io's journal
22 September 2024 - Late summer
Hi! I've been busy settling back into life in Almaty and getting used to my class schedule. I want to describe this time of year here as best I can for those of you who have never been, could not dream of going, and may be challeneged to find Kazakhstan on a map.
This ad for Coca-Cola reads, in Kazakh on the left and Russian on the right, 'Home is always close by. Fragrant qazaqsha et. Icy Coca-Cola.'
Qazaqsha et, or beshbarmak as it's called in Russian, is the most traditional Kazakh dish, ususally made from large, flat noodles boiled with horse meat and sparsely dressed with onions and dill. The juxtaposition of such a storied dish deeply rooted in the local conditions with the international sterility of Coca-Cola was a little funny and speaks to the simultaneous worship of the past and sprint into a shiny commodity future you see here.
As a side note, Lay's released beshbarmak flavored chips in 2022. I tried them and found them not bad.
Speaking of Lay's, you might be interested to know that some of the most popular potato chip flavors in Kazakhstan are crab, lobster, and salmon. All three are, as might expect from a landlocked country, extremely expensive delicacies (actually, I find it hard to believe you could find lobster in Almaty for less than its weight in gold).
I worked as a grocery store cashier in Maine and sold a lot of lobster, crab, salmon, and Lay's chips, but had never considered the possibility of seafood-flavored chips. I figure their popularity has to be a direct result of the mystery of their source flavors: we always want what we can't have, I guess.
The mountains rise up behind every building and serve some sort of poetic purpose. They always look a little different: particularly sharp after rain, dusted with snow, shrouded in fog... each time, I think I'll be able to capture their beauty with my phone, but it's totally impossible. I'd like to try shooting them with a telephoto lens or something.
Walking through the blocks of khrushchevki that surround my own apartment building, I always manage to see something unexpected. As someone who grew up out of the city I'm totally addicted to the tenderness and closeness of city life, the million little fleeting moments of connection it provides. It's overwhelming to be so surrounded by humanity. I am aware of how creepy I must seem but I love glancing up at balconies and seeing them lined with houseplants, seeing rugs being hung up to dry as kids chase each other around the courtyard and teenage boys cluster around doner stalls. I love the whistle of a kettle heard through the neighbor's window.
26 July 2024 - Tbilisi
What a beautiful city! A very busy one- a sprawling one- full of people from everywhere, with houses sprawling across the mountains and stretching to the horizon.
The biggest boulevards are filled with souvenir shops and people hawking boat tours, but there are just as many winding streets that disappear into vines and apartment buildings that seem prehistoric. The doors of the apartment buildings are always open, and through them you can see collapsing staircases, but the lights are on, and kids' legs dange from the balconies.
A random encounter to describe it: one evening, we passed one such "abandoned" apartment with open doors and a sign advertising BOOKS inside. Walking up a set of crumbling wooden stairs led me to a balcony overlooking a small courtyard filled with, as advertised, BOOKS, lovingly stacked and ranging from pre-revolutionary publications to guides on the newest English lingo.
Much like Greece, Tbilisi (and I think probably all of Georgia) is filled with stray cats and dogs, but everyone displays a remarkable kindness towards them- most of them are remarkably plump and turn their nose up at any pity offering of kibble. When we found a grungy-looking dog in the doorway of the place we were staying, the neighbors urged us not to be scared of 'Lima'. I went to a wine store with a remarkably friendly cat who the owner told me showed up five years ago and decided that it would be her kingdom.
20 July 2024 - Drainage pipe flowers
I spent two nights in Baku and finally landed in Tbilisi this morning.
Baku is a strange city. Outside of its oldest part, its frantic energy reminds me a lot of Bishkek and Almaty. Things are constantly being built and destroyed (I was ushered into one restaurant by an owner holding a wet paintbrush, nails and drywall dust covering the floor). The horizon is taken up by bizarre buildings that seem to serve only to prove wealth and power. From my American viewpoint it's probably easy to place it and Kazakhstan in the same box as 'oil autocracies' - hell, aparently Aliyev and Nazarbayev were good friends - but that seems a little simplistic. Obviously my disgust with the current regime in Azerbaijan colors my perception of it. You see ghosts everywhere - the carpet museum is particularly insidious.
A small thing: many air conditioning units drain into little potted plants on the sidewalk. I've never noticed this anywhere else, but it's genius.
17/18 July 2024 - Baku Airport, 12 AM
The Baku airport is an unsettling glass prism with more technologically advanced doors than I'd seen in my life. I'm waiting for my visa while I type this and completely failed to communicate to a officer whether I was breaking any diplomatic rules by crossing through some gates to get to the only bathroom between the tarmac and the visa checkpoint.
The design philosophies of airports remain very interesting to me; they feel like spaces where the impact of architecture on psychology is especially palpable. The Tallinn and Riga airports are nice. The San Francisco airport has a cool train (I love it!). The Portland (ME) airport lets you carry on live lobsters.
