Walking tour of Almaty to try to get our bearings.
*Quite a long read. Get yourself a coffee.
Having had an early-ish night, we were up quite early. Posh and Becks were up even earlier, Becks’ phone still being on Frankfurt time I think.
Following advice from the man, the myth, the legend, Paul Corky, I download an app called YanexGo. It’s a Kazakhstan version of Uber. You can book taxis, order food and such like. Then we decided to walk into town to meet up with our tour guide, Sheriff. It takes about forty minutes, but it’s pleasant enough. Ever so slightly down hill and the sun hasn’t really flexed it’s muscles yet.
I’ve given up trying to work out the rules of foreign pedestrian crossings. Red obviously means don’t walk. But as is the way with many foreign countries, as you sashay your way across the road with a spring in your step and a whistle on your lips, don’t go thinking that because the green man is showing, you ain’t gonna be taken out by a car.
The city is quite modern and not significantly different to any European city.
Eventually we find the starting point but there’s no sign of Sheriff. He eventually rocks up with five minutes spare.
Sheriff is a Sudanese national who was granted a place in King’s College London in 2022, but due to the civil war in Sudan, he’s been unable to access the relevant documents from his government to sort his visa application. He has been studying in Almaty for two years and is clearly very knowledgeable about his adopted country.
We had booked a tour that was listed as being a four hour walk. When he announced it was seven or eight hours, Posh nearly fell off the bench. She soon made it clear that we weren’t going to be walking for eight hours and the itinerary would need to be thinned out a bit.
You can show us where the museums are, but we don’t need to go in them today. We are here a week, we can come back, thank you very much. Posh.
He said he understood, but I don’t think he did.
For the first half an hour, we sat listening to a history lecture. We learn that we are actually sat on what was once part of the Silk Road, or more accurately, the Silk Routes, the network of trading routes linking East and West, stretching over 4,000 miles. It was important for trade of goods, but was also integral to cultural, political and scientific exchanges between east and west. It was active from 500bc (on a Saturday I think) till the mid 15th century. During those 2,000 years it was never called the Silk Road, that was a name given to it by historians in the 19th century. The name derived from the trading of Chinese silk that made its way as far west as the British Isles. Almaty was a small but important city along the route.
Almaty didn’t really grow to what it is today until Kazakhstan was incorporated into the Soviet Union. It’s close to the Chinese border so the Russians considered it an important strategic military asset. Since then it has grown to a city of 2.2 million peeps. That’s more than 10% of the population of the whole of Kazakhstan and more than the capital, Astana, which has a mere 1.7 million peeps.
As Russia entered World War Two, 340,000 ethnic Germans that had settled near the Volga River in Russia were deported to Kazakhstan and Serbia, and never allowed to return. Stalin thought they might support Hitler, but there’s no evidence to suggest they did. As a result there’s still 200,000 people of German heritage in Kazakhstan today, 1.4% of the population.
What with all these different people being exiled to Kazakhstan, for a while actual Kazakhs were in a minority in their own country. Russian is still widely spoken throughout the country but, much like the Welsh language, in recent years legislation has been passed to revive the Kazakh language.
You can see now why we didn’t start walking for half an hour. This is just the stuff I can remember.
Eventually, we got around to putting one foot in front of the other (22,000 times according to Megan’s phone). We stopped several times to look at old buildings – there aren’t many of them. In 1911 the biggest earthquake in the country’s history, weighing in at 8.1 of the Richters, shook most of the city to the ground. So if you visit, don’t bother looking for an ‘old town’. Besides, for most of the country’s history, the majority of the population were nomads, who weren’t really into building old towns.
We soon find ourselves on the Metro. The only Metro in the country and one of only two in Central Asia. It was originally started in 1988 but when the Soviet Union went tits up in 1991, construction halted. I think it restarted in 2011 (ish) and now two lines are complete. It’s more than just a Metro though. Each station is a work of art. Or as Sheriff describes them, museums. We let him get away with those. We stop at one dedicated to the Soviet Space Programme, one dedicated to the Silk Routes (although its a bit of a mystery what a Mexican pyramid has got to do with the Silk Routes) and another one dedicated to… do you know what? I can’t bloody remember what the third one was dedicated to.
Entry to the Metro is by token which you can purchase at the station and you can ride around all the stations to your heart’s content for the one token. Till you go out, then another token is required for next journey. Sheriff did mention a money saving app but it’s so cheap its not worth the hassle.
Whilst waiting for a train, they run every ten minutes, I ask if Kazakhstan is still a socialist country
No, it is now a liberal democracy. In the wealthy cities they are very open minded and tollerant. But out of the cities everyone is very poor. They are more conservative, particularly in the West. Many Kazakhs are less tollerant of Russian speakers in the west, it is considered rude to speak Russian. Sheriff
Museums are discussed several times. I think Posh was getting fed up of saying we didn’t want to go in one. I had politely mentioned toilets. After a while I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying , my bladder was so full. When we walked past one he said not to worry, there would be another one soon. I muttered something about the meaning of the word ‘now’ and ignored his advice.
Food was brought up several times and we were assured that a cafe was on the itinerary, in about two days time. When one of the gang told Sheriff that if we didn’t find food soon they were going to eat one of his legs, he started to take our requests seriously. And his answer to our grumbling stomachs? Fucking ice cream.
I’m getting most of my grumbles out in one go here, but he was actually a very pleasant and well-informed guy, he just wanted us to see as much as possible. Whether we liked it or not.
Eventually we reach Panfilov Park. The first thing we check out is Ascension Cathedral. It is a stunningly beautiful Russian Orthodox church built entirely out of wood and without the use of any nails. One theory is that they decided to not use nails because of the connection with the crucifixion. It is one of the few buildings to survive the earthquake of 2011.
After the Russian Revolution, religion was frowned upon, so it was converted into a museum of the Kazakh Soviet Socalist Republc. In 1995, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was handed back to the church and restoration began. Today the interior is amazing, covered in frescoes and adorned with iconography. It is truly spectacular, but at the same time you can’t help but think it looks a how Donald Trump’s bathroom probably looks.
*Visitor tip. Blokes must not wear hats in the cathedral, and women must cover their heads (there is a selection of headscarves available to borrow, just inside the main entrance).
Next up, we go to see the war memorial to the Panfilov Twenty Eight. As Hitler’s army was pushing towards Moscow (part of Operation Barbosa), 28 Kazakh soldiers from Almaty, led by Russian commander Ivan Panfilov, fought bravely and contributed to the delay of the advancing German Army. According to Christopher Robbins’ book (see day one blog), they were little more than farmers and went up against Panza Tanks with tractors. There are small monuments of each of the soldiers in the park, giving their date of birth and date of death. Those that died in combat have 1941 as date of death. Those that have a later date of death were captured and put in prisoner of war camps.
MOVIE ABOUT THE PANFILOV TWENTY EIGHT (English subtitles)
A short walk away is an eternal flame and a memorial to all who died in the war. This includes a gargantuan statue of fifteen soldiers, representing the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It’s an impressive piece of art, with each soldier looking like a superhero out of a Marvel comic.
After posing for some photographs, we head up to the Museum of Musical Instruments and The Military Museum. We have to explain, once again, that we don’t want to go in. I think Sheriff’s penny finally dropped.
Next up is a chocolate factory, but you can’t go inside the factory, its just a big shop. No words are really needed. He can tell from the look in our eyes we don’t want to buy any chocolate.
We have a short walk through a street full of fly-pitchers, then an open air market, then we are in the legendary Green Bazaar.
We are greeted by the sight of multicoloured stalls of neatly stacked fruits and vegetables. Most of them seem to be doing good business, despite the fact that many of them are selling the same goods. As we wander around we can see it seems to be split into areas. Fruit and veg, herbs and spices, and eventually, row after row of hanging animal carcasses of various descriptions. Including the aforementioned horse.
I’m not really sure how it happened, but Sheriff persuades Posh to buy a watermelon.
Sheriff takes us up to a cafe on a balcony overlooking the market. We try to get a table that pleasantly looks over the fruit. But it’s busy so we have a table overlooking the butchers. I think it’s probably the Kazakhstan equivalent of a greasy spoon. Traditional, basic and – well – a bit grim to be honest. Especially for vegetarians. The best bit was the watermelon which we carved up on the table. We eat some but Sheriff devours most of it.
We chat and get to know Sheriff a little better, and suss out some of his tricks. He tells us how much he loves watermelon for instance. When the bill comes the five meals come to the equivalent of £8. We of course pay for Sheriff. We figure he had picked here because if we had gone somewhere expensive he would have been snookered if he had to pay for his own meal. But we still love him.
In all honesty, I love this cafe because of the view over the market. But the food is not great: Sheriff
He tells us we now have to walk 30 minutes to the next stop. We tell him we are walking to the next pub and sort out a generous tip. He is made up- early finish and well paid. He tells us he just wanted to make sure he showed us as many sights as possible. We tell him four hours is fun, eight hours is hard work. He gets the message.
*my advice, skip the walking tour, just go to Panfilov Park. All the interesting stuff is there. And after walking for ages, we still haven’t got our bearings
I try to use the toilet in the market but they only take shekel coins, which I don’t have. I watch as the lady guarding the door hands out two sheets of toilet paper to those going in. I decide to wait.
We then head off in search of a pub. I’m glad we gave up on the walk, whilst we had our gruel in the café the sun had got it’s act together and is now turned all the way up to eleven. We follow Google Maps and go on several wild goose chases. Tempers start to fray. Eventually I find us Hopers Bar. As the name suggests its a western style pub, but not overly touristy. They have cider (yay!). It tastes like vinegar (booo).
We spend ages discussing Metro stops and which one is the nearest to our apartment. Then we walk home.
We stop at a posh looking restaurant with lots of expensively clad young people toking on shisha pipes. It’s a funny old game the shisha malarkey. They always have professional smokers hanging around to get them going when you’ve let it go out. I’m not a smoker, but I quite enjoy the aroma of flavoured shisha in the background. By the way. vapes are completely banned in Kazakhstan. You will get fined if caught. Some locals have even gone down for it. Cigarettes are OK though.
We order food and when it arrives the young waitress cuts it up for us. Maybe she could see the state on my teeth and took pity on me.
When we finish I try to pay the bill but it would appear that my bank have blocked my debit card. I used it twice with no problem yesterday, but it would not work in the pub. And it’s not working now. I pay by credit card instead which is not the end of the world, but a pain in the arse.
By Kazakhstan standards its probably quite an expensive restaurant, but this is how Norwegians must feel in Wales. For us, it is much cheaper than back home.
As we head back to the ranch the streets are coming to life. It’s definitely a nocturnal city. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. And Welshmen. And women.
Back in the apartment I keep an eye on the Celtic game. It’s a draw. Which goes into extra time. They go to penalties at half past midnight. It’s a ridiculous time to be playing football. All to keep Western European TV audiences, who are four hours behind, happy no doubt. EUEFA rarely consider the fans. But hey, it’s got to be done. Celtic lose on penalties. Tex comments on Facebook that there’s only 300 Celtic fans here, which explains why we haven’t seen many. I had half fancied the experience of being in a big, passionate crowd of celtic fans on a European jaunt. But I’m not sure that’s what it would have been. I’m glad I didn’t go.
At 1am we get a message from Posh. A girl had rocked up at their door and asked if she could charge her phone. They let her in and had a pleasant half hour chatting with the young girl, who was thrilled to practice her English. She even gave sightseeing tips. Time will tell if letting her in was a wise move. (She turns up following morning with chocolate for Becks’ eightieth birthday. The landlady advises us she has an apartment in the building she rents by the hour)
Anyway. I think we are going skiing tomorrow. Stay tuned for updates.