| ABOUT KAZAN
Kazan, my preferite town in the whole travel, it's the capital of the Tatarstan,
a russian republic characterized by a strong presence of Turkish. This republic placed on
the Volga river bank in the middle way between Moscow and the Urals, in the 1990 tried
unsuccessfully to get rid of the central control of Moscow declaring its independence.
Still nowadays the relationship with the russian government is very delicate and the tatar
nationalism is quite spread. For instance in Kazan you can see the tatar flag
flapping at the top of the main buildings or the name of the streets both in russian and
in tatar language.
The developing change of the town was quite evident from the renovation of the old
abandoned buildings that dominated the center. I think many things'll be quite different
in few years; the same "wind of change" that it's blowing in a large part of the
european Russia.
We found a nice accomodation in a hotel nearby the station paying 1200 rubl (33 euro
(12/2003)) for a double, even if the employers were as moron as usually, especially in the
restaurant were one evening they literally kicked us out saying they couldn't cook
anything.
Regarding kindness, to buy the train ticket was an adventure even more than usual, read the story.
My best memories of Kazan were the colorful trams sliding on the snow throughout the
town, the typical outdoor market, the immense frozen Volga and the completely iced
sidewalks, making of Kazan a kind of huge ice rink.
The market was quite big with different kind of stalls, but a typical scene was a
middle aged serious woman with thick clothes cover by an hoarfrost layer standing
patiently in front of her goods placed over some wooden boxes. Some sold just two or three
rotten pomegranate, or some khakies, while others had a bunch of frozen fishes: life can
be very tough here.
Just I saw it I couldn't avoid of walking on the frozen Volga reaching a big boat stuck in the ice and a
group of fishermen who were holding the fishrod over their small hole drilled through the ice. Other than
the sound of the cold wind sweeping the flat ice, it was silence: the fishermen didn't
speak each other, but were immobilized, like being surrounded by hundreds of km of nothingness.
PHOTO
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Kazan
downtown |
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The
main square in Kazan in front of the Tatarstan hotel (Tatarstan gastiniza) |
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Old
style merry-go-round in front of the Kremlin |
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Fishermen
on the frozen Volga |
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Drilling
a hole onthe frozen Volga |
 |
Gears
to fish on the ice, with already frozen tiny fish |
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Old
style merry-go-round in front of the Kremlin |
 |
It's
me on the frozen Volga |
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View
of the endless frozen Volga with some fishermen at the horizon |
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"Typical
mean of transport" on the Volga river |
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I
guess this boat has to wait for the spring before being freed by the ice |
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