THE PRESIDENT IS COMING TO TOWN

A Presidential visit to celebrate first oil is on the cards for Atyrau.  And according to The Independent Newspaper he will have company!


Obviously Mr Cameron has been learning a trip or two from Mr Blair, and has decided a bit of Networking could bode well if his retirement retirement from politics is brought about by the Boris Boys.

Anyway, Presidential visits are good for Atyrau because it means a flurry of activity on the cleaning, mending and painting front.  In fact, the astute predictor will be aware that as soon as work begins on Satpayeva Bridge the town is due a VIP visit.  And work began a few weeks ago as I arrived back.

But this time the bridge work is not a casual coat of paint like last year (this blog has pictures of a man spray painting himself and the railings last summer).  This time it is a major job with the white barriers being stripped of their plaster covering and then repaired, filled, sanded and hopefully sometime soon, painted.  This effort has been going on for nearly two months now with varying numbers of people at it.  The plaster layer was all chipped off by hand using tools they use to chip ice off the sidewalks in winter, and scrapers.

But what has impressed me the most is that the sanding has all been done by hand, just pieces of sandpaper and no power tools.  The evidence can be found along the footpath.  

There has also been extensive sidewalk repairing activity underway.  This usually happens over the summer months so I am not sure how much of this is VIP visit inspired, but I suspect that the activity all along Satpayeva, which is the main route to Airport Road in not entirely coincidental.  

Repairing the sidewalks

I also notice that the curbs have all been painted white again, as have the tree trunks.

The flower pots along the route have been planted now, as has the central island at the European end of the bridge.  So now 
Mohambet Square is being busily planted with flowers to catch up.  There is also a planting effort underway on the banks of the flyover of Kurmangazy at Tamasha...It will say Atyrau in flowers.  The bridge itself has also been painted, not blue but green.  In fact this particular green colour is appearing on a few buildings.  

Fifty Shades of Green...the new Atyrau blockbuster colour

I think it is either a new fashion or a large batch was bought by the city at a good price.

Planting on Mohambet Square

One intriguing event is the appearance of three decorative pieces in the grass verge at the Satpayeva end of the Square.  There is a stone with primitive deer drawings on it, a peacock at rest and two urns still wrapped in plastic.  

The urn motif seems quite popular.  In fact in Astana there is a whole building that is built in the shape of a toppled urn.  

The Astana urn is significantly bigger than ours, as one would expect of a Capital urn.

There has also been quite a lot of painting of building facades...in that new green or the more common ochre colours.  But by far the most perplexing colour change has been the sudden repainting of pedestrian crossings which used to be yellow and have nor turned red.  It has happened quite quickly and nor it is hard to find any yellow crossings.

Unfortunately the red paint does not seem to stick very well and it is wearing thin in places after just a couple of weeks.

Even the advertising signs along Satpayeva have been spruced up and new ones added, all emphasising Atyraus role as a commercial centre.  

And I have to admit some surprise in seeing that NCOC had put up a sign for Kashagan, emphasising that its efforts were "Benefiting Kazakhstan People". Which of course they are, and will do so even more when there is some oil flowing. 

Nicely located just in front of the Chevron TCO building!

Last but not least there have appeared on the banks of the Ural the start of two structures, the nature of which is as yet unknown.  So, as bad as I feel leaving you in such suspense, I am going to post this blog and leave it to a later date to reveal the nature of the mysterious posts!

POST SCRIPT
Well that was where I planned to leave this blog last Friday, but yesterday I went walking to the shops and discovered a couple of other "new" features in the city, so decided to add them as a post script.  The main thing is the arrival of the camels beside the Atyrau sign (in flowers).  Not only camels but also a post or pillar of some sort.

Unfortunately it is difficult to get a clear shot of this "welcome to Atyrau" scene because of the shed, but I can assure you that it adequately signals what to expect in Atyrau.

But that was not all, further down Satpayeva, in some empty land beside the street, there have appeared more animals, this time of a deer type variety.  I am not sure quite what they are but all add to the interest of walking to the store.

