Nukus

We came all this way to visit a museum. But like we forgot in Greece that museums and historical sites are closed on Christmas Day, so also are most museums closed on Monday. This means we got some extra spare time, we could visit another necropolis nearby, but given the fact that we will spend most of tomorrow in a car already we gave ourselves a day off.

We have a great apartment to do so, we even have a spare living room only for our luggage. So we savour the hot showers, bath for the children and eat a healthy lunch and dinner. Zeno takes a long afternoon nap and Cleo and Olga explore the nearby playgrounds. There are a host of things to say about the Soviet architecture and city planning, but at least they gave each apartment block their own playground.

Where Samarkand provided a small window to the Middle Ages, Nukus brings visitors back to Soviet times. Cyrillic alphabet has been abolished in Uzbekistan for some time, but here we got Russian menu’s which needed google translate to make any sense of. When we get money from the ATM, we think that we might be duped, because the 500,000 notes are completely different. In the end they just are the old notes, but we hadn’t seen them in our pile of money before. The city itself doesn’t seem to have changed much since the 1980’s, Uzbekistan probably had one architect who designed all apartment blocks. It’s just row after row of the same buildings. Only the cars and the store front show that time has past.

Everybody has enjoyed a good night’s rest in a non-moving and shaking bed. This means we are ready for our long day. We adjusted the schedule a bit, our pick up will be 10.15 instead of 9.00, so we can still visit the museum. We take a Yandex and are allowed inside the museum at 8.55 already. The State Museum of Art named after I.V. Savitsky houses the second largest collection of Russian Avant Garde art in the world. The museum immediately reminds us of Russia where every room also had several old ladies guarding the art. Here they are a bit younger and very helpful. They all want to cuddle Cleo and take selfies with her, Cleo doesn’t seem to mind and puts on her glasses as she poses with them.

The collection focuses on paintings with a link to Uzbekistan. We already recognize many locations and there is a separate exhibition dedicated to the disappearance of the Aral Sea. It’s bizarre to see depictions of the marine lifestyle of an area which is now a desert. We finish the two floors and head back to our apartment for our pick up for a tour of the desert and ultimately our next stop, the former slave market of Khiva.