Doner and Circuses

I went to the circus! There is a circus building here in Almaty. And lots of circuses (circusi?) come through. At present, the visiting circus is called the American Extreme Circus.

Couple of notes on the name. It is American in that many of the performers are from South America and Central America. But it has some distinctly foreign elements to it. I will get to one of those in particular. As for extreme, well the performers did a lot of things I would not be capable of. I would not say it crossed the line into extreme. But it definitely crossed the line into fun. 

Note: Alrica isn't actually that color. but under the lighting in the circus building she is, or was, at least for a little while. 

One great thing about a circus is that it doesn't matter what the emcee says. Call him a ringleader if you prefer. He told us things, but all in Russian, so I have no idea what was said besides the names of the performers. But you don't need to understand the words. The enjoyment of the circus is in the action. Even the clown never needed to speak to deliver his comedy. 

The show started with dancers and then the first Extreme act involved two men in a structure shown below. 

One of the men was larger than the other. The larger man's job was to keep the device going by standing inside one of the rings and moving closer to our further from center. The smaller man did various acrobatic leaaps and maneuvers both inside the other ring and walking on the outside of the other ring. He even stood on the outside of the ring and jumped rope. 

There were two men in bicycles doing all kinds of tricks. They bounced on just the front wheel. They made the bicycle spin under them. They stood up while riding, standing on the handlebars.

There were motorcycle acts. In the first act the riders did jumps from a ramp.

In the second act, they got inside of a sphere and drove upside down. There were three motorcycles in the small sphere at once and they avoided each other as they did tricks. 

Perhaps the most foreign feeling of the acts was the bear tamer. It was a woman with two muzzled bears who did a variety of tricks. At home, animal acts are no longer a part of circuses, because they are cruel to animals. Seeing those bears in muzzles being made to do handstands or ride on a barrel, I felt uncomfortable. 

Between the acts that required more set up, we were entertained by a clown. Sometimes he had big silly props. Sometimes he had something as simple as a Frisbee. Perhaps his most outlandish routine involved a tennis racket and tennis ball. But the ball kept being replaced by larger and larger tennis balls until he ended up with one bigger than he was which was launched into the stands and bounced around by the audience. 

Some of my favorite acts were the sumptuous choreographed dances of wonder. In the first act there was a couple who presented a dance. Do you know the magic trick where someone changes clothing in a fraction of a second? This routine was based on that happening over and over for both the woman and the man. But they found so many creative ways to present that trick. I don't know how that trick is done but it can't just be underdressing. Number one, with some of the ways they did it, they're would have been nowhere for the discarded clothing to go. Number two, the woman changed her outfit about a dozen times. She was not looking bulky enough when she came out to be wearing 13 outfits. (I could be completely wrong too. The fun of the magic is that you don't know how it is done.)

In the second act, that same couple presented a dance in which they were hanging from a crescent moon lifted way above the floor. They spun and writhed and at one point I was certain the woman was about to fall to her death, but she was caught with the man's feet holding her under her armpits. 

There was a rope dancer who was also high above the floor, tangling herself in her rope. Then she would fall or spin down, but always get caught by a knot she had made or a loop she had put around her. 

There was another woman who had a ring much like a hula hoop, but larger and made of some inflexible material. She danced and got the ring spinning. Then she put her hands and feet on the ring and kept it spinning. All the while she did tricks and it was all so graceful. 

We had a great time. After the circus we rode the Almaty metro. It only has one line with only 11 stops. But one of them is right at the circus. 

The metro stations are quite lovely, upscale in appearance. Getting out there was a large decorative wall with wonders of the world. 

We went to the Arbat walking street. Here there were lights, and street performers. We had delicious doner for dinner. (Doner for Dinner, that should be a song title.)

It's not everyday you go to the circus, but when you do it's fun in any culture. 

Doors, Literal and Figurative

This blog post requires a bit of back story. Kazakhstan was one of the Soviet republics when the USSR existed. During that time, business and commerce were all conducted in Russian. Kazakh children learned Russian in schools. When the USSR fell, Kazakhstan gained independence. But the post-Soviet legacy remains. 

Most every Kazakh speaks Russian. Some of them are better speaking Russian than they are speaking Kazakh. But both languages live on in Kazakhstan. 

