The Wash.

My clothes never get very clean when I wash them by hand. The dirt comes off, and they smell superficially nice, but in no time they're back to their old stinky selves. And I spend a whole lot of time washing them. And though I know the Peace Corps is supposed to be all about expending enourmous amounts of time and energy on work that returns little or no result, it's starting to get to me, at least as it regards my clothes.

Washing machines in America get my clothes plenty clean. And if you think about it, they don't do much. They just kind of swish them around for fifteen minutes. There are no scrubbing mechanisms. The swishing isn't even that violent. Which makes me think maybe I (and everyone who's been teaching me how to wash clothes here) have it all wrong.

The Kazakh method of washing is to violently attack a single article for thirty to forty seconds, rubbing it between your fists up and down wherever you think dirt might lurk, after which you swish it a just a little, maybe five more seconds, wring it out, and put it in a separate tub for rinsing. While you do this all the other clothes are just sitting, not swishing. Maybe instead of forty-five seconds of blistering abrasion, fifteen minutes of gentle swishing would do. All the clothes would swish together, and none would lay fallow. I certainly spend at least fifteen total minutes scrubbing, and swishing wouldn't hurt my knuckles.

This is consistent with the theory, too. At least with my theory. When I wash clothes, I'm mostly not trying to get the dirt off the outside, which is what scrubbing would be good for. I'm trying to get out offensive organic oils of mine that have seeped deep into the fibers and which are clinging there like odious octopuses in thick underwater kelp forests. All metaphors aside, what will flush the oils out is not surface scrubbing, but lots of clean soapy fluid passing through the weave of the fabric over a long period of time, carrying oils away bit by bit. That is, swishing.

Next time I do my laundry, I'll give it a shot. Swishing will be more relaxing, anyway. I'll listen to some nice songs that I can sing along to that last fifteen minutes total, and just stir. After which, I'll rinse, dry, and sniff. I wish I had some objective measure of stankiness so I could do a proper experiement, but while I was wasting time designing one, I'd smell funny and have blisters on my knuckles, so I'll go ahead with what I have.

Atryau, Aktau, and The Caspian Sea - Part Three - The Sea

During the morning of our last day in Atyrau, we spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to get to the sea, which was, after all, our Major Goal. If you look at a map, Atyrau is, as the crow flies, pretty close to the sea. But there was astonishly little information about how to get there. We tried tourist agencies, hotels, people on the street, and the train station. We were told of boating expeditions to the Caspian, but nobody could find the phone number. We were told that it was impossible to get to the sea. Some people didn't seem to know that the Caspian was anywhere near. And there was a lot of talk, from different people, about a city called Tengiz (in Kazakh, it means "sea"), allegedly on the seashore, with beaches and hotels, and within a few hours from Atyrau. Nobody could produce phone numbers or names for any hotels in Tengiz, but we decided that this city was our most likely bet.

So we went back to the train station to ask the spravochni how to get to Tengiz. After a long runaround and many different questions, she directed us to the bus station. We went all the way back across town(about a half hour on the bus) to the location she described, and found...a long-abandoned building. An old taxi driver outside asked us what we were looking for. The bus station, we said. "Hell, there hasn't been a bus station here for years," he said. "There is no bus that goes to Tengiz. But I'll take you to Tengiz for four hundred dollars (US)." Thank you, no. But he did tell us that we could get a van from the train station, where we had just come from, for about seven dollars each.

Frustrated, we got a bottle of wine and went back to the apartment. The next day, we would try the train station again, we decided, and hotel reservation or no, would go to Tengiz to see the sea.

So we packed up everything and left the apartment the next morning. We had a brief scare in the station when none of the three station ATMs worked and we had only twenty bucks left between us. I took a bus by myself back to the city center, and the first three ATMs I tried...also didn't work. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I headed back to the bus stop, but then I noticed an single ATM for a rival bank that had a huge twenty-person line in front of it. I waited my turn, and lo, was able to withdraw money. I went back to the train station feeling like anything was possible.

Gulshat and I managed to find the van to Tengiz despite nobody admitting that they didn't know where it was, and sat down. Gulshat started making small talk with the other passengers. They were all from Tengiz. "We're going there to see the sea", she said. "The what?" they asked. "The Caspian Sea," she said. They laughed. "The Caspian is nowhere near Tengiz! In Tengiz, there's only the Tengiz oil refinery!"

