In which Owen's parents nearly cause an(other) international incident and must escape to the mountains.
As you can see from the pictures at left, Agent Owen stays in tip-top physical condition for his many adventures by practicing sitting up. He's gotten so good as to be able to do a 1-handed tri-pod. I would also estimate he took less than four nose-dives during this photo shoot. A new record!
Perhaps his parents should have stayed home and done their exercises as well. (Certainly Dad should have. Gym? Isn't that a nickname for "James?")
Instead we went out to spy on the city of Almaty, specifically that notorious hot bed of international intrigue, the Green Market. You can see our contraband photos at left.
The market here looks much like the one in Kokshetau, just with a little more aggression. The vendors very actively market their wares shouting "Pah-zhalusta! Pah-zhalusta!" as we passed-- "Please! Please!" In fact, if you click on and enlarge the photo immediately left, you'll see two boyfriends Robin picked up from her perch on the catwalk above the market. They were delighted to have their pictures taken and there was much touching of fingers to lips and pressing of hands over hearts.
Sadly, not everyone was excited to have Robin Henshaw, International Photo-journalist, in their midst. Apparently it is a huge security no-no to take pictures in the Green Market. This is quite understandable. I mean, imagine the consequences if the secret of the hanging pigs' heads were to get into the wrong hands? It would be a security nightmare!
And that seemed to be what the security guard who bolted up to the catwalk was saying. Of course you couldn't prove by us. Here's what the exchange he had with Vitali sounded like to us:
"Zdrastvuitya!" (The guard very politely said "hello!" and shook all of our hands.)
"murmurmurmurmurmurmurmurPHOTOGRAPHIEmurmurmurmurNyet! Nyet!murmurmurmur."
At the end the guard just shrugged and walked away. Vitali smiled and, while he didn't overtly rush us, we also wasted no time in leaving. I asked Vitali if the guard wanted money. "Nyet." Still, based on the guard's smile and the way he kept eye-balling us, I suspect a 1,000 tenge or so would not only have purchased unlimited photography rights but may also have scored us a shot of the policeman!
Undoubtedly, however, the best photo of the Almaty Green Market is one we stole from Kokshetau buddies Jim and Adrienne Connolly. The faint of heart and weak of stomach absolutely should NOT enlarge it. For the rest of you, yes, that man really is eating his lunch in the middle of all that carnage.
The rest of the market was the traditional bazaar with booths selling sausages conveniently located next to booths selling men's underwear. (Draw your own conclusions.) Vitali was a great guide and, perhaps just as importantly, body guard. He insisted on carrying Robin's purse through the bazaar.
As we exited, we were assailed by the surprising and delightful smell of warm fudge brownies. It seems that the entire city block next to the Green Market is a ring of chocolate factories! Vitali explained all this to us and pointed out the dilapidated buildings, in the picture of Vitali and me on the sidewalk, left, that are the factories. Seeing our (okay, MY) excitement to be in Chocolate Mecca, he helpfully took us into a huge candy store.
Purchases may have been made.
The next stop we'd picked from our trusty Guide to Almaty, was the botanical gardens. We'd hoped to see the greenhouse but apparently even that is closed until later in spring. As an alternative, Vitali suggested the mountains just 20 minutes away. Sure!
The first stop was Medeo, you can see Robin and I outside the skating rink, left, followed by another picture taken from above. This is a huge, Olympic caliber skating rink where you can rent skates for 600 tenge ($4.60) an hour. We declined, but several other people were making the loop to the sounds of really loud Russian disco music blaring over the arena watt speakers.
Embarrassing moment of the day: Vitali catching me dancing to one of the Arabic sounding tunes. "You like?" Yup. Watched the video this morning on Russian MTV.
From Medeo we went further up the mountains into Shimbulak, an internationally popular ski resort. You can see one of the very swanky homes that spot the trail there at left. We had a spot of lunch at the slope's cafe and heard English (of the Australian variety), Italian and German. (Russian, of course, goes without saying.)
Vitali talked me into trying "skolnaya" (and, I'm sure I've butchered the pronunciation). It was a delicious soup of sausage, potatoes, olives, lemon and sour cream. I also has chicken shashlik. (I finally saw it spelled and realized I've been way over-complicating the pronunciation. Also, "shashliki " is plural. I only ate one since I haven't been working out...) Robin had the borsch soup. Not new but, for Robin, still very courageous!
After lunch, we figured the heat from our photo-sting operation might have cooled down so we headed back to town. We tried to snap a picture of KGB headquarters along the way, but it came out blurred. Vitali suggested that we might be taken there for our illegal photo-taking and have our fingers removed. Yikes!
Tomorrow's mission will hopefully be safer: We take Owen to see the doctor.
