Kazakhstan!

Here's portions of a letter that became a diary entry:

I am in Taraz, Kazakhstan now. I keep thinking of you because I keep seeing different birds and wishing that I had a bird book of central Asia with me. It’s quite wonderfully different here. We spent a few days in Almaty, which is the most cosmopolitan city here. There were two cities in Kazkahstan in which the USSR exiled intellectuals to and Almaty was one of them. Therefore it has a great intellectual academic class here. Because Janara and Daniel are very involved with the arts, we have learned all about the current artistic situation, gone to galleries with shows that were extended just for us, and had dinner with two of the country’s leading artists. (Their work, which we saw, is amazing). We also met with the Soros Cultural Institute artistic director and also learned from her about what is going on with the art community here. Because of oil money, Almaty is currently undergoing a construction boom. Prices have skyrocketed for apartments and while they are still not Boston prices, they are not far behind with one bedrooms going for the equivalent of $150,000. Everywhere we look there are new sky rise apartment buildings; of course most people cannot afford to live in them and it is said that a person is hired to turn the lights on and off inside to make them seem occupied.

Because there is no concept of tenants rights, people can be evicted without any notice if they decide to tear down the apartment for a new building. The gentrification process is excruciatingly painful here as it is anywhere else; the artistic community is being decimated, being turned out of their homes and studios and having to relocate to the outskirts of the city.

I’ve been astonished at the multicultural nature of the city. It’s Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek and Korean. Daniel sometimes gets stopped and they ask if he is Uzbek, there must be an illegal Uzbek immigration ‘problem’ according to authorities here. But when he says he is Mexican, they become very excited. He is probably the only Latin American person here.

The city is very green, with lush tree-lined boulevards and wide pedestrian pathways. All the green areas are thick and overgrown, creating a wild air in the city. Everywhere there is a mix of the old and the new. At the airport, there were automatic machines to pay the parking fee, but they were broken so you had to pay someone at the gate who would then open the lot for you. The residents are very fashionable, closer to downtown Boston or NYC style than to my style. Apartment buildings are either the nice, new modern ones or are old Soviet style cement monstrosities; I have some great pictures of them.The buildings were originally unfinished concrete on the outside; now the individual apartment owners are renovating them one by one. So the outside of a large building contains a mix of unfinished concrete, scattered siding, tiles, and other finishing materials. It makes an interesting melange. To travel from place to place we have taken buses, where they push you off if you don’t disembark quickly enough, to ‘taxis’- private cars that you flag down and they take you where you want to go for $2 - $3. It’s very safe. The price would be 3-4x as much if we didn’t have Zhanara to bargain for us.

The modernity of the city has certainly impressed me. Parts of it remind me of Japan. There was one mall we walked into that could have been any mall in the US with Benetton and Adidas stores charging $100-$200 for items.

We took a train to Taraz. It is a ten hour ride and we went in a sleeper car. It had 2 bunk beds, the top ones folded up. The train is one beneficial aspect of soviet times; it was fairly comfortable and very quaint. Mom was reminded of old British murder mystery novels set on sleeper cars. Evidently the police visited us and checked our passports because we are unique as Western tourists, but were friendly. They even sat down to chat. I slept through the whole thing. As a matter of fact, the rocking of the train served as a wonderful soporific for me. I slept 8 out of the 10 hours.