A Jurassic Encounter

My memories of crazy golf date from childhood. It was one of those things you found in slightly worn English seaside towns and spent half an hour running round when it was too cold and windy on the beach.Crazy golf has since gone up in the world - at least in southwest London.
If you drive south along the A3 from Roehampton and look out very carefully, you might just spot a few dozen life-size dinosaurs, with a stegosaurus, a triceratops and some velociraptors among them. Some of them are animatronic, some of them roar, and the quality of craftsmanship would not look out of place in the Natural History Museum.This is crazy golf for the 21st century.
We turned up at Jurassic Adventure Golf late on a Saturday afternoon. It was already almost dark but we wanted an outing and B&Q just wouldn't cut the mustard. Floodlights and the giant dinos caught out attention from the dual carriageway, and we found ourselves queuing with excitable families and their miscellaneous small children for what has to be New Malvern's funkiest attraction.
The golf itself isn't particularly challenging (at least not for anyone used to wielding a club) but the dinosaurs add a certain je ne sais quois, as does the fluorescent green water that glows in a river and waterfalls around much of the site. A bellowing triceratops will make you jump if it catches you unawares, and the prehistoric cave paintings are charming, if several million years out of date.

Phantoms of the Opera

The neo-classical façade of Bishkek’s ballet and opera house looks a little out of place surrounded as it is by concrete, Soviet municipal architecture and the characterless front of the Hyatt hotel. The opera house stands as a solitary reminder that the Russians did not arrive in Kyrgyzstan only in the wake of the Communist Revolution; the city had been a Russian garrison since the middle of the 19^th century. A love of the Russian ballet and European opera has endured despite a century of dramatic social and political change.

The Soviet Union, already a generation into the past, also left its indelible mark on Bishkek’s opera house. As you climb the stairs from the main lobby to the balcony, the ceiling is painted with a brilliantly coloured fresco. However, whereas one might expect the usual buxom nymphs, bacchae or cherubs to be frolicking across the ceiling, instead you are met by the smiling faces of the Soviet Union's numerous ethnic groups - the happy peasant is alive and well.

The Cold War’s separation of the USSR from western Europe influenced not only the fabric of the opera house but also the productions on its stage. Touring companies came only from within the Soviet Union and the new works premiered almost all originated in Moscow. Operas with supposedly bourgeoisie plots or morals were out of favour; in fact, Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute did not get its Central Asian premiere until it was performed in Bishkek in 2002.

Even today, the cast of the ballet gives testament to Central Asia’s turbulent past. Among the ballerinas are not only Kyrgyz and Russian dancers but also, quite unexpectedly, Koreans. Koreans were forcefully resettled from the most eastern parts of the USSR to Central Asia in a bid to prevent them joining forces with the Chinese and conspiring against Moscow. Although many of Kyrgyzstan’s ethnic minorities have emigrated since independence in 1991, the existence of a disproportionate number of Korean restaurants in Bishkek is a reminder of their former presence. 

Last but not least, the phantom of the USSR stalks the opera house bar in the form of Georgian champagne. Incredibly cheap, incredibly sweet and not always all that palatable, Georgian wines and champagnes were the mainstay of a Russian or Central Asian cellar throughout the 20^th century. Trade embargos prevented European, Californian or South African vineyards selling wines to the USSR, so the Soviets were entirely at the mercy of the Georgian growers. Whatever they grew, regardless of quality, was quickly sold and the habit has not yet been kicked: warm, sweet champagne remains the drink of choice in the opera house bar.