It just leaves us wondering how quickly the city would change if The President visited every month and took a different route around town.  After a year the city would be shining like a new pin...maybe.

RETURNING TO ATYRAU CUISINE

There is always a little bit of adjustment to be made when returning to Atyrau wine and food after California.  And when I say "little bit" that is an English "little bit" which has a special meaning!

Sandra was kind enough to let me adjust slowly with a first night pizza in the Zhetti Kazyna restaurant.  The restaurant is quite acceptable for most day to day eating and like most people we would eat there more often if the prices were not so high and if it was less Italian.  One of the interesting features of a lot of Italian food is that it can be prepared quite quickly, so going out for pasta, is not so much a convenience as an inconvenience.  It is as easy and far cheaper to make it at home.  So pizza is about the only thing I eat from that menu, and that is when I am too lazy to make my own dough.

However it is not possible to easily make draft beer so that is a definite attraction of the clubhouse, except it ran out just after I returned and it took over a week for it to be replenished...EFES and Bavaria, nothing exotic, so I don't know what the problem was.  But I ramble, and I mustn't bite the had that occasionally feeds me!

Sitting outside at the Clubhouse with A BOTTLE of beer.  Proof positive that the draft had run dry.

The next night we went to Gadji and had the shashlik, which I covered in the last blog.  I like this restaurant because its food is good and good value, one can sit in a private room without a TV playing some fashion channel and without music, and look at a menu that does not have pizza and pasta on it.

I bought a piece of beef and a piece of pork which I vacuum packed and put in my big pot to cook sous vide at 131F (I started at 130 and then turned it up a degree) 

Beef in a vacuum bag and the water bath, this improvised technique is known in culinary circles as "The Atyrau Method"!

I had planned to try 48 hours but then I translated the description on the package to English and decided it would be too long!  This was my guide...

The piece that I had was "cube roll".  A name I was unfamiliar with so I googled it and it discovered that it is a term used in Australia and New Zealand for rib eye, quote...

"Whole Beef Cube Roll...

