Uzbekistan 2016 - Bureaucracy, Nature, Architecture & a Roof

My dad gave me a genius program that restored all the pictures on my memory card!!! So now I can finally share all the stuff that happened in Uzbekistan.

And there was plenty! Starting with the first 4 days which were an agonizing adventure going up the bureaucracy ladder. We flew transfer through Moscow and our luggage got stuck in the Moscow airport, for absolutely no fucking reason!! We contacted the lost and found department in the Tashkent airport, who just said we have to wait after the complaint was filed.
Well, someone out there in the Moscow airport was particularly lazy, since out of the several planes that go  back and forth from Moscow to Tashkent daily, we for no reason at all had to wait 4 fucking days for our luggage to arrive.
A trip to the office of the Russian air company (Aeroflot, for the ones curious) to get compensation for the delay proved to be less than hopeful, but we DID get our money back from the little shopping we did for essentials and even an apology letter. Not bad for a story that started so hopeless, huh?
Needless to say that my family lent us everything, from toothpaste to clothes and shoes, but we were still angry as hell. Luckily all the stuff in the suitcase survived (including the Polish vodka we were bringing as a souvenir!!) and we even got our money back. Well, everyone's suitcase goes missing at least once in a lifetime, so this was our turn I guess.

Anywho, after the first 4 days we went to lake Charvaq (located north-east of Tashkent) with my family, which are my parents + brother and my uncle's family. The trip was a blast - we rented a house and made food outside, we even decided to sleep outside and spent the day swimming. Drinking was ensured and one of my cousins brought a hookah. It ended up with my dad smoking hookah with me XD.

After that there were many family visits, eating at my grandparents' place daily and mostly spending time with my (oldest) cousin, whom I haven't seen in our last trip. I usually have a lot to talk with him about. He and Boris had a ton to talk about and I was happy about it.

The weird ass futuristic buildings in the beginning of the post? My cousin had a secret key to the roof and he took us there to see the sunset! I've always wanted to go inside those buildings, they're right next to my uncle and aunt's place and they've always looked so peculiar to me. I was so excited to go on the roof of one of them!!

my cousin wanted to make a moody teenage Tumblr pic. I think we succeeded. 

Among the many fun pictures from the roof:

I already wrote about going to a rock bar in the previous post, so I'll skip it here. Towards the end of the trip I took pictures of the local architecture. Tashkent has a beautiful city center, striving to be modern in the otherwise post-soviet-falling apart architecture. And we all know which part I fancied more. Here are some artistic shots:

my uncle is obsessed with birds and has different types of them on the balcony.

Somehow the trip this time has been a lot more intense than the previous ones. I mostly hung out with my older cousin and my aunt, and a bit with my brother and parents. Usually I try to dedicate time to my relatives who live in Tashkent, as do my parents who fly from Israel for the big family meeting.

Each time I am so happy I have the opportunity to visit such an obscure place as Uzbekistan.

Boris and I might give a visit to Moscow next year, since said cousins are studying there. The family has really spread out.

Maria

Oh wait, there was a wedding as well!! And an epic one:

Ok so, the traditional Uzbek wedding is not only a lot of noise, loud music and beautiful dresses - it also happens to be the most important thing in an Uzbenk's life. So you better make it memorable. In this case, it definitely was.

One peculiar thing is that it was a wedding of a family member's kids. They're twins, so they were marrying on the same day. TOGETHER. Isn't that a little bit... strange? Financially it's a bit more strategic than having a fucking fairytale masterpiece of an event twice in a row.

Unfortunately my memory card got fucked and the program didn't manage to restore the many videos I took from the wedding, but I assure you there were traditional dancing, trumpet blowing, drum hitting and general epicness to last forever!