UB Arrival

Pre-trip

Six months ago, I decided that after graduating from college, I would seek my fortune, or more realistically a subsistence livelihood, as a journalist in Mongolia. Securing a job* at the UB Post,a small English-language weekly in Ulaan Baatar, I put all of my warm clothes in two suitcases and a backpack and prepared to travel to a city, country and continent that outside of books I knew nothing about. This all seemed like such a good, exciting idea (I even convinced my lovely girlfriend— and future co-writer of this blog—Bijani to abandon her job at a publishing house and join me in September) until two days before my departure when I panicked, imagining life in a post-soviet industrial city where I didn’t speak the language, knew practically no one, and where, by all accounts, it would get monstrously cold. I was not ready to go, but I already bought the ticket and I had told enough people about the trip that I couldn’t chicken out. Besides, I’ve managed to wing things before, so why should this venture prove any different?

On the way to town

Riding toward Ulaan Baatar in the backseat of a private Hyundai turned taxi cab, a ring of green hills caught my very red, very jet-lagged eyes before everything else. Cedar look-a-likes garnish these hills, standing dark and thick in defiance of my expectation that Mongolia had no living trees (Coal and Manure are famously burned for warmth in Mongolia and I mistakenly assumed that if you are going to burn these things, it must be because you have not trees). The sky was gray, the clouds were big and gray, and the bright hill grass blanketing the narrow river crevices and modest crests stood out beautifully.
These hills and their color also provided a contrast to the second thing to catch my eye, the outskirts of the city itself: a series of brick, cinder and wood buildings, shadowed by power plants whose large stacks puff out coal smoke. The roadside scenes looked like a union of Green Bay and Chinatown, with many structures that could’ve fit into a PBS special documenting the depression-era Midwest (some of the larger ones even have the distinctive shape of an old red barn), except for the ubiquitous, green, somehow Asian looking, corrugated tin or tile roofs.

The good, the not so bad, the not so ugly

Looming almost as distinctively as the smoke stacks over Ulaan Baatar are dozens of yellow cranes accompanying dozens of construction sites throughout the city. Foreign investment and increasing local wealth, largely from mining, has launched a construction boom in Mongolia’s capital, with several sky scratchers (they’re tall, but not that tall, and yes I would like you to help me coin this phrase if haven’t stolen it) nearly completed in the city center. Smack in the middle of downtown, there’s a large square sprawling in front of the elaborate parliamentary building which combines elements of a parliamentary building, the Lincoln memorial, and a green house. Most impressive about this building is a massive front and center statue of Chinggis Khan, who sits upon a throne, looking calm and just, yet impossibly wide and imposing.
I had heard that Ulaan Baatar was a city influenced by Asia, Russia and more recently Europe and America, and so far this appears to be true. In terms of architecture, the Russian’s did worse in East Berlin as far as ugly Soviet-bloc housing goes (perhaps these buildings improve with age and minimal maintenance), and there are many interesting and beautiful buildings in the city, which in spite of dust and some unruly city green spaces, has its own cosmopolitan feel.
So far, I like the city, but Ulaan Baatar has presented some difficulties and unpleasantness. In the early morning hours at Chinngis Khan international airport, I had a little trouble finding a cab driver who didn’t smell like a Smirnoff distillery. Anything pertaining to cars has proved harrowing as Mongolian drivers love to pass, do it constantly, and have sworn an oath to prevent pedestrians from confidently using their right of way. Deciphering the Cyrillic alphabet has also proved a challenge, as has deciding which way is north, in part due to fatigue, in part due to poor signage, and admittedly to congenitally poor directional sense.
Enough people speak enough English that I’ve had no trouble procuring food and water despite my complete ineptitude in Mongolian, and the few local people I’ve spoken with at length have all been remarkably friendly. As far as winging it goes, so far, so good. I begin work tomorrow when the real fun begins.

*This job may not be secure