Tuesday, April 22, 2014
April 10, Kazan
The next day, we got up rather leisurely and went down to the hotel restauarant for our breakfast. Most good hotels in Russia provide a rather substantive breakfast as part of the deal. Our hotel in St. Petersburg, the "M" gives you a variety of good stuff, two kinds of juice, bagels, croissants, potatoes, eggs, sausage, cooked veggies, fruit, porridge, muesli, cereal, yogurt, waffles. When you are out walking all day it is a good idea to fill up and we do. The Giussepe in Kazan is a bit less extravagant and is often times picked over when you get there at 8:30 or so. Plus no good coffee if any which makes the girls crabby. As a meat eater, I do fine, but the more refined members of our party do not have as many choices.
We planned to meet up with Kazan student friends of Stepan at 3:15 pm in our hotel lobby---after their classes; so we have most of the morning and afternoon to explore on our own. This day is a cold one, windy, and about 15 degrees F. We try to go down to the Museum of Tatarstan just down the street, go through the front door and are promptly stopped by a security guy, barring our forward progress. I hadn't read the sign outside closely enough---it opened at 10am, closed at 11am, and reopened at 1pm. Zatkrit. Closed. So, we walked down to Bauman street, the main Kazan shopping and pedestrian-only street. Our plan was to walk down this street a 1.5 miles or so to find the house where Lenin lived when he went to school here---now a small museum. Bitter cold. So we stopped in a place very similar to Starbucks---even the logo--actually an Austrian chain called "The Coffeeshop Company". Names are strange sometimes in Russia, for example, there is a live music club in Saratov called the "Rock Hard Cafe". Girls ordered fancy coffee drinks and some kind of filled croissants. The waitress explained these would take about 20 minutes. I got the Russian version of hot chocolate which is more like a cup of hot melted fudge. They give you a small glass of water with this and I suppose you are supposed to mix this in....? All in all good stuff. We are off after an hour or so to find Lenin. Nice street Bauman, very funky. Musicians playing every few hundred yards. Kazan seems very cosmopolitan, you can see the Asian influence everywhere. Many people are obviously Muslim, there are darker tones to peoples skin, women often with heads covered, but very stylish and colorful. We start to move into a less touristy and more residential part of town. We are looking for a certain street where this small Lenin museum is on our map and are having trouble finding it. Along the way, we come upon the Russian version of tow truck kidnapping. Police are in an intersection directing the following operation. Tow trucks that are more like crains are removing illegally parked cars. They attach chains to the entire car---in this case a nice black Lexus SUV and others---hoist them completely up off the ground, and then try to lower them correctly onto the bed of a truck. It seems tricky, cars are swaying, and lining them up with the bed correctly takes a bit of skill. There are several car owners standing around forlornly as their vehicles are carted away. My heart goes out to them. This policy has always seemed not quite legal to me. Apparently towing companies have friends in government in Russia too. I try to snap off a couple of secret photos. You probably shouldn't be obvious when taking pictures of police or soldiers here. Nothing sinister about this necessarily---Volgograd is only a few hundred miles away. You are warned not to hang around photographing bridges, train/metro stations, military buildings. I am pretty sure we are obviously American, and therefore---this may surprise some readers----we have the same concerns about terrorist activity and are, I think are definitely considered friendly! Any time I have contact with public authority, I am treated very kindly, never with suspicion. I think this is partly because they know I am NOT dangerous precisely BECAUSE I am an American.
We are still looking for the street of the Lenin museum. I see a street I recognize on the map that is very close and we peel off to begin the search. We cross a big highway. There is a Russian business guy walking near us who is obviously frustrated because he can't find something. We don't talk, largely because we assume we can't help each other. soon we seem headed into a residential area that is beginning to turn into hills, one lane dirt roads, and footpaths. Up ahead, a guy in a car is having trouble turning around. He is gunning the engine, spinning his tires; eventually escapes his little predicament and is headed towards us. He stops and asks me in Russian if he can help us find something. I point our destination on our map---and he basically says---what is here? I say Lenin's house. Oh OK....he points us up the road. We go traipsing up this muddy dirt track a ways and I am vaguely aware of someone leaning on his horn back down the street. It is our guy, motioning us to come back down the hill and go left. Left is no road but a path between many ramshackle wooden houses...still snow, mud, ice, a little stream. After about a hundred yards, we emerge onto a street. It is Lenin's street.. We see a sign, follow the arrow, find the museum. Closed for repair.
