Weather is still bad, very unpleasant rain. So, not ideal to explore town or countryside and, to be honest, work is catching up with us again. So we decided to go to breakfast at the Coffee Room and it turned out to be a great place to just hang out, chat, discuss, argue, get results, eat and drink.
Great place to hang – the Coffee Room not far from Republic Square
It feels like a lounge bar with comfortable sofas and chairs, pleasant and friendly staff and a menu that covers breakfast, lunch and a serious drinking session if you are so inclined. There are quite a few posh cars parked in front, most notably Porsche Cayennes, automobiles indicating a certain lifestyle of consideration and modesty. Obviously, just a Sunday brunch time snapshot, so not a soundly verified and validated fact. But, since you are still reading on, I suppose you can hack opinionated writing.
Unfortunately the bad weather up in the mountains drove us back into town. That said, the exposure to fresh air (down in Almaty the air is quite polluted and one can feel the smog quite drastically), cold rain and, uh, fresh air had made us rather hungry. While it was not quite evening it still felt a good idea to go back to the lovely Georgian Restaurant Daredjani we had visited before. And a success it was again. Khachapuri, spinach with walnuts, veal shashlik (extremely tasty marinated veal) and chingale.
Chingale (ital. cinghiale), filled pasta in the foreground, khachapuri, Georgian pizza behind
The picture above shows a glass with a green lemonade: the coriander lemonade was a distinct highlight. Probably not to everybody’s liking, but very tasty and definitely lemonade with, well, coriander flavour. A wonderful meal in a really nice restaurant. The meal was accompanied by a glass of Chateau Mukhrani Shavkapito, a Georgian red white out of an endemic grape – a perfect match. Hmmmm.
After all that food it was time to explore the city. The Daredjani restaurant is right adjacent to the Panfilov Park, a pleasant park which houses one of Almaty’s most interesting sites, the Cathedral of the Holy Ascension. Apart from the fact that it is an interesting building with a very ornamental inside the level of devotion shown by predominantly older ladies (who put on a headscarf when they entered the church), but also some younger people (who lit candles for reasons that had nothing to do with luminal darkness) was mind boggling. Probably not if you are a devoted Christian yourself, but if you tend to look at religion and its impact on society with some scepticism then it is a rather strange experience. Talking about strange experiences: not to far away from the church is a War Memorial, which seems to be a meeting place for weddings on weekends. Let’s start with the weddings:
Wedding couple at the War Memorial in Panfilov Park, Almaty
Now, let’s look at the main part of the memorial a little bit closer – just to make it clear: I personally think that war is one of the most horrible ideas that mankind produced. I also understand, that the soldiers fighting in these wars don’t necessarily find the idea of fighting in a war appealing at all. And I thank Henri Dunant for kickstarting the Geneva Convention to reduce suffering for injured soldiers and the civil population (I don’t thank the US of A for violating the very spirit of that convention with their wonderful prison at Guantanamo). Nevertheless, what has to be said, has to be said.
The incredible hulk, wearing a steel helmet, and a soviet version of Mount Rushmore.
Folks, wars are terrible. And any display that gets people to understand just how bad they are is good. But depicting a helmet-clad version of the Incredible Hulk with Soviet Union shaped wings with faces growing out of them misses the point. Obviously, I got it all wrong and this memorial is supposed to remind people of the heroes of war and invite them to think about the next battle. “Russia is huge but there is nowhere to retreat since Moscow is behind us.” as inscription is a bit of a giveaway. Now, I don’t think that the population of modern day Kazakhstan needs this kind of message any more.
Weekend! Saturday morning, well sort of morning – we didn’t show signs of activity until lunchtime, eventually time to see more than the few blocks of Almaty that we’ve seen until now. We were picked up by a local colleague, who took us to the Shymbulak (a.k.a. Chymbulak) Ski Resort. Unfortunately we’re in the middle of April, so no more skiing, but I was very curious to see the lift equipment and maybe the slopes. Even more unfortunate it started to rain on the way up, so we couldn’t spend as much time as we wanted and therefore didn’t see as much a we would have liked.
Shymbulak cable car station on the bottom of the resort.
Nevertheless, the cable car station looks modern and well maintained – I so regretted that I wasn’t here two weekends earlier, when you could still ski at least at the top of the resort. Nevertheless, we could drive up further from here by car and thus had the chance to see the famous ice rink of Almaty or rather Medeo, where a lot of world records in speed skating have been broken.