Let me also give you the cast of characters. We are subletting an apartment in Almaty from a professor. She is a British citizen, but lives and works here in Almaty. She is going back to the UK to visit her mother. She speaks both Russian and English. And for the first couple days she was still here with us. Let's name this character Professor A (since Professor X is already taken.)

The apartment (or flat as Professor A calls it) is owned by a Kazakh couple who speak Kazakh and Russian. We will call them Landlord and Landlady.

In many countries, including Kazakhstan, one of the figurative doors which visitors must pass through is that foreigners must have their location registered. We came into Kazakhstan with no issues. US citizens can stay here for 30 days without a visa. But what must happen is that within 48 hours the host, the one who owns your accommodations, must tell the government that you are staying at a particular address. 

Usually when you check in, the hotel or the host gets a copy of your passport. Then they fill out a form online that says your passport number, which country you are from, where you are staying, and for which dates. Note: the onus is on the host, not the foreigner. 

In this case Landlord and Landlady needed to do this. The trouble is that they are computer illiterate. They don't own a computer, though they do have smart phones. The online form won't work on a phone. Or so I am told. By them. 

Landlord and Landlady came over on Sunday evening to register us, but they couldn't figure out how. So they decided that on Monday morning, Alrica and I should join them going to some government office to deal with it. They also insisted that Professor A come along since she could be our translator. 

Keep in mind, this is not the responsibility of the visitor. I'm supposed to provide my passport to be copied. Aside from that, I shouldn't be a part of the process. But this time, I was going to be. 

Let me ask you this: If you were going to drive to a government office across town, wouldn't you find out where it was first? Apparently, no. Landlord and Landlady haven't had to do this since last July when Professor A moved into their apartment. They only kind of remembered where the office was. So what they did was drive us to that part of the city. Then Landlady, Professor A, Alrica, and I got out of the car and walked around this neighborhood looking for the government office. From time to time, Landlady would ask a passerby where it was and they would point us in the right direction. Okay, so we found it. 

Inside the office was a man, we will call him Government Man. Note, I only know what happened there because Professor A told me what had occurred. It was all in Russian. Apparently, Government Man asked Landlady for her electronic identifier. It was explained to me that Kazakh citizens have two numbers. They have a national ID number. That is the main one, comparable to a Social Security Number in the US. They also have an electronic identifier number that they use to log into any government service websites. That's what Government Man asked for. 

Landlady refused to give it to him. He said, I'm trying to help you with what you asked. She asked how did she know he wasn't going to use it for bad things like a scammer. Government Man got insulted and refused to speak to Landlady anymore. So we left without completing the registration. 

Great, effective use of my time. Now we stood outside the government office. Landlady calls Landlord and he says he will pick us up. We wait. He doesn't pick us up. Landlord calls Landlady saying he's lost. She tells us to wait there and she goes off to find him. We wait. Landlady comes back and says we have to walk with her to where Landlord is parked. We end up walking back to exactly where he dropped us off.

Now we drive back into the more central part of the city. There is a big government building and beside it is a little office in which employees help citizens complete governmental forms. We go there. We have to wait. Eventually, it is Landlady's turn. Then Landlady says I need to pay 5000 tenge per person, so 10000 tenge total. That's between 20 and 21 dollars. But I'm like, wait a minute. Is this money going to the government? Or is this going to the employees at this helper office. Turns out it's going to the employee. So this payment only exists because Landlady doesn't know how to use a computer. I ask why I have to pay for the thing that is her responsibility and would be free if she just knew how to do it. In the end, we agreed I would pay 5000 tenge and she would pay the other half. 

Then our new character, Helper Employee, says that according to her computer only one of the two of us entered the country. We never found out which one of us was not in Kazakhstan (as we both stood there unquestionably in Kazakhstan.) We said look at our passports. Each of them has a stamp that shows that we entered the country.

Helper Employee calls someone at the immigration office. That person can fix it, except the computer system is down. Ugh!

In the end, we did get registered. I paid 5000 tenge for the privilege of spending my morning in bureaucracy.

At this point Alrica is ravenous. Our bodies are still on China time. I am not usually a breakfast eater, but Alrica is. And her stomach thinks it is nearing 1PM because her stomach still thinks it is in China. (Maybe it was Alrica's stomach that didn't enter Kazakhstan.)

So that was our figurative door. But here is a curious thing about literal doors. We have all these double doors in the flat. 

Normally when I use the term double door, I mean two doors in one frame with hinges on the outside and which meet in the middle. But that's not what I mean here. 

