Exotic Switzerland

A friend, upon learning I was abroad recently, asked if I've been somewhere exotic. I replied: - Yes, Switzerland.

It was my first time there and yes, it was one of the most exotic places I've been to.

Switzerland is an old city on a lake surrounded by mountains. It's the perfect fairy tale,

postcard destination. How's that for exotic?

And it's very rich, but not in an overly conspicuous way. Buildings are not grand and there are no gleaming skyscrapers. Wait a minute, if you are in a small city, waiting for the green light and see yourself surrounded by Ferraris and Bentleys, are you in a filthy rich place or what? Oops, filth is heresy in Switzerland.

Then there are the cows. Cows are a symbol of Switzerland. I saw many in souvenir shops, the small ones. No, one doesn't see live cows, the real deal, in the city. Switzerland is definitely not India. I saw a couple of them on a mountain, but I've heard there are many more. And they too are very rich. If what I've heard is correct, the government pays each cow the equivalent of what 40 Burundians or Liberians earn a year.

Sometimes, there are surprises in Switzerland. For instance, Geneva has its Brasília side. After seeing the communist architecture of some former Soviet capitals, I was not expecting to see myself in the middle of a typical "superquadra", with low and long buildings surrounding a huge green lawn, in Switzerland. But hey, Le Coubusier was Swiss, right? And Geneva has its Jeddah side, with so many veiled women and the jeddau, I mean, jet d'eau.

Back to filth. Or no filth. Although I've previously heard about it, I was impressed by how tidy everything is in anti-filth Switzerland (and as my Swiss experience was limited to the French part and Lucerne, I can only imagine how is the rest of the country). So different from the mess we find in New York or São Paulo. Even construction sites are organized and clean. Now tell me: how much more boring can it get? But if we get bored, there's something really cool to do: eat Swiss chocolates, they are indeed delicious. Or find a job at the United Nations or the Red Cross and help under-salaried Liberians or Burundians (just don't touch our cows!)

The most famous Brazilian in Central Asia was a slave

Uzbekistan, from all places, seems to be the destination of choice of retiring Brazilian soccer stars. World champion Rivaldo plays in Buniadkor, the team from Tashkent. Zico trained the team at some point.

But even more than Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and whatever "Rs" Uzbeks can come up with, it’s the Brazilian soap opera that really connects Brazil to Central Asia. There is a facination for us, exotic Brazilians.

When I was in India a few years ago, a Tajik classmate told me she loved Brazilian films. How the hell the Brazilian cinema reach Tajikistan, I wondered. Then she said she really enjoyed Isaura. She was referring to Escrava ("Slave") Isaura, a soap opera from the seventies that for some reason was a phenomenon in the communist world. Its main actress, Lucélia Santos, who played the white slave of the title, was (and still is) greeted as a star in all the former Soviet Republics, as well as in China and Cuba. Just two weeks before my arrival in Kazakhstan, there she was as the guest of honor of the Brazilian Film Festival in Astana. In Kyrgyzstan, a tour guide told me that the time in the evening when our soap operas played was the one favored by thieves, that would enter the houses and steal their bounty while the family kept their eyes glued to the screen.

The capitals of Central Asia (and of "Planalto Central")

Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Brasília. Sister cities. Low, long buildings; solid, geometric structures; long, wide avenues; parks and trees galore; far from the sea. You’ve seen one: you’ve seen all. Well, not quite so. There are always surprises.

The luxuriously designed lounges in Almaty (design furniture, international cuisine, vodka, live singers, beauties dancing on the counter). Almaty, the "garden of apples", is the former capital.

The intimate scale of the greenest of them all, Bishkek, old Frunze, that manages to keep a human feeling to what would otherwise be a typically cold and gray Soviet capital.

An austere and earnest production of Gisele (or any other ballet or opera) at the Opera Theater in Tashkent, where old and young, rich and poor, virtually anyone can buy a ticket and be surrounded by the simple and sincere beauty of the spectacle and the building.

Brasília, where, well, you will find a lot of Brazilians.


Astana and Ashgabat are rather cousins of Brasília - not sisters, with their brand new (sometimes kitch) architecture.

