Monday, 24 August 2026

 

Start: Hotel in Kazan (RU) 12:00

Arrival: Hotel in Kazan (RU) 19:00

 

Total: a few kilometers on foot

 

 

A rainy day in Kazan. We decided to take it easy, get up late and, finally, somehow, pay those highway tolls.

 

 

My clever and tenacious sister had figured out where Avtodor hides the office in which one can pay their tolls "nalichnymi" (cash). The bad news was that it was rather far from our hotel. The good news was that Kazan has a subway system. Well, system... they have one line, but it drops you off pretty close by the Avtodor office. So off we set.

 

On a Monday around noon, the metro station was totally deserted - what a difference to Moscow! We had the huge hall almost to ourselves. The stations each have an oriental theme going on, with Arabic calligraphy and figures that could be straight out of the Shahname. All very nice and interesting to see.

 

 

Two metro stations further south, we alighted in a non touristy part of Kazan, with office buildings and apartment blocks. And who would have thought it - we found the Avtodor office right away, walked in, showed our car registration to a nice young girl and paid the outstanding 1700 rubles. All done in less than 2 minutes! If only all transactions were that easy.

 

 

What to do with the rest of the day? Might as well explore this part of town. We found a small park with an exhibition showing old Russian trolleybusses, trams and trains. Some of them were even open for people to sit in. Sonia hopped in and I took a pic.

 

By now the sky looked distinctly pasmurna, meaning cloudy and ready for rain. No kafeinya nor chaihana in sight, whereto we might run and hide. Instead, I spotted an interesting 1001-night-like building in the distance and we made for it.

 

 

When the first drops of rain pattered down, we speeded up the pace and just as the clouds threw their doors wide open, we ran under the wide arcades of the theatre. Because this building was actually the Ekiyat Tatar puppet theatre. Unfortunately, there were no shows scheduled for this day and the place was quite deserted. But it sheltered us from the rain, what more can you ask for!

 

After ten minutes, we dared make a run for the subway station. Slightly wet but none the worse for wear, we found ourselves at the far end of ulitza Bauman again, right next to the kremlin. The street that had been teeming with tourists yesterday now lay quiet and deserted. The day before I had noticed a bubble tea shop and so we decided to wait out the rain there.

 

 

Unlike Sonia, I am a big fan of bubble tea. I just love the playful aspect of it. So we ordered a small bubble tea - cold, not hot - black, not green - (how many variations did they have on offer?) with peach flavour and grape bubbles in it. Yummy. To further enhance the playfulness factor, one could climb up into a window alcove, if one was so enclined. I was. Sonia followed, less charmed by it. "I've never climbed up a ladder to sit in a window", I enthused. "I've had better seating arrangements", my sister volleyed back. Maybe, but what a great way to look out at the people in the rain and pop bubbles in your mouth!

 

As we were here, we decided we might as well see the mosque dome that we had missed yesterday. So back up to the Kremlin and into Qol Sharif.

 

 

The stairs up to the "tourist balcony" were still lined with tourists. Maybe I'm jaded, but the view from up above did not wow me. Objectively it looked quite wonderful. But to me, somehow, it seemed too new, too Disneyland. I missed the feeling of the numinous that houses of prayer usually convey to me. Sadly, here I felt nothing of the kind.

 

While we were still up on the tourist balcony, a man entered the hall down below, two young boys in tow. This part of the mosque was closed for tourists. A member of staff came running in. This promised to be interesting. The employee started to explain something, probably that he could not be in here, but the man ignored him and made a beeline for the front row prayer place. The poor employee, defeated, let him kneel down, but the man seemed determined to make a full show of it. He pulled the two young boys to the front as well and made them kneel down, fully aware that a few dozen tourists were looking down on him. "Let's go", I said. One does not need a large hall with an audience to connect with God. And there is certainly more than one mosque in Kazan open for prayer.

 

 

Later in the evening, we had dinner at a Tatar chaihana. The waiters wore beautiful traditional clothes and the music sounded rather Oriental to my ears. This picture does not really do the decor and ambience justice, but it was the best we could do before our food turned cold. LOL We had pomegranate lemonade, lamb plov and azu, which is a sort of veal stew with potatoes. It was quite good, a bit oily maybe, but I guess Central Asian cuisine is rather liberal with fats.

 

When we walked back to our hotel, all the streetlights were already on. Walking through a city after dark has something magical. It makes me feel like I'm a small part of the tapestry, a tiny knot in the colourful weave of this Tatar megapolis. It's a nice feeling.