Two friends recently went on a trip to Uzbekistan, getting an appreciation for the country’s history and culture on their latest in a line of trips to countries around the world.

Deb Greaney has lived in Waterloo for over 40 years, having served as an elementary school teacher in the area.

As Greaney described, she wanted to keep herself busy in retirement, mainly by traveling around the world with those close to her.

“I decided that when I retired, the one thing I wanted to do was travel and see the world, so that’s what I’m doing,” Greaney said. “And I’m lucky my husband’s gone some places with me, but I also have several friends I travel with.”

One of those friends is Kate Bauers, who has called Monroe County home for 35 years. She recalled having met Greaney as a yoga instructor about 25 years ago, and the two came to be very close friends.

The pair are both fairly well-traveled, though Bauers slightly more so. As they both said, they’ve served as traveling companions a handful of times in recent years.

“We have our fifth one coming up in July to Fiji,” Bauers said. “I collect countries. It became a thing. I just want to go everywhere before I die, and I’ve been to 87 now. And Deb, bless her heart, she says ‘Sure, let’s go!’ She goes to all these crazy, out-of-the-way countries that I’m trying to collect.”

Greaney provided a fairly thorough overview of their adventure around Uzbekistan, a country with a strong Muslim culture which was formerly controlled by the Soviet Union but has a history stretching back centuries – perhaps most notably as a major hub for the Silk Road trade route connecting China to Europe.

They flew from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. From there, Greaney said they essentially looped around the country, traveling to Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand before returning to Tashkent.

Greaney noted some of the broader aspects of the country’s culture they encountered, including the removal of shoes and women covering their heads with scarves inside religious sites.

“I loved the way they did it,” Greaney said. “The first place we went was a tomb, and I said to our guide, ‘Should we cover our heads?’ and he said, ‘It would be appreciated.’”

She further described how several nearby countries seem to be growing increasingly religious and culturally Muslim, though Uzbekistan seems to be interested in becoming more secular and multicultural.

Their guide, Greaney said, spoke about having Christian neighbors as well as knowing several Jewish families who live nearby him.

Greaney and Bauers also visited one of the oldest synagogues in the region, also seeing a 1,200-year-old Torah.

Greaney also spoke about some of the country’s history she’s learned, noting the Soviet Union’s presence in the region and how the country contributed much to Uzbekistan’s modern infrastructure.

She further spoke about how Uzbekistan pushed to reinforce its own culture as the Soviet Union dissolved, taking, for example, the large apartment blocks that had been constructed and either demolishing them or redesigning and repurposing them to be more in-line with the previously-existing culture.

“Once the Russians were out of the country, they took great pains to restore all their monuments, to restore their history,” Greaney said.

She also touched on their overall experience in the country as American tourists, recounting how friendly and welcoming people were.

“They love Americans,” Greaney said. “I had people come up on the street and take selfies with us. School children classes, I’ve got pictures, they came up to us to talk to us and practice their English.”

Bauers expressed similar sentiments, noting in particular how interested folks seemed to be in the United States.

She commended the food as well as the overall cleanliness of each city they visited, further noting a distinct cultural difference in the degree of masculinity that’s expected of men, with a long-haired man who was also part of their tour group receiving many curious looks.

Greaney and Bauers also spoke about their thoughts on traveling in general, both of them espousing the benefits of exposing yourself to other cultures.

Bauers emphasized the most important part of traveling for her.

“Learning,” Bauers said. “Learning how the world works. If you’ve never left the states, you just have the news in the states, and you don’t even really care, maybe, about what’s going on in China. But if you’ve been to China, you do… It’s really a learning experience.”

Greaney likewise spoke about the benefits of traveling and seeing other countries and cultures first-hand, saying how especially enlightening it can be to speak to average citizens rather than just tour guides to get a real idea of what life is like outside the U.S.

“That’s the one thing I’ve found about traveling is you hear all these things and you have all these concepts and ideas that you hear here at home, and then when you travel, you start to see what’s really real,” Greaney said.

As Bauers mentioned, she and Greaney are currently planning a trip to Fiji in July, with another trip to Nepal and Bhutan planned for November – though they both have plenty of traveling to do even beyond this year.