The front door and the door to the lining room balcony and the door to the bedroom balcony are two doors.

On the front door the outer door swings out toward the building's internal staircase and elevator while the inner door swings into the apartment. 

But on the balcony both did swing in toward the bedroom (or toward the living room.)

They are perfectly easy to use. But I don't understand the purpose. Alrica's hypothesis is maybe it helps insulate the apartment. That's a pretty reasonable guess. Though I may never know why. 

To paraphrase Jim Morrison, there are the things we know and the things we don't know and in between are the double doors. 

The Apple of Indeterminate Size

Almaty, Kazakhstan sits beneath the Tien-Shan mountain range. Here, you can see them. This is a view from the balcony of our bedroom. 

Keep this mountain range in mind. It will be important to the story. 

New York City is also known as The Big Apple. In truth, that name has nothing to do with apples, the fruit. It comes from horse racing. An apple was a slang term for a prize in a race. The term was used by jockeys and horse trainers. And if you could win the top prize in a major race, you took the big apple. 

Jazz musicians then picked up the term. For them, getting a gig in NYC was huge. It was the gig they aspired to. If you got to play NYC, that meant you had made it as a jazz musician. So New York City was the big apple of jazz. 

This later was taken up by the NYC tourism board who promoted the city as The Big Apple with lots of apple imagery. Nowadays, people don't realize it was originally a reference to a prize rather than a fruit. 

Almaty is not The Big Apple, but it is all about the fruit. Alma is the Kazakh word for apple. Almaty is named for apples. In fact, it is a variation on its previous name,  Alma-ata, which means "apple father". But why?

Remember the Tien-Shan mountains? That's where wild apples grow. The apples we eat today are domesticated versions of a species of wild apple that came from the Tien-Shan mountains. Almaty is the home of the ancestor of all the apples we eat. 

You know how some cities have the same sculpture all around the city, but it is painted differently. Like in some cities there are all these cow statues. Or cowboy boots. Well, here in Almaty, they are apples. 

The apple imagery sometimes extends into other public art. Check out these chimes.

We bought a variety of fruit here, including apples. The apples are good, but i have to be honest. They aren't better here than they are anywhere else. 

We have had some uniquely Kazakh foods. The picture below is beshbarmak. It's a national dish, a dish of nomads. We're digital nomads. Does that count?

The meat is not beef. It's horse. Horse meat is considered an important delicacy in Kazakhstan. The meat is served over rectangular sheets of pasta with boiled potatoes and onions and seasonings. I enjoyed it. Horse meat is a bit more fatty than beef and it has a sharper flavor, but not as sharp as lamb. 

When we got our Kazakh food, we were given shot glass sized chalap. This is a national drink which is a very salty sour milk. It's not bad, but I am not usually into very salty beverages. Gatorade is about as salty as I can handle and this was certainly more saline than Gatorade. 

An interesting food here is prynik or pryaniki is more the Kazakh term for it. It is sometimes called Russian gingerbread. It tastes similar to gingerbread but also has another flavoring. The one we bought is vishnia, which is sour cherry. I was surprised by how much cherry flavor there is in the pryaniki. (My picture is coming out upside down. The hazards of being forced to blog on my phone.)

There are a variety of interesting beverages here. Below is drinkable yogurt. Tastes like yogurt, but liquid. 

Another popular drink is kefir. I've seen kefir in other countries too. It's not bad. I think it tastes like you are drinking cottage cheese. 

Another beverage is kvas. Kvas is very similar to kombucha, but it is made by fermenting brown bread rather than tea. 

We will continue our culinary exploration of Kazakhstan. There's plenty to try. Including more apples, because you know, when in the apple city eat as the apple citizens do. 

Last Day in China

When you travel on a budget, you make budget choices. One aspect of this for us is that we often take some relatively undesirable flights. It saves money when the flights are at inconvenient times or if they include weird layovers. 

Case in point: As I write this, just a bit after midnight, I am sitting in Daxing Airport south of Beijing. We are heading to Almaty, Kazakhstan, but by way of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. That's a bit less than direct. However, the real savings come from the fact that our flight departs at 2 AM and we have a thirteen hour layover in Tashkent. 

This meant that today (or, technically, yesterday) was our last day to enjoy Beijing. We got tickets to see the Forbidden City in the afternoon. We did have to check out of our hotel, but they kindly let us keep our luggage there. 

