Tatarstan’s capital

With a two hour time difference from Ekaterinburg, we woke early.  Around 0500 local time, or 0700 where we were yesterday.  The breakfast downstairs was quite nice; it was tasty stew of potato and meat, but I went off it when I realised it was kidney and liver.  The cabbage stew was tasty with a tinge of sour (similar to bigos in Poland), and some red.  The potato and dill salad was good too.

We have the day to explore Kazan, the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, within Russia.  It is outside Siberia and is about 60% non-Russian.  But being about 40% Russian it doesn’t look like it will get independence. They seem to be proud of their somewhat autonomous status.  The Republic flag is every where and we noticed later that McDonald’s even puts the Republic colours into their “restaurant” signage!

We started our exploration with a walk to the Kremlin (fortress) which contains the Presidential Palace, a church and mosque.  Much of the Kremlin was undergoing major works.  Combined with dull overcast weather, it wasn’t much of a photographic experience.  The museum was closed too, being Monday.

Continuing on, we walked the length of Kazan’s pedestrian mall, Baumana Street.  It was rather quiet compared to other cities.  Also, no one was drinking beer on the street, possibly of the higher Islamic influence.

We noticed that there were many other nice churches and mosques but most were scaffolded for restoration. The city was founded in 1005 and is celebrating its millennium this year.  Perhaps, they’re wanting to have everything looking good for the celebration.

After a short curtailed but successful visit to the internet cafe, we found a good eatery called Dom Chaya for lunch.  Being all white inside with lots of (fake) flowers, it seemed like a bridal boutique.  It had a good selection of food ranging from pre-cooked self-service to ala carte table service.

We fed ourselves well with dumplings with dill, meat and rice patties on mash potatoes and pilau.  It felt like a complete Russian meal, finally!

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Our next stop was Kazan’s Central Market.  It had a very Turkish or Central-Asian feel in the people and the style of the market.  There were lots of dried fruit, men touting for business, splashing water on the floor to minimise dust.  Just like in Turkey!  It’s quite an irony that we’re now on the European side of Russia and it has an Oriental feel, whereas the Russian cities on the Asian side felt very European.

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We rested back in our room from 1300 to 1600.  We had seen circus posters around town and it appeared that we were between the performance dates.  So once we headed out for the evening, we tried to confirm that.

Back on Baumana Street, it seemed a little livelier.  Peruvian buskers were in town.  People-watching in Kazan is interesting.  The majority are Turk-Mongol Muslim people who are descended from Chinggis Khan … it does appear than many people are somewhat mixed in ethnicity just by looking at the mix of features in one face at times, eg. Chinese face but European colour and eyes, Turkish face but Chinese eyes.

We had dinner in a cafe which had a good range of food to be heated in the microwave.  We went for the chicken deep-fried in croutons, mince in cabbage roll-ups, potato salad and shashlik.  After such a long time in Russia without Russian food, we are making up for it by having a second Russian meal on the same day.

We grabbed an ice-cream on the walk home.  They keep the ice-cream here at a warmer temperature, seemingly.  It’s always nice and soft, but sometimes a little too soft.

With our body-clock still on Ekaterinburg time, we were back in our room by 1800.  It’s good as we will need to wake early in a couple of days.

We may be running out of things to do in Kazan.  Let’s see how we can fill in the day tomorrow. I was cautious not to have all arrangements packed in too tightly in case we were disrupted.