Astana, the capital that is farthest from the Ocean, the second coldest capital in the world, the Dubai of the steppes. Astana, the city of gleaming skyscrapers, with barely a soul on the streets. Astana, the the capital built in an effort to occupy the Far North of Kazakhstan (a region closer to Russia). Economic crisis = unfinished megadevelopments, half-built concrete mammoths. But Astana is there to stay, to be loved or hated, to be envied or despised. And to become the future home to a few Brazilian diplomats (those particularly critical of Brasília might become more appreciative of it after being "really" far from the sea and out in the cold).

Ashgabat is the odd kid on the block, much like Turkmenistan, which doesn’t quite fit in the lot of Stans of Central Asia. What to make of it? An hybrid of Singapore and Dubai, the immaculately clean city is out of tune with the much poorer rest of the country. It lives in its own dimension, and proudly so. It’s the fruit of the design of Saparmurat Niyazov, or Turkmenbashi (“father of the Turkmen”), the first president of the country, who spared no effort to build a gleaming city that was devastated by an earthquake in 1948, leaving Nyazov’s mother and two siblings dead, along with other 150.000 people. It’s the white city, where all public and main buildings are covered by white marble. One would suspect Turkmenistan might have helped keeping the Italian and the Spanish trade deficits not too out of control simply by buying all that stone. Besides the white buildings, the monuments and statues stand out. And in this domain Turkmenbashi, the president that could be king, reigns absolutely. Though dead since 2006, he lives and shines in the many golden statues in Ashgabat and elsewhere in the country, together with the statues of his mother, father and infant brothers. The main statue, atop the Arc of Neutrality, sits on a mechanism that rotates it in a way that leaves Turkmenbashi always facing the sun. Other unusual sites in Ashgabat are the “walks of health”. When Turkmenbashi decided to stop smoking, he forbade smoking on the streets and built two long paths, one with 8 km and the other with 24 km. Going up the hills, with thousands of steps, they are illuminated and can be seen from different points of the city. Although one’s health might improve after completing the shortest path a few times a year, the effects of completing the longest one are yet unknown.

The current president seems to be slowly undoing some of the more controversial policies of Turkmenbashi. He allowed the use of internet; replaced the old currency (the old bills, no matter their denomination, carried the face of the first president); and restored the old names of the months of the year, which had been renamed by Turkmenbashi with the names of his parents and relatives. Still all public buildings, universities, aeroports carry the name of the first president.

Turkmenistan was my first experience of a country that still has very visible marks of a cult of personality. It's pure travel bliss, like being transported to another time or dimension.

Central Asia's pot - and a lesson on stereotypes

One of the best aspects of traveling abroad is the possibility of overcoming prejudices and stereotypes through a first hand contact with the places and people along the way; of being surprised by how the world is richer and more complex than previously expected. I was surprised, for instance, to know that the cap on the head of my driver-cum-guide-cum-travel companion in Kyrgyzstan wasn’t a kippah, but a taqiyah. I guess I was not expecting a blond, blue-eyed, Russian-named guy in Kyrgyzstan to be a Muslim, just because I’d never seen one before. It shows not only my ignorance but also the melting pot that is Central Asia.

Well, not exactly a melting pot, but a pot where many races live more or less side by side within the same borders, and not always in great harmony. Ethnic Kazakhs make up only half of the population of Kazakhstan, as do ethnic Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan. Although ethnic Tajiks are registed as Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, some claim that the first outnumber the latter in the country. Ethnic Russians can be found in all countries, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tajiks living outside Tajikistan outnumber those living in the country. In Uzbekistan, Turkmen, German, Ukrainian, Korean, Tatar, Uighur add to the mix. It’s a festival of faces and features that rival the different landscapes found in the region.

Dichotomies

The most common cliche about Istanbul must be the one on its many dichotomies. I would never pretend to know the city well, after being there only two times in a total of 10 days. But from a timid peek, one can already tell that it's a different place. Not in the "all places are different somehow" way, but in a "je ne sais quoi" way that is hard to explain. I might have been influenced by some readings, including the autobiographical piece by Orhan Pamuk, but it's not hard to realize that Istanbul doesn't easily fit in any category. The biggest cliche of them all: part-Europe, part-Asia, part-East, part-West. And the cliche stems not only from an abstraction but from the evident and unique geographical reality of the city, as one can swiftly pass from one continent to the other just by crossing the bridge on the Bosphorus.

