Any blog about life in the former Soviet Union is incomplete without a post discussing the omnipresent marshrutka, the transportation of choice in most cities of the former USSR. I wrote a little about the shared taxi system of Dushanbe in a post a few years back called Managing Marshrutkas, but now that I spend about an hour every day inside the real deal, I think it’s a subject that bears revisiting.
First of all, what is a marshrutka? Continue reading “That Marshrutka Life”
The other day, I was on my way to an evening at Public Pub, which is this lovely Irish pub (of which there are, unbelievably, two in downtown Dushanbe) where we like to have a beer every so often. As usual, I stood on the side of Rudaki, waiting patiently for a car (or even better, a Lada) drive up with a nice big laminated “3” in the front window. In minutes I was speeding down the road in my own private Mercedes (for the grand cost of 3 Somonis, or about 60 US cents), when we were flagged down again. I watched incredulously as three other men my age climbed in and sat on the bench next to me, two more crammed into the front seat, and three others climbed in on top of us, to put a total of what must have been 9 or 10 people in a relatively small sedan.
Dushanbe is a small city, but it’s even easier to get around than you might think. Everything is only a few blocks off of the main drag, Rudaki avenue, and if that weren’t enough, there is a robust network of public (and easily accessible private) transportation.
Easily most visible are the rusty trolleybuses that ply Rudaki as bus route 1, many of which have a Tajik flag billowing on a little mast above the driver’s cab. You step on at any of three doors, and pay an attendant one Somoni for the ride. As many a Tajik have learned, you then assess where the sun has been hitting the vehicle most recently. Since Rudaki runs north-south, depending on the time of day, one side of the bus is considerably hotter than the other because it’s in direct sunlight. Maybe that’s why so many people looked at me strangely for the three days I chose to sit on the sunny side of the bus before realizing on the fourth that the right side of the bus was a good twenty degrees cooler. Continue reading “Managing Marshrutkas”
