The rapid growth and development of Tashkent is amazing to watch. In the four years I’ve lived in the city, the amount of new businesses and apartment blocks is astounding. It has caused strains on the infrastructure such as much more traffic, lack of electricity and heating fuel for all, etc. On the positive side, it has made life here much more pleasant with better restaurants and cafes and more things to do and see. It seems like every couple of weeks a new business is opening. When I went to pick up my bicycle from the mechanic earlier this week, Nadia and I noticed that the British Coffee chain, Costa Coffee opened a store in the mall near Eco Park. Costa Coffee was founded by an Italian guy (Mr. Costa) living in London back in the 1970s. They bought a Polish chain, CoffeeHeaven years ago and had a lot of shops in Eastern Europe. We used to go to Costa Coffee when we lived in Belgrade, Serbia. Today, it is the second-largest chain of coffee shops after Starbucks. I had an excellent nitro cold brew and Nadia enjoyed a piece of cheesecake.
On the flip side, in some ways, Tashkent has a long way to go to become a modern, capitalistic city. The former president, Islam Karimov kept the economy tightly under wraps in the post-USSR independence. I was walking Obi the other night when I came upon these two cows, tied up in front of a house located very close to the backside of our school. It reminded me of the stories my mother used to tell of her childhood when she had to go up to the cow pasture in my village of Caspian and collect the family cow to put in the yard overnight. That was probably in the 1940s. No one in my village today has a family cow and the young people growing up in Caspian probably do not refer to the hill as the “cow pasture” anymore. We called it the cow pasture thanks to our parents who remembered that time. I don’t think you would see cows in many European cities. This is one of the reasons I enjoy living here and having adventures overseas.
The start of the school year for an administrator is incredibly busy. This week we welcomed returning faculty and took the annual staff photograph. I am looking forward to school year and seeing the students!
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