Tengiz, as in the oil refinery, is pronounced "ten-giz", with the "n" and "g" separate, as opposed to "tengiz", with the nasal "ng" sound. "Tengiz" means "sea" in Kazakh. "Ten-giz" is just the name of a factory. Maybe this caused part of the confusion. But it couldn't have possibly caused all of it. A lot of people had given us completely falacious advice.

It was noon when we stepped out of the van. Our plane left in a day and a half, and there was, evidently, no way to get to the sea from Atyrau. I gave up hope, but Gulshat pulled on my arm. There was a train leaving, at that very moment, for Aktau, the famous Soviet beach resort we had wanted to go to in the first place.

We went to talk to the conductors. There were no seats available. But the conductors would sell us their coupe compartment - two private beds in the upper class car - for thirty American dollars each. We could arrive in Aktau the next morning, spend the day there, and catch the same train back to Atyrau at 7pm. They would reserve their compartment for us, though of course it would be a matter of trust - there were no tickets. If we made the connection, we would make our flight from Atyrau.

But if we didn't, we would miss it. And we would have to bribe the conductor to even get on the day-long train back to Astana. And I would not have time to go back to Kokshetau before I caught the flight back to America for my sister's wedding. The train was leaving, and I had five minutes to decide what to do.

Gulshat and I wouldn't be together too much longer, and you only live once. I decided to go.

And we made it. On the train ride down, we passed yurts, strange, dramatic white mountains, and the first wild camels either of us had ever seen. We drank wine, ate well, and slept soundly in our private cabin. The seaside was windy and dramatic, with high waves, white sand beaches, and swallow-swarmed precipitous cliffs. We drank fruit juice and ate fish shashlik and tried to sunbathe despite the cold. In short, we had our one day on the seashore.

We got to the train station about an hour and a half early, and the train was fifteen minutes late, which made me want to gnaw my knuckles. But true to their word, the conductors saved the cabin for us, and we made our plane. It was the first time Gulshat had ever flown. And you probably know, I made it to my sister's wedding, with a story about the sea.

Atryau, Aktau, and The Caspian Sea - Part Two - In Atyrau

The train ride was about twenty-four hours to Atyrau. It was, for the most part, uneventful. Because we had bunks on the side of the train, we had to use other people's tables, and so we spent a lot of time sitting with differnet people, playing Durak (a Russian card game) and checkers and drinking tea. As we were pulling into Aktau, we were running low on food, and since there was no schedule posted, we asked how long the stop would be. Estimates varied from ten to twenty-five minutes, so felt safe getting off to buy some provisions. But as we were standing on the platform negotiating the price of lapioshka, only five minutes after the stop, we saw our train pulling away. We panicked and ran after it, but it was gone before we could cross the crowded platform. We started asking everyone what had happened. Again, reports varied. It is going to Atyrau, some said. It will be back, others said. We waited with bated breath, since all our documents, money, and clothes were on the train. We discussed the possibility of spending all the money we were carrying to hire a taxi to outrun the train to the next station. But sure enough, our car was simply being connected to another engine, and returned five minutes later on a different track. It was gratifying to me to see Gulshat nervous, since it made me feel that these things didn't simply happen to me because of inadequate language. Locals suffer, too.

We arrived in Atyrau the next afternoon, and took a taxi to a hotel that my 2000 Lonely Planet described as a low-mid hotel with a good location, costing about $15 per person per night. Something seemed amiss as we entered the opulent marble lobby, and the uniformed lady behind the desk informed us that their rates were now $90 per person per night. The oil industry was clearly working for someone. Feeling tired, and not wanting to shop around too much, we took another hotel down the street for only $90 per night between us, including breakfast. After showering and resting a while, we wandered around the city center, marvelling every time we crossed the bridge across the flooded Ural river, the bridge between Europe and Asia. Rising from the middle of the bland residential district, there was a pink gumdrop Orthodox church, I took Gulshat to her first trip inside a Christian house of worship. That night, we saw a stupid movie called, in Russian, "Groom For Rent", which I think was called "Wedding Date" in English.

