Author: Mark Jahnke

Mark Jahnke is a figure skater-turned-marathoner-turned-traveler currently making his way from Central Asia to London via Argentina and Uruguay. Follow him on Instagram at @mondaybazaar.

Man Down

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Today I fell in a hole in front of a giant crowd of Tajik students. Whoops.

I’ll back this story up to provide some context to what so far has been the funniest thing to happen to me since arriving in Tajikistan. Here there are a lot of open areas for water drainage – the rare rain that comes can cause major flooding, and so the city has a very effective system of water drainage from sidewalks and streets.

However, this results in many open holes and channels, or jubes, that are occasionally hazardous to people and Ladas alike. We had been warned that we should always look where we were going because of “open manhole covers,” as it was put to us, but having only seen one that was actually a manhole, I sort of brushed this aside as I walked along chatting with some people after class.

And then suddenly there wasn’t ground under my foot and, “like a train wreck in slow motion” in the words of one of my friends, down I went. It was noon at one of the busiest intersections in the city, and people were already watching us. I blinked for a second before jumping back to my feet. All we could do was laugh and walk quickly before I blushed too much.

Lesson learned: watch your step.

Mark, Meet Dushanbe

Published on by Mark Jahnke

We arrived in Tajikistan at 3:30 in the morning a few days ago, and since then I have a lot to report, partially because I have not had a lot of access to the internet. On our first day, we spent most of the day trying to orient ourselves after having had very little real sleep for several days. After clearing customs, we were bussed over to a hotel in the center of the city to rest for a few hours before eating and having an in-country orientation. We all had thought that we would immediately pass out for the entire rest period, but many of us ended up sitting around using the internet to update friends and families as to our location and arrival (this was when I posted my last blog, assuming I would have internet the following day to post another). After finally being able to fall asleep, though, many of us regretted the decision because we were so sleepy when we woke up. After our orientation we had lunch at a Persian restaurant, and then walked around the city for a few hours. Continue reading “Mark, Meet Dushanbe” →

Moonrises

Published on by Mark Jahnke

On Tuesday evening we watched the moon rise over Dulles, its orange crescent form more slender than even the wings that would carry us to Frankfurt and beyond.  In many calendars, including the variety of Islamic calendars, the new moon is the start of a new month, but for us it was also the start of a new journey.  The next time we see the new moon, it will signal the halfway point on our journey here in Tajikistan, and will also signal the beginning of the month of Ramadan, which many plan to observe. Continue reading “Moonrises” →

Thirty Three Arches

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Thirty Three Arches

This is a piece of travel writing I wrote in 2013 about my experience traveling in Esfahan, Iran in the fall of 2012.  Because of the way rights work with The Crimson, I can’t publish the entire text here, but here is the opening part:

There is something both timeless and eerily beautiful about arches in Safavid architecture. The elegant ogees appear in both two and three dimensions across the city of Esfahan, forming façades and domes, lining bazaars, and crisscrossing the Zayandeh Rud in the form of four stone pedestrian bridges.

Stepping onto a pedestrian bridge is always a thrill. I still remember when I first walked across the Weeks Bridge, looking at the cars on both Soldiers Field Road and Memorial Drive and thinking to myself, “I bet you wish you could use this bridge.” Where else in Boston can you see people dancing Argentine tango beneath the full moon in the spring, jumping into the river in the summer, cheering on the rowers in the fall, and quickly running across in a bundle of down in the winter?

Continue reading over at The Harvard Crimson!

One Week Countdown

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Having bid my family farewell at the airport a few hours ago, it would seem that I am now officially a fully fledged independent adult, or as it keeps on being portrayed to me, “a member of the fellowship of educated men and women,” although I wish they said “people.”  I am a member who, in precisely one week, will be climbing onto a series of jets over the course of two days to travel to Tajikistan.  The belongings are stored, and the duffel is (almost) packed.  It’s finally hit me that this is really happening.

Continue reading “One Week Countdown” →

A Preparation

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Leaving home is never easy.  Leaving a home and knowing that you are leaving your community for good is even harder.  This was my life this week as I packed up my 6th and final dormitory room from my four years of university over the course of eight hours the morning after I graduated.  In frantic runs to the ZipCar and the storage unit, one Lululemon bag after another piled up in boxes and in my temporary room that I am occupying until Thursday.  It is from this pile that I will carefully select the 20 kilos of belongings that will travel with me on the two-day journey to Dushanbe.  By 20 kilos, of course, we really mean 15, because I will buy at least 5 more kilos of gifts and souvenirs while I am in Tajikistan, I’m sure.

With family and friends punctuating each day, I wonder to myself how will this departure, as not a side-note to a larger university education or job, but rather a transitional interlude between chapters, will register in my mind.  Is this an end or a beginning?  Or is this somewhere in the middle?  Too many farewells have taken place in the past three days to call it exclusively a beginning, but too much is about to happen to call it exclusively an end.

I guess I’ll just have to live in the middle for now.  The middle of my piles of things, that is.

DYU

Published on by Mark Jahnke

Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The city that will be my home for two months this summer. A city the size of Boston located in the heart of Central Asia, isolated by mountains on all sides. A city whose past lies not in a city but in a market that took place every Monday for centuries. It is that market from which the city and this blog take their names. Follow my blog and my journey as I graduate college and move on to travel across the globe,beginning with Dushanbe in June.

 

Image from: http://ds-lands.com/dushanbe.html