What did I expected of Kabul before I come here? Part I

The following posts might become a little more serious! my scientific side is coming up sometimes!

I expected to see:

1. Ruined houses because of war: I saw many of ruined houses and many construction works. For days an area called Makroyan, which is in one side of river was the front line of war, different Mojahedin groups were shooting from both sides of Kabul river passing trough the city. You can still see the bullet holes and ruined houses in this area. The area is build with big concrete apartments from communist’s times, very similar to what I saw last month in some areas in Dresden (East Germany). I also saw many houses and apartments which were newly built. These were very out of concept, and ugly to be honest! In the area with many ruined houses and dirt road with big holes in the street, suddenly you can see a pretty house with mirror worked walls, colorful stones and modern windows. Big gardens and lots of security wires on top of walls. I like to see how the city would look like in ten years from now.
Also it was surprising that most of the pretty old houses, which now turned to high class restaurants (mainly for foreigners), were hidden behind a very dirty ugly walls, with a big door. I wouldn’t ever expected to see a big garden behind the walls. You would go inside and totally forget about outside.



"Old part of city: Shar e Kohneh"




"Makroyan houses"




"Destroyed houses"




"New build house: often happens in the middle of totally ruined street a newly build house".


2. Very crowded streets like in south of Tehran: true, there were a lot of people in the streets, especially around the market (Bazar) near the river. Also too much traffic, not as much as Tehran, but similar. In the evening the city was deserted though!








3. To be very cold: Not too bad! The temperature drops pretty fast here, but I was lucky with timing, spring is coming!. During days was really nice and sunny, beside of couple of days of rain. But evenings are pretty cold. Past winter was one of the coldest winters, for long time the temperature stayed below zero. Here the houses do not have any good isolation, there is no gas and people use a lot of wood to warm up. If you are rich your windows are actually have glass, otherwise it is plastic.