A flower power dictator with brutal cakes!

Hello from another funny country! (According to the definition of my beloved ex boyfriend). And in this case, I totally agree, it IS funny! And lovely - of course 😍 (according to my definition).

Tajikistan - what do you associate with it? As for me, I heard somewhere 10 years ago that it is super dangerous and you cannot go under any circumstances. Consequently, it was at the same time off the list and put as priority to discover! At the one hand, I am also not immune against alarming, sensationalist media reports. On the other hand, I know, whenever something is pictured too extreme in the media, in reality the situation turns out to be the opposite. And as a proper economist, I did my well founded statistical research ;) 

My favourite examples are Saudi, Yemen, Iran with bad reputations in the media and super peaceful, highly civilized and cultured, enormously friendly populations! And on the other hand the medial "good guys" such as the US, India, Maldives, Brazil, where you just get shot or robbed in a supermarket or raped. Independent evidence to be found here!!: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?displayColumn=1

Back to this funny country. As probably most of you, until today I find it difficult to differentiate between the STANs and their capitals: Uzbekistan with tashkent, Turkmenistan with Ashgabat, Kyrgyzstan with Bishkek, Kazakhstan with Almaty and Tadjikistan with Dushanbe (I was googling while writing this!!). And who is the one with the funny dictator who got a bit megalomaniac with his marble cities and burning hell holes??? That's the Turkmenistan one! No direct neighbour of the Tadjiks, but the Taliban indeed are just a stone's throw away. But they're peaceful and welcoming now... Very tempting 🤭

Tajikistan is surprising for me in a way that I expected to somehow have armed militias and run-down post soviet heritage, meaning the morbid beauty of rotten prefabricated concrete buildings. What I found today was more in the category of the funny country:

Endless tulip fields, making you think you landed in Amsterdam, huge monuments indeed remembering the sovjets, an army of electrical Chinese cars, beautiful snowy mountain panoramas peeking out behind the impressive neoclassical palaces and shy sweet mosques with colourful hats of mosaic domes, a ring road framed with platanes and fountains reminiscent of the imperial ring road in Vienna! Here and there some memories of powerful colored St Petersburg houses, shiny glazed banking towers and green oasis of huge forestry parks all in between. And everywhere you see a picture of the leader in-between flower fields and cheesy mountain panorama. Indeed he seems to love flowers! Even the lanterns are of flower shapes! I was honestly only missing donkeys to make this puzzle of sceneries complete! Ok slowly and more visual now:

Be welcomed by a tiny Roman colosseum giving view to a Disney pillar and Christmas tree.

Translation: The Istiklol freedom and independence monument surrounded by baroque style arches and Nowruz decoration. Nowruz is the Persian new year, which was just one week ago :)

You might have noticed at the bottom of the tree: they use something close to Persian language but with Cyrillic script! Challenge accepted!!!

(Sorry for the wrongly turned picture. I cannot change it in the app and will fix it once I have my laptop... Or maybe not 😁)

Disney with flower power and snowy mountain panorama 🥰

I was betting it wouldn't work!!! But as we are not in Germany - it worked!!

Dushanbe built the largest flagpole with 165m until Jeddah got the largest one 3 years later in 2014. It's all about size! Now it's the 5th largest and certainly the most ronantical 🥰

Here I met the director of a polish ginger bread museum! The pathes of life never ceize amazing me!

Nowruz palace - This used to be the largest tea house in central Asia (remember, size is important!!). I consider it an appropriate entry portal for my own little tea parties...

From the side it looks a bit less overwhelming and more playful. I can totally see my girls and me sitting in this pavillion for breakfast! Can't you??

The cake!!!! 🎂🎂🎂 He looks brutal. So it's a brutal cake! Anyway, he's the largest concrete cake building I've seen! Took me a while to find out what's the purpose of the cake: Barbad concert hall.

And now we arrived at the Vienna ring roads. Just missing the horse carts and trams!

And last but not least a very meaningful picture telling the other part of the story. I'll leave the interpretation up to you!

Unfortunately it's not possible to capture the cuteness, softness and positivity of the locals in a picture! My hostel family welcomed me at 4am with open arms and a smile and invited me to join iftar after a long day walking and freezing in the city! Promise me to imagine the taste of fresh, home made bread, filled with tasty meat and vegetables and an apple mulled wine without wine when looking at my dinner picture:

The story to be continued tomorrow! O definitely owe you a photo of the romantical leader ;)