On the Web: Ulaanbaatar Subway

Not many people know about it and especially pictures are rare. But there is one enthusiast who has dedicated a web site to the Ulaanbaatar Metro, or Metroo as it is called. Here is a picture of the Zuun Urt station that is featured on the website, but also a subway map is digitally available. The guestbook is another feature on the site, with some interesting comments from both believers and non-believers.

!! - For those not so aware of the public transport situation in Mongolia - there is reason to doubt the actual existence of the subway.
The website on the purely fictional UB subway is made by Yumzhagiin Oodarghal and as can be seen in the guestbook many people found it realistic enough to believe it, while others took amusement in continuing the joke - !!

Wedding day - Mongolian words: хурим (khurim）

хурим　(khurim） means wedding but also just feast. Гэрлэх ёслол (gerlekh yoslol) is a more general word for a marriage. Anyway, today there was a lot of weddings and feasts, as it was an auspicious day in the Buddhist calendar: Baljinnyam and Dashnyam coincide only once a year and it is traditionally the very best day to get married. From the early morning until late at night couples and their families were lining up for marriage ceremonies at the Wedding Palace. Odriin Sonin reports that from 2.00h in the morning until 21.00h a total of 108 couples got married in ceremonies of about 20 minutes (although the math of that doesn't really seem to work out).

UPDATE: See more images of one the wedded couples on this day: Roeland an Suvdaa, in their Suvdland

Pictures: Agricultural Market in Ulaanbaatar

This weekend was the start of the annual agricultural market in Ulaanbaatar, named Altan Namar or Golden Autumn. Hundreds of farmers came from all over Mongolia to the capital to sell their products. It is a rare collection of fresh vegetables that reach the city: eggplants, pumpkins, corn and many more. Students of the faculty of law carried out a survey on the origin and background of the salesmen and -women as part of the Mongolian Nomadic Society and Land Ownership - A Comparative Study of Land Privatization in Transitional Countries, organized by the Center for Asian Legal Exchange (CALE) and the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan.

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The main market was at the liberty square near the Tengis Movie Theater and an additional market was at the Sky Shopping Center. Both will last for about another week.


Family with their products at the agricultural market in Ulaanbaatar

UPDATE: UB Post reports on the struggels of the farmers, and the problems with cheap impost products.

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technorati: mongolia - agriculture