The Long and Winding Road

The route to Zhezkazgan is long and winding in a very literal sense. I've been on two night trains in Europe before but I've never done back-to-back nights so I wasn't sure what to expect or how hellish it was going to be. In truth, the odyssey went by much faster and more pleasantly than I expected. My counterpart Bulat and I had a five hour layover in Karaganda after spending all night and all morning on the train. His friend lived very close to the train station so we were able to shower and stay out of the wind and cold there. The woman who lived there spoke perfect English (she's a translator). Her son was wearing a "Life is Good" T-shirt and she brought out Smuckers chocolate sauce that her daughter had brought back from a work-study summer program near Denver. Her family has spent a summer in Boston and Orleans in Cape Cod. Was this Karaganda or was this someone from Nantucket? Sometimes, you just never know.

The train to Zhezkazgan departed after dark so I fell asleep pretty quickly. I awoke to the steppe. The steppe from Almaty to Karaganda was what I imagine North Dakota's badlands to look like: treeless and vast, but there were still rises and uplands that occasionally arose to block the view. The railway to Zhezkazgan was different; flat with only very slow rises and nothing but endless grass. Occasionally the train would putter through a tiny village of a few dilapidated buildings, but in general it was a very definition of solitude.

At around 9am Zhezkazgan rose out of the steppe, its presence heralded by the smokestacks flanking the railway on the outskirts of town. Zhezkagan is surrounded by the empty steppe with nothing in sight for miles, but inside the city limits the streets are surprisingly leafy. It's a small city and while it lacks the type of culture and options that are found in big cities, it definitely as a lot more than a typical Kazakhstani town. The shashlyk I have had in cafes has been excellent. More importantly than anything else, this week has been encouraging on the culinary front; eating meals at more and more families' dwellings has been eye-opening. I think I'll never be a fan of some of the true die-hard extremes of Kazakh food, but I'm starting to believe that the quality of the cooking is the major contributor to my problems.