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Uzbekistan Airways Sure Knows How to Turn on the Charm

Does this billboard for Uzbekistan Airways creep you out? It is a perfect example of how not to advertise an airline, or anything for that matter. In fact, it makes us kind of scared.

This TwitPic from tweeter @clivepugh was sent over to us by a friend who said that she "couldn't stop giggling" over it. The spirograph-like shapes might be pretty, but nothing stops us from noticing that the airplane is getting sucked into a cloud, and that their whole slogan is "Good Luck." Perhaps they didn't feel like showing off the whole hunka airplane, since their fuselage is pretty weird-looking, as we see here.

Oh and don't look now, but Uzbekistan Airways has added a second billboard, featuring some phallic buildings and an extra exclamation point: see it here. So does anybody have some Uzbekistan Airways stories to share? We're now super curious about exactly how much luck is required to fly with them.

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[Photo: TwitPic/clivepugh]

Strange Things / Uzbekistan / Museums / Art / → All Tags

Follow the Spook Trail to Nukus

Here's another go-to on the list of creepy Soviet-esque travel paradises. Not sure why we keep going back to these sorts of places, since you couldn't pay us enough to spend a week in them, but here goes nothing.

Nukus is the capital of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Time Asia, in encouraging you to visit, describes it as "ravaged by desertificaton and poverty." Okay. So what's fascinating about Nukus, besides the poverty? Its access to the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea (a "hellishly arid landscape"), and its Savitsky Karakalpakstan State Art Museum filled with Gulag-era gems.

The museum's original curator and namesake, Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky, died from tuberculosis after his health was damaged by the chemicals he used to clean and restore his art. If that's not enough to scare you into lending him the respect of a visit, perhaps you'll have to go after all you did to get to Nukus: it's a 40-hour drive from Tashkent. You can take a plane there too, but it sure won't be a 747. Hotels in Nukus are said to be "disgusting," so you might be best off Googling a homestay.

[Photo: upyernoz]

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