Kazan

Kazan, with a population of about 1.2 million, is the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan which is a federal subject of Russia. Long story short, the people here speak Russian and consider themselves Russian.

We arrived early in Kazan and had to wait before our couchsurfing host Grigory would be finished work. We headed roughly towards the city to see what we could see. Little did we know that on that day, August 30th, was the day of the Republic of Tatarstan and there were many festivities.

As we moved further into the town we noticed crowds of people going somewhere, naturally we followed them, but we had no idea where they were going. We climbed a little staircase and were presented with groups of people in traditional dress, singing and dancing, apparently preparing for some kind of parade.

There were many groups like above who would stop to play and dance and then move further down the street. We followed and on the way noticed something that caught our attention, a fast food restaurant called Tubetey. We were amazed to find this McDonalds style fast food chain that serves traditional Tatar food. Unfortunately I cannot remember or find the names of what we ordered but it was some dumplings in a broth filled with potatoe and onion, a flat quesidilla style thing with beef and cheese and a traditional herbal tea. It was delicious.

Soon after that we got in contact with Grigory and arranged to meet him at his apartment. Google told us which bus to get and we hopped on, a ticket cost us 27 rubles each. After some back and forth we finally managed to meet Grigory, a Kazan local who had been living there all his life. The following picture is not when we met him, just in case you thought that was his apartment in the background!

He led us to his apartment where we could finally leave our bags down. To be quite honest the lead up to his apartment made us a little nervous as it was in a run down area, but the apartment itself was wonderful. The entire place was a collection of custom decorations made mostly by Grigory’s father, with whom he lives.

Grigory made a point of going to the shop before we arrived to buy us some havla. Which is a very sweet and very dense block of sesame paste and sugar. We had it with black tea and it was wonderful, exactly what we needed after our day rambling through the streets of Kazan. After we had chatted with Grigory and recharged our batteries, Grigory offered to bring us to a cheap place to get food and then into Kazan to have a look.

Grigory brought us to a Russian Stolovaya or canteen. These canteens are large self service restaraunts that serve very simple and very cheap russian cuisine which are a throwback to soviet times. If you are in Russia on a budget, look out for these Stolovaya. A full meal with a salad and a drink will be around 100 rubles or less. Thats less than 2 euro!

Grigory then brought us into the city where he showed us around the main street called Bauman street. He told us much about the recent history of Kazan. Interestingly Kazan has seen a huge economic boost over the last 20 years and as a result has a lot of new streets, and whole areas of the city that didn’t exist before. Some light research suggests this may be due to oil and related industries but I’m not sure.

The following day we went on a bike tour around the city (Grigory was kind enough to lend us his bikes). We went to the cities main historical attraction, the Kremlin. Moscow is not the only city with a “Kremlin”, in fact every major city has a Kremlin which is the seat of power for that area. There is a beautiful mosque their that strangely is only 14 years old.

We spent one more night in Grigory’s apartment. The following morning we would head to the train station and embark on a 68 hour train ride to Irkutsk!