The next day, we moved to a new apartment on the edge of town for only $30 per night, arranged for air tickets back (since the trains were all full), and took in some museums. As I was wandering among the horsewhips and wooden tableware in the Kazakh history museum, I was astonished to come upon a small, black, perfectly typical Indian-style Buddha statue. Apparently there were Turkik muslims, called the Karamaks, in the Atyrau area in the 17th century. There was also an old traditional coat allegedly worn by Jengir Khan, the subject matter for Abai's famous Curses (if I'm not mistaken). The coat, which looked to my eyes just like the chincy souvenier coats sold near the entrance of Almaty bazaars (except being made with genuine gold thread), disproved Bryan and my theory that "traditional" Kazakh dress, as sold in souvenier shops, was too gaudy to be genuinely traditional.

I wanted to see the new Star Wars movie in Atyrau, thinking I wouldn't get another chance in Kazakhstan. (In fact, it came to Kokshetau after I came back from America.) We stumbled across a theater that was playing it, and noting that it was playing the next day at 7pm, planned to return.

That night, while Gulshat was doing laundry, I turned the TV on to BBC. A news report was wrapping up, in which the commentators were discussing something about Iran deceiving the world about its nuclear ambitions. In giant, bold letters, at the bottom of the screen, it read, "IRAN NUCLEAR". My heart fell into my stomach - Iran has nuclear weapons! Gulshat was unperturbed. I spent most of the rest of the evening searching in vain for another news program, until finally around 11:30 I found out that it had simply been a sensationalistic subtitle. Stupid BBC.

Our project for the next day was to try to get a job interview at an oil company for the fun of it. To this end, I bought a tie, Gulshat put on her best clothes, and we tried to find a place where we could print our resumes. Failing to find an internet cafe with a functioning printer, we unconvincingly walked into Petro Kazakhstan's opulent lobby with only dress clothes and an attitude. Not surprisingly, despite a lot of blustery English on my part, we couldn't get in the door.

That evening, we tried to go see Star Wars. When we arrived at 6:45, fifteen minutes before the advertised start time, we found an angry crowd. It happens that early that afternoon, they changed the schedule to start the movie at 6pm, and the crowd was full of people who come to see the movie, only to find it halfway finished. Gratifyingly, these Kazakhs, at least, weren't taking this sitting down. Of course, after about a half hour of demands for accountability or simply to talk to someone in charge, most people left unsatisfied. (My attempts to sound indignant were hobbled by my language. "We checked the schedule tomorrow!" I angrily declared. "Tomorrow it said seven o'clock!") However, those who chose to were allowed to watch the end of the movie for free, which is what Gulshat and I decided to do. In Russian, Yoda has a deep, sophisticated voice.

By the time we walked home, in the rain, we felt that we had exhausted all that Atyrau had to offer. The next day, we were to shoot for the sea.

Atryau, Aktau, and The Caspian Sea - Part One - Departure

Gulshat and I decided to take a trip together before we parted ways. Every good trip needs a goal, the grander and more arbitrary the better, and we chose the Caspian Sea. This is the story of how we did it.

Although this all happened before my sister's wedding, I'm going to post it afterwards, because it's taking me longer to write and I want the entries together on the blog.

Since time was short and I assumed the train ride would be horribly long, we decided to fly to Aktau, an old Soviet beach resort. Gulshat called around and found round-trip tickets to Aktau for 34k tenge, or about $260, apiece. We went to the travel agent that offered this price, who proceeded to take our documentation and draw up the paperwork. Gulshat and I sat next to her and chatted excitedly about the exotic Caspian in English. When she was done, she handed us the tickets, and said, that'll be 40k tenge apiece. The total difference between their promised price and this sum was almost $100! Why the price difference, we asked? She scowled and refused to explain the difference, or even why when we had called earlier that day to confirm the price she had agreed to it. She became very rude, and our conversation got unfriendly.

Finally, Gulshat decided to call another agency that had tickets for more than 34k, but less than 40k. We called them with the desk phone of the 40k travel agent, and were told they would check, could we please call back in five minutes? Ok, we said, and hung up. Moments later, the phone of the 40k agent rang - it was the other agent, asking to buy the tickets from her!

It looked like we were stuck with the expensive price tag, and though I may have considered paying the extra money, the extroardinarly rude behavior of the travel agent made me decide not to. I told them this. Fine, they said. That'll be 400 tenge. What for? For writing up the tickets that we have to cancel now. I'm not going to pay you 400 tenge for increasing the price $100 at the last moment, I said. Then we won't give your passport back, they said. I felt myself about to lose my temper, and stepped outside to calm down.