Whole Cube Roll Scotch fillet or Rib Eye depending on where you were brought up but this is melt-in-the-mouth tender great NZ beef" So I decided that 48 hours might me overdoing it a little and rescued it at 24 hours instead.  It war nice and pink and juicy, so I threw it in a very hot pan for a couple of minutes to give it a bit of "Maillard" flavour, took it out, rested it and carved nice pink slices to go with our stir fried rice and vegetables.  This is what it looked like. It was too tough to eat!  It was no more a piece of rib eye than it was calves liver!  I dont know how the labelling works, or doesn't work but I am back to treating meat on instinct and not labelling. So in the spirit of fighting back, putting it down to experience and getting even and not mad, I went and bought another "cube roll".  This time it got the full 48 hour treatment and it was good!  Not super tender, but quite acceptable and with good flavour.   This one I dared to serve to friends on Sunday when we had a cheese and cold cuts light evening meal, and I didn't have to blush with embarrassment.   Oh! I forgot to mention the 48 hour piece of pork, well it was not a great success, actually it had become rather too tender, quite edible but better transformed into rillettes and served on toast. We have been eating out too, but I have to confess that after a few years the appeal of the menus at Petrovski's, Hugo's, O'Neil's, Winter garden, Guns and Roses and even the more expensive, Samcek is wearing rather thin so the routine has changed and I now usually take Sandra her lunch and we eat it together in the NCPOC staff dining room.  Quite often colleagues will stop buy and share a little of our extra so it make a pleasant social break in Sandra's work day. So our eating out choices are getting harder.  Champions (Renaissance) is still on my black list after their awful chicken wings and soup with packaging in it, Zhetti Kazyna is saved for Thursday Happy Hour, which is actually Partially Happy Evening, ie a fixed price buffet with one drink included. We do go to Venezia for lunch sometimes at weekends.  I don't think I have mentioned this little place very often before.  It is a small hotel, run, I think, by an Italian exile, and usually occupied by Italian oil guys. The food is simple and, not surprisingly, Italian.  However it seems far more authentic than the other Italian restaurants and is much better priced.  We had another shot at eating at this restaurant in Ardagar Mall.  I cannot read the the name so will have to ask someone to do so for me. We had some pickled fish to share as a starter.  It arrived as shown below on the left and was removed from the table as shown below on the right.  It was very very fishy and not very pickley, and obviously not very popular with either of us! I then had a bowl of soup and baursak (the unsweetened doughnut type breads. The soup was fine but and very muttony.  I then had manti stuffed with meat and pumpkin and Sandra had shashlik.  It was not great but satisfactory when consumed with lots of cold beer (and that is my excuse and I am sticking with it!) Our conclusion though is that restaurant is no longer on our list.  I have been making the Chris bread (recipe in an earlier blog) since I got back, but occasionally forget as it needs a 24 hour rise and then I have to revert to using the bread maker, which if used on the slow 6 hour cycle makes a pretty good loaf (better than the fast version). As I have written many times before, pizza is on the menu of most of the restaurants in Atyrau that aspire to international cuisine.  many claim that the best pizza is at the Renco as it is the home hotel of the majority of the Italian community and has a good oven.  However there is a break away sect going for Petrovskis.  I am quite in favour of the less well known Venezia pizzas, which have the uncharacteristic feauture of being good value for money, and made in an Italian owned place.  Unfortunately our local restaurant at Kheti Kazyna (7K) is making pizzas with thicker and breadier crusts so doesn't rate very highly on my scorecard.  We had some people over for an informal Sunday Lupper (unlike brunch between Breakfast and Lunch, Lupper...I think you have got the picture!). We served some of the cheese and cold cuts that we brought in from the US, as well as some pizzas that I decided to make.  Unfortunately with a domestic oven and no pizza stone we were a bit disadvantaged, but the 4 different small pizzas came out fine and were all eaten. As it is summer I have also been making salads or more specifically a Greek style salad.  It is only Greek style because the feta cheese that we get from President brands is a strange version of Feta that has a cream cheese type texture to it.  But it tastes fine and with tomatoes, cucumber, finely chopped red onion and olives, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and sprinkled with a pinch of dried oregano, serves its purpose.  The one ingredient that I rarely use in salads here is lettuce.  I find it difficult to pay the local prices for a vegetable that is so tasteless and watery. Above I mentioned the 48 hour pork.  I retried it at 24 hours and it was pretty good.  I also tried the beef for longer, 48 hours.  I had two pieces, same cut, same size, same shop but not apparently from the same beast as one was way overcooked, too tender and the other was a little overcooked.  I used them cut in chunks in a stew and it was very good, so I can do that again and will have to rethink the rare roast beef.  Meantime it is back to simpler things... Like baked macaroni cheese with a layer of partially oven dried tomatoes in the middle.   Actually, if the truth be told, I am not coming clean.  We were fortunate enough to "come upon" some caviar a few days after I got back.  Despite the Caspian being the home to the sturgeon this industry has all but disappeared due to overfishing and poaching, so the copious supplies of caviar that were once the childhood diet of now the now thirty-something year olds are no longer here.  I made some blinis, and put together some light accompaniments and we enjoyed a wonderful treat!  Thank you very much xxxx.

BACK IN TOWN

After two months in California it came time to return to Atyrau.  The Jasmine was starting to bloom, the grape vines were sporting their first leaves, the rosses were in full blossom and limes and lemons on the trees.  Definitely time to leave before getting too comfortable. 

The return journey was once again through Istanbul, and I had to overnight there as usual.  This time I stayed at a different little hotel in Yesilkoy, my favourite little town near the airport.  It turned out that the room had a small kitchen so instead of going for dinner at the usual little fish restaurant attached to the fish shop, I bought some fresh prawns and took them back to the hotel for a beer and prawn supper!

This was a pleasant change in routine, and the prawns were beautifully fresh and sweet.  However I have to admit that it was rather limited in its variety, and I think I will return to my usual hotel next time, if there is a next time.