View of the Almaty speed skating rink.
The idea of an ice rink that high up is appealing, the place is probably the highest speed skating site in the world at almost 1700m above sea level. The architecture is distinctly pompous and you can almost smell the sweat of the speed skating proletarians, who, after spending virtually all their energy on extending the glory of the Soviet Union, still had enough power to break one or the other speed record in ice skating. But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. From there we went further up to a dam just above the ice stadium, which has been built in the 1960’s to protect Almaty from potentially devastating mudflows.
Schematic of the dam project at Medeo above the ice skating rink.
The dam did a good job in July 15th in 1973 when 4.5 million cubic metres of mud were stopped here and did not flow down the gorge like in 1921 before. At this point the increasing rain forced us back into town, where fortunately the weather wasn’t quite as bad. More to follow.
So, predominantly another day of work. Followed by a visit to a pub – in this case Mad Murphy’s at Tole-bi Zhenkova 12. We arrived shortly before nine, just in time to see the first gig of the local band playing rock classics. And very well they played, at least to the ears of a Munich based German, where the bands playing in pubs usually will not play anywhere else in the course of their career. A good crowd was there, not overly busy but crowded enough to get a good party atmosphere. A few people started dancing, so a good place to spend a Friday night at.
Friday night in Mad Murphy’s. Live band in the background – the frontman credibly performed songs sung by Axl Rose, Liam Gallagher.
It was a great and relaxed start into the weekend – looking forward to seeing something, but unfortunately the weather forecast is really bad.
Same old story. Work, lunch, work, dinner. So I keep it short until the weekend comes and I will be able to report something interesting. However, the Cafe World Class is a little highlight for a quick lunch: very fresh and crisp vegetables and salads, meat in form of stir fries, stews and roasts, some fish. To be recommended.
Café World Class at Naurizbai Batir str / corner of Kabanbai Batir street. It’s a cafe based in a rather upmarket gym and offers a nice buffet lunch with lots of fresh vegetables, salads and a few meat dishes ranging from stews to fish.
World Class is actually a health club with gym, pool, squash courts and a wellness area. It is pretty high end with a lot of posh cars in the car park. I haven’t been to the sports area, but on the outside it all looks very well kept, modern and clean. If you are into the whole “if am not on a treadmill for at least 60 minutes a day I don’t feel like a person” lifestyle – that’s a place to go for.
Hopefully more interesting stuff to follow on the weekend.
It hurts a little bit. There we are in a place 5000 km (3100 miles) from home (home is the City of Munich, Germany, by the way), in the middle of the unknown, and so far we have seen our hotel, the office and a couple of restaurants. If you think that this is the introduction to “but today – today we went to see an old Berkutchy (dude that hunts with a golden eagle with whom he has an intense and life long relationship)” – well, you are wrong. What we did today was: we went to the office, went for lunch, got back to the office, had dinner, went to the hotel and then I got out again to an English Pub: befittingly called the Shakespeare Pub (at 40 Dostyk near intersection of Dostyk) to watch tonight European Champions League games (in football, the real football, 2 x 45 min without advertising breaks after every pass). Tough night: my host, an avid Barca supporter (he turned up with a Barca tie today at the office), had a particular bad evening: not only was the game not shown, but FC Barcelona also lost versus Atletico Madrid. What a bummer. I on the other hand faced quite a few locals in Manchester United colours (how could they), who saw their team going down against a strong FC Bayern team – 3-1 was the result. That said, the local supporters of the English club were good natured users and shook hands with the only two Bayern supporters in the Pub. That didn’t count the distinct non-Manchester supporters from the non-english part of the British Isles, who didn’t really cheer for Bayern but agains Manchester United. Cannot say that this experience gave me a deep insight into the life of the locals. But it confirmed that the Scots cannot stand the English.
Lunch we had at a remarkable little basement restaurant called the “Hemingway Restaurant”. Address is Nauryzbai Batyr Street above str. Satpaeva. We had the business lunch, yet another tasty meal with fried fish, vegetables with chicken pieces, various salads and the ubiquitous coloured lemonades that seem to get served everywhere.
Ernst is here. If he had actually drunk at all the waterholes that claim he drunk there he would have been a serious alcoholic.
