Postcard from Bishkek

A short while ago we did a short presentation of the hotel for a group of students following a Hotel Management course at one of Bishkek’s universities. As I understood the request, the idea may simply to get them out of the classroom and into a real hotel … it wasn’t clear how many of […]

I understood the cri de couer  only too well. I had come across a plea on one of the internet discussion groups from someone who was looking for a complete list of street names here in Bishkek. There must be a list, I thought.  Perhaps the city’s architectural department of the State Registry Service kept […]

I have a number of friends and acquaintances here in Kyrgyzstan called Marat.  It can get quite confusing when I am told that someone is calling me, perhaps on the telephone or  in calling into the office in person, that:  ”It’s Marat …”. In fact, it gets even more complicated because there is another version […]

One confusing feature in Kyrgyzstan is that since independence there has been a tendency to change place names, especially from the older Russian version to new Kyrgyz names.  In many cases the new name is a form of an even older Kyrgyz name – but not always.  In a way, this is isn’t altogether surprising.  […]

When I first came here I often ran into problems over names.  Back in the UK, for example, as a school teacher, I would have “hit the roof” if one of my pupils had dared to call me Ian.  The correct form of address is “Sir” or “Mr. Claytor”.  The use of the given name […]

In Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”, the heroine, distraught that her beloved is a Montague, cries: Tis but thy name that is my enemy; … O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; What she meant is clear:  ”What matters is what something […]