On to Belgrade, sad..? to leave Turkmenistan so soon

Flew into Belgrade today. My taxi driver told me how hard times were in Belgrade at the moment. Well, he tried to in broken English. He mentioned how jobs were scarce and money and general wasn’t very good. Though, he was very cheery. Then we went by a building that was falling apart and I made some comment about it, and he said it was bombed. So I said, bombed? What do you mean? So, he said 1999, bombed by NATO. Wow, now there’s some history for ya. In plain sight.

At the airport, getting onto the plane, a man sneezed. I almost said “god bless you” thinking it would be a nice gesture but then I stopped and thought about it for a second. Many, many, maybe even most of the people around me were muslim, what kind of message would I be sending out? Would they be offended by something as simple as that? So I said nothing. I noticed that just across from my gate there was a flight to Baghdad about to board. Some of the people in line were looking at me. It was a bit creepy. I wonder if they were looking at me, like hmmmm… I bet she’s an American. That country that thinks they can own anyone. I quickly looked away.

On my way to the airport this morning I was a bit sad to leave Ashgabat so soon. I didn’t get enough pictures of those skyscraper, strange buildings looming in the sky with the doors 4 times the size of me, and the picture perfect parks in perfect condition, so perfect you can’t even walk through half of them. In hindsight, in general, how lucky I am to have a glimpse into such a closed-off government. I can’t believe I had the opportunity to go there.

I got to the airport to with my “CIP” status once again and sat across from some foreign ministers from different parts of the world; Nepal, Afghanistan, India, and a muslim woman, wasn’t sure where she was from. I overheard them talking about how the US doesn’t “understand” something that everyone else does. Not sure what that is. They also mentioned how obvious it is that Pakistan ISI obviously knew that Osama was living where he was. There is no other way to slice it. I was working while they were talking and I stopped writing to listen. It was hard to hear everything though.