Today we went to a very nice Usbek restaurant in Almaty: Kishlak
Very interesting are their traditional tables, which look like a small table stacked on top of a bed.
You take off your shoes and enjoy your meal sitting crossed legged (if you can enjoy a meal in that position).
I really enjoyed the food!
Although vegetarians are clearly not the typical target group I got a very tasty lentil soup and a vegetable kebab – whereas the others tried some deliciously looking meat.
What a bummer! Here I am again: in Almaty, looking forward to a sunny weekend and had to realise, that I’ve left my travel guide at home! Paul Brummell’s “Bradt Travel Guide to Kazakhstan” proved to be a helpful travel companion last time, see http://adebiportal.kz/catalog/book/kazakhstan-bradt-travel-guide/?lang=en.
There we go again: Munich – Frankfurt – Almaty in approx. 10 hours with one stop. Not too bad a journey, even when you consider the distinctively cattle transport like economy class of Lufthansa. Very nice flight attendants, this time: super attentive, helpful, friendly – makes flying that bit nicer!
The Holiday Inn in Almaty on a nice sunny morning in May.
Almaty in May 2014 feels very pleasant: temperature in the morning close to 20º Celsius, rising to a pleasant 25º during the day.Beautiful weather, pollution not too bad – even though that might be a subjective feeling driven by the excitement of just having arrived. Well, off to the office to a good day of work, but more to come in the next days. Hopefully a chance to explore the surrounding and meet the “real” Kazakhstan with yurts and kumis and eagle hunters and tasty Aport apples.
While I thought that I knew what it means to take the red-eye-clipper at 6.50 int the morning the term took on a new dimension with my 3.50am flight from Almaty to Frankfurt. Next stop:
Traffic, as it turns out, is fairly harmless in Almaty. Pollution aside, which is horrendous, the traffic flows fairly well through the rather spacious perpendicularly aligned streets. Since the earthquake towards the end of the 19th century, which pretty much wiped out the garrison town of Verniy, as it was known then, Almaty has been rebuild with relatively wide streets which cope with the traffic quite reasonably. I have read otherwise, so bear in mind that this observation merely reflects what I have experience in the two weeks I have been here.
Cars range from oldish to new and flashy – there’s quite a selection of Bentleys on the road (sold by a local dealer), you see a lot of Porsche Cayennes and BMW X5’s, I have already mentioned the ubiquitous Toyota Landcruiser Prado. Most of them are in good shape; the local attitude towards cars is closer to the French approach then to the German “my car is my castle” attitude.
The owner of this car will be getting a ticket, won’t he?
Driving behaviour in general is very civilised, even though I have no idea what the driver of this car thought when he parked it at the stairs.
Having spent more than a week in Almaty now, albeit with a limited set of experiences due to having to spend my time with other things than exploring the town and, for that matter, Kazakhstan, it is time to share a few observations.
Online banks: I thought online banks were virtual organisations only present in the internet. I remember when Egg started business in the UK – I was quite attracted by the idea of having a lean easy bank that does what I want it to do: take care of my money, give me access to it when I need it – and all of this without having to bother to go to a high street branch. It seems there is a bank around here, that does not fit my understanding of an online bank:
Online bank? Doesn’t look like it. Seen in Almaty.
The photo isn’t very good, but I think you’ll see the interesting bit all the same. Puzzling…
F… the system: I am so glad, that virtually everywhere we can find people who feel that they have to publicly express their differentiated view on this world. Should you have read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about the Soviet labour camps – he is describing his experiences in a Kasakh Gulag close to the city of Karaganda – you might have been shocked by the stories of completely innocent people having to go through the unthinkably cruel life in the Gulag. Now, I am not saying that somebody who quintessentially damages somebody else’s property by spraying stupid statements, in this case without even the faintest trace of artful aesthetics, should spend years in the Gulag. But, whoever the brave sprayer was, he would have been much braver had he done his work during the Stalin period. Which, thankfully, has been over a long time.
F.. the system, the sprayer says.. F… the sprayer, I say. Seen on the way and close to Gorky Park.
Back to the treadmill it is. I don’t like Mondays. Which is actually not true; I don’t have a special like or dislike of any day of the week. And the treadmill is not so much a treadmill but rather enjoyable: how many people have got the chance to work on an exciting project at an interesting place like I have now? Alas, this is not about work, this is about, ehem, well, just rambling on in public, really, isn’t it?
Almaty’s Gorky Park – probably not a great difference to any other Gorky park in this world.
So, we had a good stroll in Gorky Park on Saturday and explored all the roundabouts and carousels and pools that are there. Unfortunately the weather was rather bad, so everything was closed (not that I knew whether it would have been in operation if the weather had been good), but it is a pleasant park with some quiet areas and a large section which is clearly kids paradise.
What did Mom’s do before the smartphone? God beware, they might have interacted with their offspring instead of sending text messages.
A few kids we saw, and we saw them in a familiar situation – probably known around the globes: kids play, mother focusses on her smartphone. While this might not be particularly interesting it just shows the normality of Almaty in Kasakhstan – just like anywhere else in other parts of the world that consider themselves civilised. I am still stunned about the fact that I hang out in this place and feels so normal. However, it is a bit of a melting pot with people from all over the ex-Soviet-Union and Asia with no (at least visible to me) difference between people. One is almost tempted to describe that as tolerant where it is just pleasantly normal. I like it.
Who's been here? 