24 Hours to Europe: Almaty, Kazakhstan

Here we are in the heart of Asia, surrounded by deserts and mountains, living in the city farthest from any ocean, yet we can hop on a bus and land in Europe in about 24 hours. Don't believe me? Try making the trip from Urumqi to Almaty.

Say "Kazakhstan" and if it conjures up anything, it will either be images of endless steppe or silly Borat jokes. However, the city of Almaty is a major financial center and has been built up into a wealthy, beautiful, clean, ordered, and distinctly Western city.

Since I started studying Kazakh language, if people have any clue what the language is, the first thing they ask me, "So have you been to Kazakhstan?" Last May holiday, over a year after I started learning Kazakh, I finally got the visa stuck in my passport and braved my way through the harry border crossing. My roommate Logan was with me for a couple days, en route to Kyrgyzstan.

Almaty is a great break from China. Not speaking Russian, it was a difficult city for me to get around, but it offers the perfect respite to weary China-dwellers.

Here Logan and I are enjoying real European-style pastries, something both of us were agog over after learning to ignore the bizarre Chinese renditions of western sweets. Sometimes they look tempting, sometimes they look like alien life forms, but they are never good. (See last year's birthday cake, exhibit A. Picture complements of Fausto.)

We could relish the simple pleasure of something that looks the way it's supposed to look, smells the way it's supposed to smell, and tastes the way it's supposed to taste too.

As good as the selections were, we did not spend most of our time in Almaty eating. For the most part we were running around trying to accomplish all of our traveling errands. We were lucky to have the company and guiding of Saule, a friend who lives in Almaty. She also tried to take us to some of Almaty's sights, such as a vista from a mountain just outside of town, but, well.... You can see the view we had that day.

Almaty is not just European in look and feel, it's European in prices as well. So, because of limited time and budget and a desire to speak Kazakh, not learn Russian, I headed south pretty quickly.