I am now looking forward to the weekend, where I hope to be able to see a bit more. Or ski.
Again, a wonderful morning: bluebird day with snowcapped mountains shimmering in the sun – Innsbruck, Grenoble, Teheran, Almaty. I love these cities surrounded by mountains – on a sunny day there’s hardly a more beautiful views than majestic mountains. Almaty gives a booming impression: I have read that a lot of the old apple orchards have been taken over by the ever growing town – there are indeed a lot of cranes to be seen and none of the building projects gives a small impression. Big is beautiful.
You might have read about the plan to rename Kazakhstan and get rid of the unbeloved “stan” suffix (which apparently means “land”, so land of the Kazakhs, which somehow feels rather appropriate). So here’s a good story: certainly on Almaty’s roads you’ll see a lot of Toyota Landcruisers, particularly the Prado model is prevalent. In fact, it is so common, that some people reckoned Pradostan an appropriate new name for Kazakhstan.
A Toyota Landcruiser Prado on front of a electric bus on a street in Almaty
I quite like the electrified buses on Almaty’s road. Pollution seems to be quite a problem in the area, so it seems a good idea to use electric buses. Assuming the electricity isn’t produced in a horrific coal-fire powerstation. Football (real traditional football, not this American sport designed to sprinkle as many television adds into a sports TV transmission as possible) joins the world. A lot of people play football here, quite a few of them in company teams fighting for victory and honour in corporate leagues. We were lucky enough to be able to see a match between two teams of a bank: enthusiastic and skilful players in a five-a-side match with a very pernickety referee. I suppose it’s not a bad idea to prevent injuries in an indoor football match, but this guy booked players where I couldn’t spot a foul. But that’s just me.
One thing that puzzles me is the normality of Almaty: before I got here it was the great unknown, but I probably expected some sort of exotic mix of Russia and China, with dudes holding golden eagles on their arms roaming the streets, joined by the occasional horde of wild horseback riders. U, well, I don’t know what I expected. But what I didn’t expect is a modern city (which only relates to the small part of town that I have seen so far) surrounded by beautiful mountains, inhabited by very pleasant, unassuming people who drive their cars in a very civilised way: automobiles will stop at pedestrian crossings, drivers have understood the concept of lanes and if somebody wants to turn right at the next junction they tend to move into the rightmost lane a fair bit before the junction. I don’t know how you feel about that, but traffic behaviour tends to be a good indicator for the degree of factual civilisation of people. Take North America or most parts of Western Europe: fairly relaxed driving, lanes and traffic lights are respected, cars are means to get from A to B and not lethal weapons in the hands of reckless/inconsiderate idiots. Sit in a car in India, even if driven by somebody who can successfully pretend to be an intelligent person in most conversational situations, and you are exposed to a degree of crazyness which makes it extremely hard to believe that whoever steers this car has understood the most elementary rules of human interaction. Kazakhstan plays in the North American/European league here. I like it.
Pooh – the trouble with these business trips is that they are – business trips. So instead of exploring Almaty I have been working. With a very nice local team, by the way: committed, enthiusastic and driven. But I don’t want to dwell in work, I had enough of that today. However, in between workshops we went to a Georgian restaurant:
We had variations of Khachapuri, a Georgian type of pizza with and without meat, some great tasty salads, richly flavoured spinach, accompanied by homemade woodruff lemonade. Delicious. The restaurant is called Daredjani at Kunaev Str# 85, corner Kazibek-bi. We got there around 3.30pm local time, so right in between lunch and dinner. Thus, it was fairly, but not entirely quiet. One of our hosts was a Georgian guy and selected the dishes for us – he made some excellent choices: the food was very tasty – a visit at dinner time seems a must, thus we’ll have a chance to sample the Georgian wine as well (last time I was in Moscow in a Georgian restaurant it turned out that due to the trade embargo at the time they couldn’t import wine from Georgia, so we had to make do with Greek wine!).
The owners seem to have a few places: a Russian restaurant near by and some more – to be checked out!
What a view! That’s a shot taken out of my hotel window: snow capped mountains in the backdrop, a few modern buildings in the front – I like it. And now it’s time for breakfast.The sun is shining, it’s a bluebird day. Skiing would be fun! But a day in the office it is.
Who's been here? 