A Living Reminder of the Bygone Soviet Union Years — Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent

Calum Macleod said in The Golden Road to Samarkand that Hotel Uzbekistan is “so ugly that it’s almost beautiful.” Upon seeing the building, I tended to agree with him. The hotel was built by the Soviets and the government only sold it to private hands in 2018. The building shapes like a book with opened leaves and standing upright. The oddest of its appearance is what looks like an additional layer of steely, or wooden, material in absolute uniformity that covers the hotel’s windows. This additional layer comes in rectangular shapes with overlapping corners, which makes the hotel look cold and rigid, but intriguing at the same time. Perhaps the ugliness comes from its still-shiny steel adornments, including the sign of Hotel Uzbekistan and this odd, seemingly unnecessary layer of window façade, that remain golden, but a gaudy kind of golden. The sight of the hotel itself was education to me. I have probably not ever seen anything that is truly “Soviet Union,” although the gaudy gold does somewhat echo the state hotels of China built in an earlier era. This architecture expresses what “grand” entails in an ideological era long bygone. Hotel Uzbekistan was meant to be top-of-the-line when it was built, and certainly it still markets itself as a luxurious hotel in Tashkent now. There are two sections, Café Bar and Bar Vienna. Bar Vienna was a whole lot more interesting so we sat down there at a compartment seating on the side. I said our coffee there was other-worldly-dreamy because this setting was the perfect backdrop for a spy movie. It felt like a 1950s classics there. I sat down and started imagining Soviet agents eavesdropping on foreigners discussing the affairs of the world. #uzbekistan #centralasia #tashkent #hoteluzbekistan #sovietunion #sovietachitecture #旅行酷体验