FAREWELL DINNER IN THE STANS AND TWO MIRACULOUS CONNECTIONS

Our tour group of 90 people (divided into three groups of 30) had been together for three weeks. We had traveled through six countries together, ridden buses, trains, camels, and planes together, consumed thousands of cans of Coke Zero together--and the time had come to bid each other farewell. Most of the group was heading home, but we and another couple still had one more three-day stop in Azerbaijan to go.

The tour leaders said their good-byes, including the two representatives from the German train company and the four members of the Tyndall family, owners of Fun for Less Tours, who had been on the tour with us:

We shared our last dinner while enjoying entertainment provided by local musicians and dancers.

Gotta love the dramatic gestures:

The "This Bread's for You" and "London Bridges" dance:

Turkmeni guitar music:

The Turkmeni Lady Gaga:

We really grew to love the Central Asian drum, a skin stretched over a frame and played mostly with the finger tips:

I wish I had taken more pictures of our traditional Turkmenistan dinner, but all I have is this cup of squash soup, a couple of meat-filled pastries, and a glass of Coke Zero (the Honorable Beverage of the Trip):

There were so many wonderful things about this journey--I learned so much and many of my perceptions and attitudes were re-shaped by our experiences. However, one of the absolute highlights of the trip did not really have anything to do with the Silk Road. Rather, it was a pair of unexpected and miraculous encounters with fellow travelers.

The first day I got on the bus, someone called out my name.  Pearl Anderson introduced herself to me, and then told me a story about having met my oldest sister at church in Utah a few months previous (both of them live in other states), and figuring out that her family and ours were connected. Her father, an American GI, befriended my mother, a German girl in her early 20s, during the occupation of Germany by allied forces after World War II. His family ended up sponsoring my mother's immigration to the US in 1952, and my mother lived with Pearl's grandparents for nine months when she first arrived in the US. Truly, without their help, Mom never would have been able to get out of Germany. She wouldn't have met my dad a few months after she arrived. She wouldn't have married him and had five children with him, with me being the last. My family's existence hinged on the friendship offered to my mother by this woman's father.

Pearl had told my sister she was taking this trip, and my sister told her she thought we were going on the same trip. The 90 tourists on this trip were divided into three sub-groups, and miraculously, the Cannons and Andersons were in the same sub-group. Pearl had seen my name on the sub-group roster and had been watching for me.

During our long journey west, we spent hours together on the bus talking about the stories our parents, all of whom are now dead, had told us about those war years, the immigration process, and my mom's first year in the States. We shared stories of what we knew about our parents' marriages and what our family lives had been like. I think I learned as much about my mother during this trip as I learned about the Silk Road! 

The other little miracle relates to one of the other passengers--a man named Hans Bobsin who is one of the chief travel managers of the German company that owns the Silk Road Express train. He accompanied our group during all of the train travel. Hans is an intelligent, lively, friendly fellow with a great sense of humor who got along well with everyone. As I listened to the soft German accent behind his impeccable English (he speaks something like six languages), it sounded so familiar. The train company is based in Berlin, but Hans did not seem like a typical northern German to me. He was way too much fun. I finally got up the courage to ask him what part of Germany he was from. I told him he did not seem like a typical Berliner to me, a group of people I have stereotyped as a little dour and not particularly friendly. 

"I'm not from Berlin," he said. "I'm from southern Germany."  

"Where in southern Germany?" I asked. 

"Pforzheim."  

That single word took my breath away. No wonder his accent sounded familiar! My mother was from Pforzheim, and lived there most of her life before she immigrated!

What are the chances that a member of the family who sponsored my mother's immigration and a man from her hometown would both be on this trip with me? (Mom, did you orchestrate this?)

I shared my mother's stories of the war in Pforzheim with Hans, who teared up when I told him the story of Oma and my uncle fleeing to the river during the lethal bombing raid on February 23, 1945, which killed almost 18,000 people, and of my mother stuck on a farm in the country, not knowing for two weeks if her mother and brother had survived. Hans is my age, and as he told me about growing up in Pforzheim, I could almost imagine what it would have been like to move there had Mom made the decision to return to Germany after my father died in 1964 , something she seriously considered. Hans and I could have been classmates! It gave me new perspective into her difficult decision to stay in the United States for the sake of her American-born children.

After three weeks of travel, in the end it was hard to say good-bye to these and the other wonderful people we had journeyed with.

It didn't help that we were facing a 3:30 AM flight. The airport opened in 1994 and used to be called the Saparmurat Turkmenbashy Airport. (What else would you expect from Turkmenistan?) However, it had many design flaws, and so the second president, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, redesigned and rebuilt the airport at a cost of $2.3 billion, and this version, the Ashgabat International Airport, opened in 2016. It is bizarre (the word I have used again and again in my posts about this country) so spend this much money TWICE on an airport as Turkmenistan has almost no tourism and tightly controls the movements of its own citizens.

The terminal's very distinctive design (in white marble and blue glass, duh) looks like a bird in flight:

Photo from Wikipedia

The interior is also quite distinctive:

It had all the regular Duty Free shops, which were either empty or locked up. Of course, it was the wee hours of the morning.

Good-bye, Turkmenistan. I wonder what you'll be like in twenty years?

For that matter, I wonder what ALL of the five Stans will be like in twenty years. This seems like a region of the world that is ripe for change--be it revolution, annexation by China or Russia, collapse, or (by some miracle) a belated entry into world politics and trade.