I have been in many airports recently. I flew to Tallinn, which a friend called a snowglobe - I think it's an incredibly apt description. It's truly beautiful, yet so manicured that it becomes a little eerie. There are a lot of people on the streets LARPing as medieval tavern-owners, monks, and nuns. It doesn't give you the impression that you're passing back in time, but rather than you've stepped onto the set of a very high-budget theater production. The parts of Tallinn outside of the Old Town feel much more real and lived-in, beyond setpieces.
Riga's old town, in comparison, feels less enclosed in glass.
I love combinations of flavors I wouldn't have thought of before and breakfast pastries that go beyond croissants, so I fell in love this bakery. Poppy seed and cottage cheese cake, a mysterious "šokolādes pārsteigums" (chocolate surprise), and a "ābolu-magoņu kabatiņa" (apple-poppy pocket)... also a lot of sweet things incorporating rhubarb, my favorite "fruit". (I saw rhubarb incorporated into everything in all three Baltic states, much to my delight!)
On my first night in Riga while eating outside it started to absolutely pour rain. When the rain ended, I stepped out to see one of the most beautiful rainbows of my life.
I also loved the central market in Riga; it reminded me a lot of Almaty's Green Bazaar, with the same eclectic collection of preserves, pickles, and gaudy clothing.
My favorite thing in Vilnius must be the Bernardine Garden. It was beautiful to laze around on a hot summer day and watch people with tiny stupid-looking dogs stroll by.
The ice cream is also very good. My traveling companions were totally baffled by the existence of a "milk" ice cream flavor. I would love to know how vanilla became the default blank slate for ice cream in the United States.
I hope I get my visa soon... my legs are starting to hurt in this chair. They took my passport, too.
9 July 2024 - Normal Animal
Yesterday an older woman was buying five bags of marshmallows at work. I asked her what her plans were for them, and to my surprise she answered that a family of raccoons visits her every night, and they've been bringing more and more friends lately. To quote her, "it's cheaper than having a dog".
Some of my favorite animals are the pests and annoyances of suburban life, and one such favorite is the squirrel. If you watch them, you'll notice that they're extremely cute and charming little things. I have even recently succeeded in getting one to eat out of my palm!
I present thus a squirrel who was posing for me this morning.
24 June 2024 - Sonoma Coast
I've been in California for the past few days visiting family. I haven't been out to the west coast for probably over a decade, and it surprised me how different the flora and fauna are from what I'm used to... I saw what I guess was a gopher and was totally stunned by it. I could only describe it as "something that looked like a squirrel but certainly wasn't".
The coast is stunningly beautiful, with the fog and hills and carpets of wildflowers. It reminded me almost of Ireland, like around County Kerry, but it looks a lot different too. I was particularly entranced by the massive chunks of driftwood- from redwoods?- on the shore, they look like the bones of some massive sea creature washed up and left to bleach.
I spent a lot of time with my camera pointed at the ground. The complexity of texture and color in a little patch of ground can be so remarkable. I have been in a plant-y mood and got angry and frustrated when I saw all of the beautiful orchids they were selling at the farmer's market, which I obviously can't bring back on the plane (unless...?)
21 June 2024 - First post, rhubarb, and chicken-of-the-woods
The earliest treasure of summer, for me, is rhubarb. I adore it, and I can happily eat it raw, but I'm just as happy to cook it down with some sugar and layer it over ice cream, or make into a sorbet, or add it to a crumble or pie. A customer at work remarked to me that rhubarb (and fiddleheads) are one of the few remaining true seasonal delights in a world where every fruit must be available all year round, be it imported from Mexico or grown in a hothouse. You can have strawberries or apples, albeit subpar ones, all year round, but try finding rhubarb in December!
Anyways, I filled up my backpack with rhubarb from work and biked home. I couldn't zip it shut so the stalks waved around and I had an acute sense that everyone I passed was laughing at me.
This time I decided to make a jam in hope of sharing the taste with a few friends who lived in places where rhubarb doesn't grow. I followed a recipe for a rhubarb and orange jam and added a lot of ginger on a whim- I have nothing against strawberry and rhubarb but I think strawberry tends to overpower rhubarb rather than let it stand on its own.
For my first jam-making attempt I was quite happy with the fact that I was able to make anything at all. I've been eating it on toast, with yogurt, and with ice cream... it presents many possibilities :-)
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I've attended mushroom forrays with a local mycological society, but I have never foraged and cooked mushrooms on my own out of a lack of confidence in my own inability to not be stupid (that is, my stupidity). I recently stumbled across a tree (that one ^) properly overflowing with chicken-of-the-woods, though, which I have heard is a safe bet not mistaken for anything else.
I grabbed a chunk and sauteéd it with white wine, salt, and pepper, then had it with risotto. It's very good! The taste of the mushroom itself isn't as notable as its meaty texture (hence the name- though I think the similarly-named hen-of-the-woods is named after its appearence, and not its taste).