The Forbidden City is massive. I had seen its outline on a map, but that didn't prepare me for how big it is. As we were entering, so we several hundred other people. There had to be thousands of people inside that complex and yet it could have easily fit a thousand times as many people. Yes, the buildings are large, but the courtyards, gardens, and open spaces are gargantuan. 

In addition to being vast, the Forbidden City is quite beautiful. There are dozens of buildings with arched roofs crowned in tubular tiles atop highly decorated wooden beams over red walls with intricate doors. Some of these buildings sit on a foundation with multiple levels, like terraces cut into mountains for farming, but the levels here are bounded by finely carved stone pillars. It is impressive. 

That being said, there comes a point such that when you see your nth large building with arched roof and all the fixings, it has less impact than when you saw the (n-1)st such building, and that impact was less than the (n-2)nd one, and so on. You get the idea. Even grandeur can become ho-hum. 

I did particularly enjoy the Imperial Garden. Not only is it full of beautiful trees and flowers, but also many ornamental rocks. Some of these rocks are like jungle gyms. How they were transported to the palace, I don't know. But what makes me more curious is the question of how they were found. Was there some guy whose job it was to go out into the mountains, look at big rock formations and say, "If we could haul this back to the Forbidden City, the emperor would plotz!"? (Probably the Chinese didn't use the word "plotz", but they must have had some word with a similar connotation.)

After the Forbidden City, Alrica found this delightful noodle shop. They make handmade stretched noodles. Mine came with a beef soup. Alrica's came with a sectioned plate, like a Seder plate, with different toppings and vegetables she could add. These were some fantastically tasty noodles. 

We returned to the hotel to get our belongings and hung out there for a bit. Then we took a train to the airport. All of that was fine. But the real "fun" came after. 

I have never been to a security checkpoint with this level of scrutiny. After stepping through the metal detector, each passenger gets a thorough (and I mean thorough) pat down. The woman who handled my pat down touched me in more places per minute than anyone else ever has, including my wife. She was tugging at my belt and lifting my shirt. Alrica told me that when she got her pat down, it seemed like the woman wanted inside Alrica's bra. 

Plus, both of our bags got flagged during screening. Mine ended up getting screened four times with the agent unpacking more and more of it each time. When it was finally through, I had to sit on the floor and repack. 

But we did get through. If nothing else unexpected happens, in about nine hours we will be in Uzbekistan. With a thirteen hour layover (and probably no sleep) we hope to see some of Tashkent. 

But don't worry, I think we can stay in budget. 

Stumbles Upon

When you travel, there are things you plan. You know you want to see sight A or eat food B or experience cultural activity C. (They probably have better names than single letters from the Latin alphabet. Incidentally, the license plates in China use the Latin alphabet.)

There are also the things you didn't plan, you just stumble upon them. Some of these are weird, some are interesting, and some are fabulous. I had something of a stumble upon day (and Alrica joined me for part of it.)

While Alrica was getting some work done, I went for a walk. My plan was to visit a park that was only 30 minutes away. To get there, I had to cross a canal where there were people swimming. It was almost like the park had a moat.

I discovered the park is fenced and there are only a few ways in. And you need to get an admission ticket. It is very inexpensive, just 2 yuan, which is about $0.29. I could have absolutely afforded it. But I just wanted to walk. I wasn't looking for any special park services.

So instead, I decided to walk along the canal. There were walking paths on its sides. I'm glad I did as it was very interesting. 

In addition to a small number of people swimming in the canal, there were a much greater number of people fishing in the canal. These were always men. I never saw any women fishing. I saw plenty of women walking, but they did not stop to fish. 

Some fishermen had surprisingly long poles with a hinge. They attached the bar of the pole to the railing and then bent it at the hinge so the long pole stuck down to the water's surface. Others had poles of a more traditional type, but their reels were bigger, like the size of a bread plate, and shaped like a wagon wheel with spokes.

Fishermen at a canal isn't so rare. What was rarer was the slingshot man. I came to a place where the walkway passed under a highway. There, in the shadow of the span overhead, set about 15 meters or 50 feet away from the path were these metal racks with metal and plastic objects hanging from strings. Think cowbells and soup cans and bleach bottles. At the side of the path was a man with a slingshot. He was pulling back the elastic band and letting small bullets (like ball bearings) fly at the targets. Sometimes I knew he hit one because I heard the satisfying metallic clunk. When he was done, he packed up his slingshot and bullets. But the targets weren't his. They remain there under the overpass for anyone who wants to sling. 

