Travel Blog Mongolia

Time Change

Good that Anna told me Friday that winter time will come in the night from Friday to Saturday to Mongolia 😀 I would have totally missed it… Luckily it is weekend and it would not really matter.
Language course is set for Jessy and me on Monday morning and I have bought the book the teacher is recommending us. I am very happy to start to learn something, as I am already feeling the need to get some input for my brain before making my mind dull…

Saturday was a huge football game organised by the PAD and the Zfa. 12 schools from Mongolia (in which German is taught of course ;)) were registered, 8 came to the competition. Lennart and I went there later and joined the others. I got to know Gregor and Tobi who live in Erdenet and Darkhan, finally after carrying a blood sugar meter and 300g of luxury ham from Germany to UB ☺
Vincent (who works in School 18) declared in advance in a very self-reliant way that of course HIS school will definitely win the competition…. To shorten this all a bit, YES indeed his school won the competition, the first three schools got medals, a trophy and a certificate, which is very popular here. Apart from this there was something like a flower ceremony (the people knowing Ironman, will know about this :P) and we Germans had to pop up confetti bombs 😀 Never done that before, it was funny but bestowed us a huge mess. The Mongolian way to clean it up: everybody had to pick up the confetti (and yes everybody helped, not as in Germany where all pupils would have gone without doing anything). One man brought a vacuum cleaner and tried to aspirate the confetti, which was not really working 😀
The host of the event was of course an cultural and economic attaché of the German Embassy (Christian Seiffert), who lives in UB since one year now. I got the great opportunity to talk to his wife. She got involved with the International Women’s Associations here in UB. Nice organisation supporting women in different fields and they organize several events, for example at the end of November a Christmas bazaar in the English School, which is not far away from my home.

To come short to the work as an attaché and their live: The world is divided in different zones (A,B,C) depending on their live quality. This means standard as in Germany (so this is mostly Europe, North America etc.). Then there is B, so below the German standard but not as bad as C countries. UB is a upper-class C country. It must be a C country because of the air pollution and therefore you do not stay 4 years in UB as attaché. It is shortened to 3 years. You get of course the luxury of an air filter for your home and the possibility to have your own parcel in the Embassy’s garden (including a gardener) to grow your own veggies! Would have loved to have this luxury as well, as I haven’t seen any veggies in my dinner at home so far. I asked where they get their vitamins and I was told that in milk and flesh is enough vitamins 😀
Before they came to UB (which is the coldest capital in the world, as I already mentioned in my first post) they lived in the hottest capital of the world. Have a guess where this is!!!…………… Tataaaaaaa: the capital of Oman… mh ok but what is the capital of Oman 😀 …. Muscat (in german: Maskat). The climate chart looks completely the opposite from the one in UB 😀 (climate chart of the hottest capital in the world )

Who wants to read more about the attachés clicks here: Christian Seiffert and other Attachés

Night stroll

After the football match, we went into the city, had a coffee and met Mintse. Lennart, Kirsten, Jessy, Mintse and me went with the bus, undaunted by death, to the Zaisan Monument and climbed up the 1001 stairs to have a marvellous view over UB by night! Amazing, the view and unbelievable how even the ugly huge skyscraper look pretty by night. No half-built up buildings etc.

By the way, people do not know the word sleep (the German word is better: Nachtruhe). Even during the night they work on the building site to get new skyscrapers done asap and I do live right next to two building sites 😀
It is so wonderful to have met Mintse and to work with her together in school! I am looking forward to much more adventures with her! Thank you Mintse for all you have already done so far for us!!!! We really appreciate your effort!
Having arrived at around 10 pm in the evening I was completely tired and chilled through ☹ …. We actually do have late summer and it feels as cold winter. I do not want to know how bad winter will be here. Definitely travel time then! Plans for a trip to the Gobi and more are in the planning phase! At home there were friends around from my host family and little children. One of the cute girls looked at me as if I was an alien. Even when I told her in Mongolian what my name is she did not really answer and continued staring at me 😀 Funny though. Even the Mongolian baby started to cry when my host mom showed it to me 😀 But this might have been as well because it was tired. Pretty fat, round-faced looking thing 😀 But anyway cute…
Tired to death I fell asleep very quickly and Sunday is our shopping, fitness club what ever organisation day 😀