Chrisi discovering Afghanistan: Shopping, Jogging & Eating in Kabul

Chrisi's shopping tour in Kabul


Sunday morning I decided that it was time to do some shopping to by some Afghan cloths for myself and lots of souvenirs for my family & friends at home: So Shaista (Mahmood’s cousin) and I spent the whole morning going from shop to shop. After 10 days in Afghanistan I felt quite safe walking around Kabul, just her younger brother accompanied us. We started in “Chicken Street” where all tourists go to buy souvenirs: You can get absolutely everything there but it s also very expensive, so we went to some smaller bazaars where you can get exactly the same items just much lower prices: It seems like the most popular souvenirs are Afghan cloths, hand bags and jewelry of all kind. Shaista impressed me and the shop owners with her bargaining skills ;-)

Burger Restaurants and crazy taxi drivers
Afterwards we went to a burger place, where I made the mistake to just grab the first chair available and sit down. The staring of all the men showed me that something was wrong and I was told that this room is for men, and the room behind the curtain is for women. There we met two very nice women, one was head of the English department at her school and we had a very nice conversation about Germany and Afghanistan.
We then took at taxi to the AIESEC office and I realized once again that the most dangerous thing about living in Afghanistan is the traffic and the crazy taxi drivers: Nobody wears seatbelts, traffic lights are constantly ignored and if they want to impress you they overtake the other cars left and right on narrow bumpy streets.






Jogging in Kabul Park
After 10 days without any exercise I suddenly felt the urgent need to go jogging. Bahadur (MC VP PD) accompanied me and we went for a walk & some jogging in Kabul Park: People in the street always stare at me – but apparently there are not many women that go jogging there so today I caught even more attention than usual.

Today I got a special gift: Mahmood’s cousin Jawed who is tailor made a beautiful Afghan dress & for me. It s black with red decorations and looks very nice J