I left Atyrau at the end of winter just before the Ural thawed and almost in time, but not quite, to avoid the mud.  In fact the mud around Zhety Kasyna was so bad that we actually failed to walk out through it on a couple of occasions.  I was glad to be returning to some warmer weather with temperatures aroung 20C.  There had been rain but with very windy weather the ground had dried out and my first walk out of Zheti Kasynor was on good old dusty dirt trails.

The contrast between now and just two months ago really brings home just how quickly the seasons change here.  

The path/road towards 

Satpayeva was snow covered 

and muddy at the start of 

March, now (on the right) it is

dry and dusty again.

The street workers who were assigned ice 

chipping duties over the winter are now 

back on their summer schedule, 

tending the plants, sweeping the roads

and painting the kerbs white.  Of course 

they can now also sit for a moment 

without freezing solid.

At the end of winter I was delighted to wait for the taxi at the back of Rahat and watch the cars and trucks negotiation the "puddle" that became deeper and deeper.  On three occasions I came out of the market to find a vehicle stranded in the puddle...always a truck and always missing the driver.  I would look around for a guy wearing pants wet up to his knees but sadly never  got that photo-op.

This picture is the only one I got and the truck almost managed to get out, the back end is not even in the deepest part.  Anyway, the hole has been partially filled with broken tiles, so I guess it now officially qualifies as being repaired.

Hole filled

Hole filler

I think it is fair to say that the whole town of Atyrau has now moved into summer mode, though as I walk along the street in shorts and T-shirt I am amazed to see some children playing with parkas on, and even adults wearing thick coats.  The Kazakhs like to keep warm.

The streets are being swept and the kerbs are being painted.  The flower planting in the street pots has not yet begun, but it has in Zhety Kasynor.  The raised flower beds are being planted by teams of garden workers.  Typically they wear white cover-alls made of a light weight synthetic fabric, which go from ankles to head, with hoods and long sleeves, and zips up the front.  They are rather loose and baggy, which means that as it is very windy right now they sometimes get filled with air from the blowing wind and inflate, making the team look like a group of Michelin tire men.  The only differentiating feature seems to be the red peaks of their caps, they all wear red caps, which appear out from the front of their hoods.

Of equal import is the window cleaning.  Winter left the outsides of the windows horribly dirty, but a team sprang to action and started the cleaning.  I have to say that whilst they adopted a technique that I was hitherto unfamiliar with, it did the job!

There is a brush on the end of a long pole and it can reach up to the fifth floor windows.  I don't know if it is hard to "drive" but they seem to manage quite easily.  Still, it is a long way from the bucket when it is time to rinse the brush.

Out on the streets the pedestrian crossings are all getting a new coat of paint after the winter saw the end to the last one.  

Similarly the paint job that was done last summer on Satpayeva Bridge is now showing some wear.  

There is also a major job underway on the barriers, which were also painted last summer.  The paint hasn't lasted too well.

So now all the top layer is being chipped off, using tools that look just like the ice chipping tools used in winter.  They have completed one side of the bridge walk and are now working on the other.  Pictures below of the chipping job....more later of the renovation (I bet you can hardly wait!)  One has to adjust to what is newsworthy, in a hive of activity like Atyrau.

The results of the chipping job.

That first weekend we took a walk along the Ural River.  The wind was strong and the water was very high.  It is as rough and unappealing as I had ever seen it.  

In the evening we went to Gadji, the restaurant where my birthday party (absent me) was held in January.  

We were a small party, and just had one of the little private rooms.  The food was pretty good (shashlik) as usual, but we were disappointed that the kebabs didn't arrive standing proudly around the small charcoal fire, as they have in the past.

In the picture above you will notice that the beer mug has a straw in it.  I have noticed straes appear when the beer is being served to a lady (or in the local parlance...a girl).

I dont seem to have a full set of guest pictures but JandA posed nicely!

Adventures with food have been on going.  We have eaten out some of the time but I have also made an effort to provide some home cooked variety for Sandra and friends.

Results have been very mixed, as I will explain in my next blog on returning to Atyrau cuisine!