I took a different route back to the hotel from the canal. I happened to pass these open gates that seemed to have some sort of market within. Turns out I had accidentally discovered the Panjiayuan Market. It's huge, spanning several blocks in both the east-west and north-south directions. Within are tables and stands in the open air. There are frames that hold fabric above to block much of the sun, but not walls. 

That's not wholly true. There is a section of the market which is inside a building. Here you find carpentry, hand-crafted furniture, antique books, antique vases, and statuary. In the open-air section are crafts. There were so many beads made from wood, jade, stone, and who knows what else. In one section, each shop had beads of a different color. There were lots of bracelets and other jewelry. There were hand-crafted wooden toys, fabric vendors, paintings, and calligraphy. 

There were a few stalls selling food and milk tea drinks. There was also a post office. But this is not a market meant for foreign tourists. There were a few foreigners beside me, but hardly any. Almost everyone, vendor and customer alike, was Chinese. 

It turned out the market was just a couple blocks from our hotel. So later in the day, I took Alrica there to see it for herself. And on that excursion, we experienced our coolest stumble upon of the day. 

Alrica wanted some good dumplings for dinner. She played around on AMap, the mapping app that works in China, and found a place called Ersanjiupin Handmade Dumplings Self-service. It was a bit further from our hotel than the market, so we hit the market on the way. 

Finding the dumpling restaurant wasn't easy. Thank goodness some people posted reviews which included pictures of the building. A couple of the reviews were in English.  Of course, most are in Chinese, and AMap doesn't auto-translate. Luckily, one of the reviews in English indicated that the restaurant was on the third floor. So bit by bit, we progressed and we found it. 

This restaurant, Ersanjiupin Handmade Dumplings Self-service, is not only full of delicious foods, but it is a fun experience. First, you pay. The cost is 49 yuan per person (which is about $7) plus you pay a deposit (about $3.50.) A deposit at a restaurant? I'll get to that. 

This buys you a table, so you go sit down. At one end of the table is a metal pot full of water. One of the staff turned on the heat for us since we must have looked like we didn't know what we were doing (which was true.) As you wait for the water to boil, you have foods to collect. 

Let's talk dumplings. The restaurant hand makes the dumplings. When a set of dumplings is ready, they are placed, uncooked, on a little wooden tray with high sides. In front of the kitchen area is a refrigerator, but not the upright kind you have in your kitchen. This is the kind shaped like a footlocker with a sliding door on top. Along the top are labels telling you which kind of dumpling is in that spot. All the signs are in Chinese, so we had to do a lot of translating. You open the refrigerator, take out the trays of dumplings you want, and bring them back to the table. 

On the wall behind the pot of water are instructions. These are also in Chinese, but after translating, we learned the rules. Once the water boils, you can start cooking the dumplings. Vegetarian dumplings should be cooked for 5 minutes. Meat dumplings should be cooked for 6 minutes. They recommend you boil about 18 dumplings at a time. And you have an overall time limit of 90 minutes at the restaurant. 

But the dumplings aren't the only food available. There is also a big area like a salad bar, but it isn't just salads. It holds all kinds of cold foods, dishes from many regions of China. There were clams, dishes with gray noodles, some sorts of prepared chicken, roast pork on the bone, fruit, noodle dishes, and rice dishes. You take rectangular plates from under the bar and then fill them with the cold dishes. 

You can go back as many times as you want to both the dumpling fridge and to the cold food bar. There was even a drink dispenser. I had some sort of drink that tasted like a combination of cola and ginger ale. Not sure what it was, but I liked it. 

Even more exciting, Alrica noticed that beside the dumpling refrigerator was a freezer with different flavors of ice cream! All this and bowls of ice cream? Woohoo! As it was all you can eat, we ate a lot. But we were lightweights compared to many of the other patrons. They must train for this. We could see stacks and stacks of empty dumpling trays at the end of their tables. 

When you are all done you bring up your ticket that you got when you paid. The ticket includes the time that you entered. So long as you are leaving within 90 minutes, they credit you back the deposit. We did stay less than 90 minutes, so I can't say for sure what happens if you take too long. I suspect they keep the deposit. 

It was great food and a lot of fun to do. And that is the best kind of unplanned stumble upon.