Uzbekistan & Tajikistan with Marc

5.1.2025 - 15.1.2025

I met Marc at the end of October on a train journey between Dresden and Freiberg. It was quite a coincidence that I ended up sitting in his group of four seats. When he started chatting with his fellow travellers about Uzbekistan, my ears pricked up and I carefully tried to join in the conversation. With success! Because just two months later, the bear was off travelling with Marc - they'd been invited to a wedding in Uzbekistan!

That did require a bit of organising, though: Weltreisebär had only just landed back in Frankfurt on 3 January at 8.30am and was already setting off on his next journey from Dresden on 4 January at 11pm. So I decided to pick up Weltreisebär from Klaus in Magdeburg at midday on 3 January. We arranged to meet at Magdeburg Central Station, where I got to welcome Klaus and Beate (and was delighted that we were seeing each other again after more than two years). After that, it was back to Dresden, and on the morning of 4 January I handed the bear over to Marc and his wife Vicky.

On the outbound flight, the two of them stopped off in Abu Dhabi, where they spent the night with the bear at the hotel by the football stadium. That's how the lovely new photo for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) came about. My classmate Fritz had already had a stopover at the airport back in 2020.

The bear also travelled by night train in Uzbekistan - one of my favourite modes of transport. Alongside the wedding, the visit to Samarkand was definitely another highlight of the trip.

After that, Weltreisebär got to be part of an actual wedding: Marc's friend Rasul got married!

To round off the trip, Marc briefly crossed the border between Ishchan (Uzbekistan) and Durman (Tajikistan) on 13.1. It really is a wonderful moment when a second country unexpectedly gets added to the list, completely unplanned:

Here are the coordinates of this rather unassuming spot: 39.516880, 67.405830. It's also a little milestone - because if you count Greenland and Antarctica, this is the 100th country/territory that Weltreisebär has had the pleasure of visiting! Thank you so much, dear Marc and Vicky!