After a few minutes in the fresh air, I felt more reasonable. 400 tenge isn't much money, I thought, it's better to pay it and be done with all this than make a scene. I walked back inside and put the money down on the agent's desk. It's 800 tenge, she said. 400 per ticket.

I lost my temper.

A few minutes later I had spoken my mind, we had our documentation back, and we had not paid them any money, but we were walking away beneath the warm summer trees to my apartment without any tickets to Aktau. I apologized to Gulshat, and she said I had done the right thing. On the way home, we talked about other trips we could take.

Back in my apartment, we laid out my map on the floor and started thinking about alternatives. Ust-Kamenigorsk? Karaganda? A little Southern village we noticed on a small country road named "Gulshat"? Noticing that there was a train line that seemed to go through Russia, but more directly to Aktau than the Almaty route I had imagined we would have to take, Gulshat called the train information number to find out how long a train ride to Aktau would actually be. To our surprise, it was only 36 hours, less than half of what we thought it would be, inexpensive, and perfectly feasible! The Sea was still within reach!

There were only three catches - the trains only left on even numbered days, which meant leaving the very next day. The tickets could only be purchased in Astana. And there was no guarantee that there would be seats left. We decided to risk it - in the worst case, we would be in Astana with our baggage, and could decide then where to go.

We stayed up late packing and putting our affairs in order. At 10am Sunday morning, we took a Marshutka (taxi-van) to the Astana train station. Our spirits were high in the line at the ticket counter. But when we got to the window, we were told that no tickets to Aktau remained. In Kazakhstan, no tickets remaining doesn't mean you can't go, it just means you might have to bribe the conductor and sleep on a luggage shelf. We talked it over, and agreed to do that. But first, we thought we should confirm that it was in fact only 36 hours, and that I would be able to take the train, since according to my map, the line passed through Russia and I had no Russian visa.

At this point, the trip's recurring theme of incompetent information ladies (called spravochnis) began. The spravochni, upon being asked the above questions, told us that there was no train to Aktau, at all. Indeed, the one working computer schedule kiosk didn't list Aktau as a destination. How can there be no trains to such a major Kazakhstan city? Thus began an infurating hour of every single person we asked giving us conflicting information about everything. The spravochni herself would give different answers time to time. In an hour in the train station, we were unable to determine whether or not there was a train to Aktau, but did find that there were two platscar tickets that got us within a couple hours of Atyrau, the other big city near the Caspian. Perhaps from there we could find our way to the sea.

By the way, I blame our difficulties getting information here and elsewhere on the trip on one Kazakhstani cultural peculiarity - the unwillingness of people to admit when they don't know something. People who obviously didn't know the answers to our questions, like the station security guard when asked about whether or not I needed a Russian visa, felt obliged to give us definitive answers. Everyone answered our questions, but they all answered differently, and there was no good way to tell who knew and who was saving face. This would haunt us again.

Gulshat and I sat on a bench outside the station, looking at the taxis, travellers, and pimps renting apartments by the hour. (Bryan and I once had a confusing and embarassing conversation with said pimps when were were innocently looking for chaste places to stay in Astana.) We talked about having a sure thing in Karaganda and Almaty, or taking a chance at shooting for our Arbitrary Goal. Gulshat, a completely inexperienced traveller, never having gone more than twenty miles from the train line between Kokshetau and Almaty besides her home village, never having even gone anywhere in her life without a plan, said she wanted to take a chance on the sea. I glowed with pride. We bought our tickets and left that evening.

A Brief Dreamlike Glimpse of America

I went to America for two weeks for my sister Carrie's wedding. The trip was magnificent.

I didn't expect to feel so sad leaving Kazakhstan, or to feel so sad to leave America. I had two sad plane rides. Being simultaneously homesick for two places twelve time zones apart is a real drag.

In Germany, walking the Frankfurt streets among the American sorority girls on European Vacation, carrying my torn Chinese bag and dombra and smelling like a man who bathes every other day and washed his clothes by hand, I felt very Kazakhstani. I checked into a hostel where I ate the boiled eggs and baursak Gulshat had packed for me, listened to Vysotski on my ipod and missed Kokshetau, where I spoke the language.

