How time flies...we have been here for almost 5 weeks now! We are just now able to access our blog, hence the gap in postings. Rest assured blog followers, we will be posting more regularly from now and going forward.
These past weeks have been incredibly full, at times it feels like we hardly have time to breath, but they have been rich with learning and experiences. As the days have passed, occasionally Nic and I will say to each other, "Oh, I want to make a post about this or that", but I fear we will not be able to describe now many of the thoughts or experiences of our first weeks in Kazakhstan. I do, however, have one post I wrote after a particularly great experience at the Green Bazaar (named so for it's green building). Please enjoy our first posting from Almaty, Kazakhstan, and stay tuned for more.
The Green Bazaar
Nic and I know our way around a market. Guatemala gave us more than enough opportunities to hone key strategies for market shopping; constructing a mental map of the market, comparison shopping, haggling, knowing when to blatantly refuse and when to refuse politely and apologetically, money and purchases storage, finding the (cleanest) bathrooms (and remembering to bring our own toilet paper), developing a relationship with vendors and finding the best and cheapest meal on the go (that won’t make us sick). We visited many markets in different areas of Guatemala, some we got to know very well while others we only passed through once or twice. We also saw some very large markets in Guatemala, but none of them compares to the Green Bazaar.
Ah, the Green Bazaar….a full city block of small stalls overflowing into dirty aisles in the heart of modern Almaty. It is the place you go to buy anything you could possibly need for daily life. For Nic and I, it is a place to go that reminds us why we enjoy living abroad.
From our house, the Green Bazaar is about a 30 minute walk downhill (North) on Dostyk Avenue. Dostyk Avenue is a busy street lined with bars for wealthy foreigners and locals, upscale shopping (I’m talking Dolce & Gabbana and Prada kind of upscale), and larger than life statues. Between those are Korean markets and local convenient stores (known here as “magazines”), all with a backdrop of run-down and shabby, but still occupied Soviet-era apartment buildings. Once we hit Paniflov Park, we know we are close.
There are many entrances to the Green Bazaar, and we have only explored limited areas of the huge market. The first time we visited, we couldn’t quite figure out how to actually get “into” the bazaar, wandering through aisles of cheap clothes and plastic goods that occupy the perimeter of the block. Once we were “in” the market, we knew we were someplace great. Before us we saw blocks of counters covered in color and texture. Vegetables were stacked neatly in little pyramids, bowls burst with varieties of mushrooms, cups overflowed with juicy berries and corn was husked and positioned to show off large kernels. And that was only one area of the many areas of produce. As we continued, we saw small burlap bags loaded with spices and bin after bin after bin of every dried fruit and nut one could think of, and some we had never though of. Along one wall were shops with cheeses and butter, the other had sausages. In the back were piles of pickled vegetables and salads.
Today we went again to stock up for the week and explored another area of the market. This area was covered by a large dome with big skylights and was more clean and organized than the other areas. As we walked into the large room, we saw a row of honey vendors. A middle aged-woman wearing bright pink lipstick met me with a smile and offered a sample. Before her were 8 small buckets, each containing a different hue of amber. She dipped a strip of stock paper into the bucket and handed it to me. I sampled about half of the buckets and decided on the first, amazed at the potency and range in flavors.
On the other side of that aisle were pickled vegetables and salads. Now, let me take a break here and talk about language. We don’t speak Russian, in case there was any question. We find ourselves with so many questions as we wander the market, “What is this?” is most frequent, almost always followed by “How do we use this?”. Because we don’t speak Russian, we cannot ask these questions. This lends a certain amount of adventure, but a certain amount of disappointment as well. For example: Across the aisle from the pickled vegetables and salads is the dairy aisle. Women stand behind large buckets of while liquid at varying levels of coagulation. In front of those buckets are bins with varying shapes/sizes of small, hard, white balls. I had read something, somewhere along the line, about what I think these balls are: dried and salted milk (could be cow, goat, sheep, camel or horse). Next to these bins are stacks of a brown, granular substance that has been molded into bricks, poke-a-dotted with raisins and dried cranberries. I have been on the look out for brown sugar and to this point had not found it. Now, my mind reasoned, “Why would brown sugar be with the dried horse milk?”, but my mind answered itself with “Just because I wouldn’t put it there doesn’t mean that someone else might”. So, I leaned down and took a big whiff of this brown, granular block. It was not brown sugar. What it is, I still do not know, but it smelled of lard and salt and smoke, and nearly made my eyes water.
We had a snack when we arrived at the market (a delicious baked dough pocket stuffed with cheese or meat and onions called “samsa”) but we wanted to have some lunch before walking home. In this room are 4 large pillars and each pillar has a balcony with a small café inside it and tables around that balcony. We made our way up one pillar and were handed menus in Russian. Hhmmm…we knew that a dish called “plov” is popular here, and we hadn’t tried it yet so we ordered two. While we waited we could look down onto the bustling floor and see the layout…meats all along the back wall, divided by animal. We knew this because the management graciously posted a drawing of the animal on the signs. Pig, lamb, beef, ram (I guess lamb and ram are different meats?) and the last 4 or 5 aisles dedicated to horse. Down the other wall was duck and chicken, and some more pork. In the corner are medicinal herbs/plants. Then live flowers and house plants, then dried fruits and nuts and then back to the honey aisle. On the balcony with us, women were making a few kinds of dumplings on a floured table, working quickly and producing uniform dough vessels.
Our meals came in less than 5 minutes…a heaping pile of yellow rice mixed with carrots and onions and topped with fresh tomatoes, lamb and fresh dill. We ate happily and watched as the women finished the dumplings and began to pull noodles by hand. We paid the bill (about $3 each for the plov with tea) and began to make our way out of the market, stopping to sample caviar that was being sold in the middle of the room. We politely refused to purchase the caviar, but turned around a bought a round of bread baked with onion and herbs. Our backpacks loaded down with the weekly rations, we headed towards the park and agreed that the Green Bazaar is truly awesome.
The view from the balcony cafe. The bottom right is looking onto the sundries and upper left looks onto diary, I believe. We're heard that cameras aren't welcomed at the Green Bazaar, so we had to be stealth about photos.
Our plav arrived. It was delicious!