Laura goes back down to Bauman to shop a little before we meet our guides. Janet and I head back to the hotel. We have about 45 minutes to rest up before our new friends meet us in the lobby..
We planned to meet up with Kazan student friends of Stepan at 3:15 pm in our hotel lobby---after their classes; so we have most of the morning and afternoon to explore on our own. This day is a cold one, windy, and about 15 degrees F. We try to go down to the Museum of Tatarstan just down the street, go through the front door and are promptly stopped by a security guy, barring our forward progress. I hadn't read the sign outside closely enough---it opened at 10am, closed at 11am, and reopened at 1pm. Zatkrit. Closed. So, we walked down to Bauman street, the main Kazan shopping and pedestrian-only street. Our plan was to walk down this street a 1.5 miles or so to find the house where Lenin lived when he went to school here---now a small museum. Bitter cold. So we stopped in a place very similar to Starbucks---even the logo--actually an Austrian chain called "The Coffeeshop Company". Names are strange sometimes in Russia, for example, there is a live music club in Saratov called the "Rock Hard Cafe". Girls ordered fancy coffee drinks and some kind of filled croissants. The waitress explained these would take about 20 minutes. I got the Russian version of hot chocolate which is more like a cup of hot melted fudge. They give you a small glass of water with this and I suppose you are supposed to mix this in....? All in all good stuff. We are off after an hour or so to find Lenin. Nice street Bauman, very funky. Musicians playing every few hundred yards. Kazan seems very cosmopolitan, you can see the Asian influence everywhere. Many people are obviously Muslim, there are darker tones to peoples skin, women often with heads covered, but very stylish and colorful. We start to move into a less touristy and more residential part of town. We are looking for a certain street where this small Lenin museum is on our map and are having trouble finding it. Along the way, we come upon the Russian version of tow truck kidnapping. Police are in an intersection directing the following operation. Tow trucks that are more like crains are removing illegally parked cars. They attach chains to the entire car---in this case a nice black Lexus SUV and others---hoist them completely up off the ground, and then try to lower them correctly onto the bed of a truck. It seems tricky, cars are swaying, and lining them up with the bed correctly takes a bit of skill. There are several car owners standing around forlornly as their vehicles are carted away. My heart goes out to them. This policy has always seemed not quite legal to me. Apparently towing companies have friends in government in Russia too. I try to snap off a couple of secret photos. You probably shouldn't be obvious when taking pictures of police or soldiers here. Nothing sinister about this necessarily---Volgograd is only a few hundred miles away. You are warned not to hang around photographing bridges, train/metro stations, military buildings. I am pretty sure we are obviously American, and therefore---this may surprise some readers----we have the same concerns about terrorist activity and are, I think are definitely considered friendly! Any time I have contact with public authority, I am treated very kindly, never with suspicion. I think this is partly because they know I am NOT dangerous precisely BECAUSE I am an American.
We are still looking for the street of the Lenin museum. I see a street I recognize on the map that is very close and we peel off to begin the search. We cross a big highway. There is a Russian business guy walking near us who is obviously frustrated because he can't find something. We don't talk, largely because we assume we can't help each other. soon we seem headed into a residential area that is beginning to turn into hills, one lane dirt roads, and footpaths. Up ahead, a guy in a car is having trouble turning around. He is gunning the engine, spinning his tires; eventually escapes his little predicament and is headed towards us. He stops and asks me in Russian if he can help us find something. I point our destination on our map---and he basically says---what is here? I say Lenin's house. Oh OK....he points us up the road. We go traipsing up this muddy dirt track a ways and I am vaguely aware of someone leaning on his horn back down the street. It is our guy, motioning us to come back down the hill and go left. Left is no road but a path between many ramshackle wooden houses...still snow, mud, ice, a little stream. After about a hundred yards, we emerge onto a street. It is Lenin's street.. We see a sign, follow the arrow, find the museum. Closed for repair.
Laura goes back down to Bauman to shop a little before we meet our guides. Janet and I head back to the hotel. We have about 45 minutes to rest up before our new friends meet us in the lobby..
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