That night, after sleeping for two hours, someone came into the hostel dorm room and turned the lights on. It was the middle of the night. I woke up and scolded him in Russian. He was a Chinese face in a hostel in Frankfurt, and there were several choices of languages he might have spoken, and Russian was not one of them. He looked startled for a minute, and then apologized, "I only speak English, dude." I hadn't realized I was speaking Russian, so I startled too. I asked him in English to turn the lights off and went back to sleep.

Friends picked me up at the airport in Chicago, and we drove through the first McDonald's I saw and got fries and a coke with ice. There was a party with magnificent vegetarian fare, gourmet liquor of all kinds, and lots of goofing friends. I stayed awake all night, and Eddy, Xie, Jeanne, and I drove to lake Michigan in a convertible to see the sunrise.

I drove to my Grandma's, and we went to Applebee's, all the time talking about how nice it was to be going to Applebee's again. She is, to all appearances, as healthy and sharp as ever, and we were very happy to see each other. I spent two soft days chatting with her, practicing the dombra, and watching the rain.

I flew out of Chicago towards Montana, but in Salt Lake City a stupid mistake and Polygamy Porter caused me to miss my flight. I spent the night in Salt Lake City in the worst hostel I've ever been in, beating myself up about missing my flight and sharing a bunk bed with a stinky, strung-out hippy who called out curses against the devil in the middle of the night and tried to go through my bags.

When I got to Great Falls the next morning, I ran errands with the older brother of the fiance and his girlfriend all day. We had cheap Chinese-American food for lunch, and it was heavenly. I saw my family that evening, and it was heavenly, too. Better, really. We spent that evening and the next morning together in a rented house apart from the wedding hubub.

We went hiking the next morning, had a picnic lunch, and saw the family farm. Friends came from Idaho. Friends from all sides mingled. We rode a horse. We pulled warm eggs out from underneath a surprisingly calm chicken. We climbed a haystack. We sat on a silo. We felt Montana. The sun set, and my family and I went back to our rented house.

The next morning was the day before the wedding, and we prepared for it. We erected a tent, which was made difficult by too many engineers. (Or, as on Montanan put it, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.) We moved tables and chairs from the church. We roasted a pig. Then, we had the wedding rehearsal, and then the rehearsal dinner. After dinner, we danced crazy dances until the playlist ran out. We went to a local bar, where we talked about kissing and I heard stories about Scott from his brothers.

The next morning, I polished my shoes. Pictures were taken. I was the Man of Honor -- that is, the main person on the brides side, to complement the main person on the groom's side being his older brother, Damen. Despite my gender I, being a traditionalist, preferred the title "Maid of Honor", which I always wrote on my nametag. However, breaking with tradition, Damen and I agreed not to kiss. Since I was the only male on the bride's side, some traditional combinations for pictures were awkward.

The wedding was extraordinary. The music was played entirely by friends of the bride and groom. One reading began, "The heart is a meaty pump..." The recessional featured the bride and groom on trombones, accompanied by a brass band playing a New Orleans jazz march. Carrie claims not to remember much of the ceremony itself.

We had a delicious pork dinner in the tent. We played volleyball, and then the volleyball team made itself into a softball team and we played that. Then we moved on to Extreme Bocce Ball. Everyone agreed at the time that it was Extreme, but the next day no one was clear what exactly was Extreme about it. There were mountains on the horizon, and fields of wheat between us and them. There was a campfire. There was a walk in the fields under the starry starry sky. There were fireworks. There was pie. It was as American as an American night can be, and I felt like I was in the heart of it all.

The next day we cleaned up, the husband and wife opened presents, and then I spent the evening with my parents and their friends. And the day after that I flew back to Chicago.

In Chicago, Jim took a sick day and drove me around Chicago running errands and discussing the Things That Must Be Discussed but Rarely Are. Amanda, my KZ PC friend who ETed, came in to see my and help cook bes barmak for my friends. We had a Kazakh feast for my friends around 9pm, which featured toasts, after which I have seem to recall playing a (muted) trumpet in the stairwell and running around in some kind of ductwork in the ceiling of the apartment building and going to sleep in the bathtub.

The next day, Amanda and I cleaned up the aparment, packed, and walked about Chicago chatting. We saw the Grant Park Orchestra practicing Ravel's Daphne and Chloe in millenium park. And then I began the long flight home, having forgotten missing Kazakhstan and now entirely missing America again.