Austin stumbled upon a chess park in downtown Bishkek so we went there after dinner one evening. After observing and watching some games for about 30 minutes, Austin decided to try to crack into a game. We don’t speak Kyrgyz or Russian so it was tough to communicate with full sentences but Austin pulled together a couple of words and got his point across when asking to join.

The guy in the traditional hat (photo below) offered Austin his spot and all the men around chuckled at the foreigner. Little did they know, Austin is pretty darn good at chess and he ended up beating a few guys! After the first win, the guy in the traditional hat immediately sat down to show Austin who is boss. It was a super close game but the older guy came out on top. Another local wanted to play Austin and another…everyone wanted to play the foreigner, haha! Crowds of people also gathered to watch, at one point there was about 20 people huddled around their table watching.

We learned a bit more about the chess park after the fact from some local friends. The chess park initially was a park for kids with slides and swings (i.e., a loud and fun playground). The street of the park houses many past KGB (Soviet Union State Security) people/families and they complained that the kids were loud so they used their power to change it into a chess park for adults to ensure their street would be peaceful and quiet..pretty wild the KGB still has some pull in the ex-Soviet world.

Spotted this little girl at the chess park with her kitty on a leash 🤣