I am here in Tashkent only a week now and it feels very much at home again. It is still lovely autumn weather with a very bright orange-yellow sunshine every day. It is cold in the nights but 20-22 degrees in the daytime. The sun is low, so our street with the 4tier appartment buildings are in the shade very early, around 4 pm. 
On Wednesday it took us the better part of the day to get registered at our new adress. In this country that is a very serious business, as they want to know from everyone where you are, from day to day. We were registered in the Alitravel guesthouse till the 2d, but since we wanted to register in our flat on the 3d, at the registration office which is about 5 kilometers from the area we live in, we first had to prolongue our registration in the guesthouse till the 3d (for which we had to travel to the other side of town again) otherwise they would not change the registration form one place tot the other- there being an unexplicable gap of about 10 hours, for which they do not dare take responsibility.
All this led by our sweet but tough landlady of 55, with her mother of 77 who is the real owner of the appartment and with help of our taxidriver cum friend Djamsheed, who speaks English good enough to translate between the officers(Russian), the landladies (Russian) and us. When we had finally finished all the paperwork, payments and signatures in the different offices ( passports to be picked up on Saturday, when they were not ready yet) we took the whole group out to the French Cafe, not too far from our new adress, to treat them and us to drinks and lunch. We had an interesting exchange, through the translations of Djamsheed of course. The grandfather of our landlady was a famous operasinger; he was the first to be allowed out of Uzbekistan in 1925, then part of the Soviet Republic, to erform in Paris and Moscow. He was acquainted with Rachmaninoff. Our landlady herself was a dancer, also having been on international tours and is now a dance teacher. Not ballet and not folklore, so probably more like Turkish bellydancing. She invited me to take lessons from her so I could perform for my husband! Which might be interesting indeed. 
During one of my lunch breaks I ‘scored’ a nice winter coat, pullover and a blouse at the Mango store, a Spanish brand, where they had sales at 30 % off, so real cheap. It felt as if I was in Europe , with all the ladies grabbing for hot items, as if there is money enough in this world!
There is artweek here from 4-9th of October, so we tried to find the exhibitions, walking though the parks and treelined lanes, but that didn’t work out. Lack of Russian doesn’t help inquiries! So instead we climbed the viewpoint, which was nice. We did find the photo-exhibition, which is really of good quality.
Today, to start our wedding anniversary in Paris fashion, we had breakfast in cafe Bon, with a huge French cappucino , on the terrace in the sun, lovely! Then we were invited for lunch at Maricla’s, together wih Axelle and our Dutch friend Margreet and her (visiting) sister. They are all of the generation of our children , none of them married yet, so despite being married 35 years, we didn’t feel old in their company. Maricla prepared Duck(very special, from a lady at Aloyski Market), Axelle brought the wine she carried from France and we brought chocolate-cherry cake.
In between we got congratulations from good friends and family by email, emailcard, text message and skype, which contributed greatly to the festive feeling, knowing to be connected through shared love and friendship. Thank you all!
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