The Mighty Volga

From Vladimir I made my way to Nizhny Novgorod where I would pick up the M-7, the main road east to the Urals. Nizhny is the third largest city in Russia and is located at the confluence of two large rivers, the Volga and the Oka. Arriving in Nizhny wet and tired I met up with my host Vassily. Vassily started working in the early 90s as a graphic designer, before moving on to programming. He and two partners have a tech company in Israel, and he is now becoming involved in the art scene again. I met him in the basement of a building inside the Nizhny kremlin where he is organizing a street art exhibition. Two young Russian street artists were spray painting large scenes on the walls of the basement, this would be the first time anything like this had been done inside the kremlin – much of it is still used by the local administration. Vassily is a tea afficianado and he had just received a new green tea from Indonesia. This was a relevatory experience – simply the best tea I've ever had in my life. A teaspoon of buds lasted us an hour of sipping many small cups of tea. Later that night we went on a nocturnal tour of street art and graffiti in Nizhny, there were even some things done by an American artist from NYC.

I left Nizhny under cloudy skies again and it rained off and on the entire way to Kazan, some 250 miles east. Kazan also lies on the banks of the Volga and is the capital of the republic of Tatarstan and has a significant Muslim population. The Tatars are the second largest ethnic group in Russia and many people speak both Tatar and Russian. I found Kazan to be a very nice city, clean and modern with a beautiful kremlin containing both Orthodox churches and mosques side by side.

I stayed in Kazan for two nights with my host Nadi and her roommate Dasha. Nadi had just started learning English 7 or 8 months ago, but she had already made a lot of progress. Dasha didn't speak any English, but she was really friendly and the language barrier didn't hold us back. Dasha was fasting for Ramadan and I asked her to take me somewhere for the evening meal, we ended up at a place specializing in food from Central Asia and the Caucasus: