Waking up and getting bearings in new city. Or maybe not.
I’m not sure what time I woke up. My phone is on flight mode and I’m using the apartment WiFi. I’m not sure if my phone is telling me the time in UK, Frankfurt or Almaty o’clock. Kazakhstan is well out of the EU, so you can kiss goodbye to cheap data roaming. Most advice recommends an e.sim. It probably is a good idea, but I’m apprehensive about messing up my phone settings and not being able to reset them. I decided to try and wing it by WiFi hopping in pubs and occasionally splash out the £7.50 a day my network provider charges.
I check on Google Maps to find out where we are. The Ascension Cathedral, which seems to be at the heart of things, is a thirty minute walk away. We had left the choice of apartment to Posh. Whatever we picked, she was going to moan about. A thirty minute walk doesn’t bother me, but I’m sure Posh will moan about it. Her fault, not ours.
As we arrived last night, I was convinced there was a park opposite our apartment. In the light of the day, I can see it is an athletics track with a skateboard park in the middle. A handful of fitness fanatics are doing a circuit of the running track before the sun rises too high. The forecasts says it’s going to be thirty of the Celsiuses today. Some yoofs wiv a death wish are hanging around the top of the skateboard ramp.
I boil some water for coffee, putting extra in the kettle so I can chill it for later. The advice is to not drink the tap water in Almaty. Although I gather it’s OK in Astana.
We Google ATMs. Word around the campfire is most major cards are accepted here, and US dollars are often accepted. Getting Kazakhstan Tenge outside of the country is a bit of a challenge. I don’t think it is formally a ‘closed’ currency, but it might as well be. Best bring a few dollars for taxi from the airport then use ATM in town. Posh and Becks paid around £14 for taxi into town. We paid nowt, cos we used Posh’s loyalty points.
Posh and Becks are notoriously late risers, so we head out on our first foraging misson. We are soon back with local cheese, butter, bread and beer.
From my research, we can’t be entirely sure which animal provided the milk for the cheese. Apparently horse is commonly eaten here. As a vegetarian, I don’t have a particular problem with that. All meat is murder. That’s not me taking a moral view of others who eat meat, it’s just that I see no difference in eating a cow or a horse. A famous local delicacy is fermented horse milk, which I might give a try whilst here.
It is beyond me why people travel half way around the world and drink in Irish Pubs. Soak up the local culture for gawd sake.
The nearest open bar to our gaff is a German Beer Keller. Be rude not to really.
Kazakhstan is an oil rich country, so lots of foreign oil workers frequent the big cities. Almaty is full of places called things like ‘Shakespeare’s’ ‘Murphy’s Bar’ or ‘The Spud and Shamrock’ (I might have made one of those up). My reading tells me that locals don’t go out till around midnight and drink into the wee small hours. Sitting in the beer garden in 28 degrees I can see why. Although for those not coming this far south, I gather it’s two coats colder in Astana. A mere 19 of the Celsiuses.
As I suspect, most of today will be spent looking through the bottom of a pint glass, or should I say a half-litre glass. I might as well tell you about Trotsky.
When he fell out with Stalin he was still considered a hero of the revolution. At that time big Joe didn’t have the bollocks to have him executed, so in 1928 he fucked him off to the arse end of the Soviet Union. Almaty.
Whilst here Trotsky got into hunting and spent fourteen hours a day writing. Much of that was writing letters of support to comrades still true to the original communist revolutionary ethos. The letters were intended to keep morale up and motivate his homies. But long before phone tapping was invented, Stalin’s cronies were intercepting the letters and letting big Joe have a gander before delivering them. The letters got through intact. But eventually the boys were sent around to have a word. A lethal word. So while Trotsky thought he was helping with an early version of team building, he was just identifying the addresses of people to be assassinated.
After a year in Almaty, Trotsky was moved to Turkey. Then in 1932 his Russian citizenship was revoked and he was given assylum in France, then Norway.
‘What ever happened to, Leon Trotsky?’ He eventually moved to Mexico where in 1940, as every Stranglers fan will know “he had an ice pick, that made his ears burn’.
But whilst he was exiled in Almaty, it wasn’t an unpleasant experience. He was still considered a hero. Even the dudes in Moscow that arrested him were in awe. One preferred Trotsky to shoot him rather than go down in history as one of the people that arrested a leader of the revolution.
Today, apparently, the Soviet leaders are still held in high esteem by many in Kazakhstan. Especially by people too young to remember the Soviet Union and the negative baggage that went with it. Hopefully we will get to test that version of current attitudes over the next few days.
It’s clear from the menu in the Munich Bar that ‘vegetariansky’ (real Russian term for vegetarian – honest) is not a big thing here. Veal, horse meat, almost any meat is available. Often on the same plate. But no ‘plant based’ items on the menu. We make do with salad and something that looks like a pizza, tastes very similar to a pizza but ain’t a pizza. It’s a cheesey bread thing that just happens to be circular. To be honest, I think it’s better than pizza.
We sit for a few hours drinking beers, then cocktails, then Posh and Becks finally peel themselves off their mattress to meet us in the pub. Sorry, Bier Keller
As we sit in the pub, some Celtic fans arrive. They are playing Kairat FC tomorrow, in some European tournament us Cardiff City fans don’t bother ourselves with. The stadium is twenty minutes from our apartment. I suggest to Becks that we buy him a ticket. It’s his seventeenth birthday tomorrow. He impolitely declines.
We debate which day we are going to do the traditional, ‘get your bearings walking tour’. There is a suggestion that we pay extra for one that starts in the evening. Eventually we decide that we will get up early and do a ‘free’ tour tomorrow morning before it gets hot. I say ‘free’, we usually give a tip equivalent to the cost of a paid tour anyway. We compromise and agree to get a taxi to the pick up point.
After taking the piss out of the waiter for having a love bite on his neck we have an early(ish) night. I’m not sure how early, I still haven’t switched my phone data on.
Tomorrow’s blog will be far more interesting, I promise. Lots of stuff learned on our walking tour, about wooden Cathedrals, war memorials and shit.