As you walk down Istiklal Cadesi, with its 5-story buildings with ornate facades, you might have the feeling that you're in a European City. Still, it's not quite European. It is neither Asian or Middle Eastern as Damascus so evidently is. The avenues in the more affluent parts of the European side, like Beyoglu or Nisantasi, are not as orderly as in Vienna or Warsaw. Although they can be somewhat grandiose, sometimes there is also an ugliness - and the traffic jams - that is more reminiscent of Sao Paulo. Yet the overpowering energy of Sao Paulo is not there. It's easier to sense what Pamuk described as a feature of the city's people: their melancholy.

Like Buda and Pest on the Danube, the European and the Asiansides have their share of palaces built on the shores of the Bosphorus. Like Budapest, Istanbul has the magnificence of its past to show, but in the faded way of a great empire that ceased to be. Then there's the unmistakably Oriental flavor represented by the ever-present domes and minarets that dot Istanbul's skyline and make it unique in a way that no European city could be.

After talking to a few expats there, I learned Istanbul is one of these special, "love it" or "hate it" cities. This observation reminded me of Brasilia, a city that, like Istanbul, one cannot be indifferent to. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe them as "love it and hate it". Yet, Istanbul is worlds apart from Brasília, not only for the richness of its history as for the apparently spontaneous urban development that one can't find in the planned and controled Brasília's layout.

Another dichotomy I could feel in Istanbul lay in the Turkish themselves. Eventhough they are very welcoming and friendly, they are quite reserved. Maybe traces of the melancholy Pamuk described?

All in all, its beauty and its ugliness living side by side, Istanbul is a magnetic, magnificent place to be.

Middle East again

Something keeps me coming back to the Middle East. I still didn't reflect upon it. I usually prefer to wait and let things sit or sink and then try to understand them emotionally rather than rationally. But let's stop the autopsychoanalysis!

There's something in the Middle East that really appeals to me. Many things, to say the truth. But these many things are easy to conjure: the delicious (and very inexpensive) food; people's hospitality; amazing historic and natural sights; people's good looks (uhmmm, is this a reason to travel? - as michelin guide raters would say, is it good in this category, is it excellent and worth a detour, or is it exceptional and worth the journey?) Here i come quibbling again.

But the explanation is in the "something".
Is it the thin line between openness and conservatism? Or between wealth and indigence? Is it just the appeal of a culture that is strange and familiar at the same time? Is it the magic that permeates the streets and houses, century-old places and customs, the aura that emanates from the cradle of our civilization and all the honey and blood spilled on so much sacred earth? Is it something in the way that people look at you that's both shy and curious, welcoming and suspicious, innocent and guilty?

Of course all these are somewhat romanticized blanket statements that don't do justice to all the different peoples and cultures and landscapes in the Middle East. Up to what point is Islam such a unifying force in that region? Islam itself has its divisions and contradictory messages. Some countries are much richer than others. Interestingly (or perhaps consequentially) countries that were not blessed with deep and vast oil wells seem to be the most beautiful. Like parties, poor people's ones usually more entertaining than rich people's feasts.

And talking about feasts, then there is the food! From the ubiquitous shawarma to the more elaborate stews and skewers. Some spices so familiar to me. Yet always some new discovery.

For a Brazilian like me, the Middle East is not an "in your face" different world like India or Southeast Asia. But it's neither an "oh, it's just the same" old boring Euroamerican environment. Maybe it's in the shades of grey. The appeal is perhaps in the mystery, in the rugged beauty that does not show itself effortlessly. Perhaps one must deserve it, in order to be allowed to comprehend the beauty of the place. I'm not talking about the superficial, easy to acknowledge beauty, but that one that reveals itself slowly, that demands you to lift the veil. This slow discovery has been worth so far. Every trip makes me thirstier. I can't answer. And I'll probably keep going for more.