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.
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