A trip to town...
Jul. 28th, 2013 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpOver the past two weeks, I had had enough of Area 95 to actually seek a change of scenery, so I joined most of the French team for a long-ish (5-hour) visit today. I figured it would give me a chance to walk around a bit and maybe do what I call a "Hemingway" (the act of sitting in a restaurant and writing a story out by hand, a description of which I seem to recall from early in his A Moveable Feast).
So, after gettng dropped off near the top of the Arbat (near the Palermo Pizzeria), I walked over to the Syr Darya to see what I could see of the recreation area on the river's bank—there were some people splashing around in the public fountains that are powered by underground springs, and a handful of sun bathers—and then I walked back to the Arbat and waited a few minutes for the Palermo to open at 1 pm.
The layout of the front room was pretty much as I remember it, but all of the strange stuff on the wall—the stuffed owls and the edged weapons—were gone. There was a new coat of paint on the walls and I counted six large flat-screen televisions hanging from the ceiling, displaying the same kind of mindless music video "entertainment" that's offered on a screen over at the Polyot.
I ordered a small (150 g) pizza with cheese, ham, and mushrooms (it had a house name, but I forget what it is) and a Shymkent draft beer. (Apropos of which, I had never heard of the town of Shymkent until I ordered my first Shymkent draft beer, so it's not as if drinking beer can't improve your geographical smarts—heck, I even know where Karaganda is, now—but I digress...) The pizza seemed just a tad smaller and noticeably lighter than the last time I was at the Palermo, but it did the trick.
In between bites and sips, I put down about a page of handwritten story before I started to merely outline the story line, and after about a half page of that, I found that my attention was easily distracted. I suspect a part of my mind was rebelling at the idea of writing stuff out by hand that will either have to be copied verbatim, or that will end up getting changed (or both, i.e., changed after it's put down in pixels). At any rate, I closed my notebook, paid the check, and left.
I ended up at what the Pinkertons call the "Strike" (because of the bowling alley on the second floor). Locals (and I) call it the "Arsenal," because that's the name of the complex. When I got there, I went up the steps to the second floor to see what was going on. Only one lane was in use.
I allowed my eyes to rubber around the area before asking how much it cost to bowl. I was informed the cost was 400 rubles (about US$13) per hour. I figured I'd roll a few frames for half and hour or so and call it a day, but for some reason, the automatic scoring system would not initialize properly, so I wasn't able to keep score, so at the end of my time, the management only charged me half price.
Almost immediately after I laced on a pair of house bowling shoes and picked out a ball, a bunch of kids installed themselves at the lane next to mine. It was a hoot to watch them bowl. They went at it sort of instinctively, with no regard for bodily coordination, attempt at ball control (one girl lofted her ball so vigorously, I wondered if she thought she was playing petanque, which I don't have the time to explain right now, but involves either rolling or tossing a ball at a target). There was also not the slightest hint of basic bowling etiquette, e.g., waiting for the bowler in the next lane to release his/her ball before starting one's own approach, and although I tried to set a good example, paying for a lane by the hour may make that courtesy hard to come by.
In the end, I was happy the scorer had malfunctioned. Despite not having bowled for probably 15 years, the number of gutter balls and other idiocy I committed would have made for an embarrassingly low score.
Overall, the scheduled hours made for a pretty town visit, but I somehow managed to muddle through and make the designated rendez-vous for the trip home. I am now fully recharged for another week (at least) of stand-down activities.
Cheers...
So, after gettng dropped off near the top of the Arbat (near the Palermo Pizzeria), I walked over to the Syr Darya to see what I could see of the recreation area on the river's bank—there were some people splashing around in the public fountains that are powered by underground springs, and a handful of sun bathers—and then I walked back to the Arbat and waited a few minutes for the Palermo to open at 1 pm.
The layout of the front room was pretty much as I remember it, but all of the strange stuff on the wall—the stuffed owls and the edged weapons—were gone. There was a new coat of paint on the walls and I counted six large flat-screen televisions hanging from the ceiling, displaying the same kind of mindless music video "entertainment" that's offered on a screen over at the Polyot.
I ordered a small (150 g) pizza with cheese, ham, and mushrooms (it had a house name, but I forget what it is) and a Shymkent draft beer. (Apropos of which, I had never heard of the town of Shymkent until I ordered my first Shymkent draft beer, so it's not as if drinking beer can't improve your geographical smarts—heck, I even know where Karaganda is, now—but I digress...) The pizza seemed just a tad smaller and noticeably lighter than the last time I was at the Palermo, but it did the trick.
In between bites and sips, I put down about a page of handwritten story before I started to merely outline the story line, and after about a half page of that, I found that my attention was easily distracted. I suspect a part of my mind was rebelling at the idea of writing stuff out by hand that will either have to be copied verbatim, or that will end up getting changed (or both, i.e., changed after it's put down in pixels). At any rate, I closed my notebook, paid the check, and left.
I ended up at what the Pinkertons call the "Strike" (because of the bowling alley on the second floor). Locals (and I) call it the "Arsenal," because that's the name of the complex. When I got there, I went up the steps to the second floor to see what was going on. Only one lane was in use.
I allowed my eyes to rubber around the area before asking how much it cost to bowl. I was informed the cost was 400 rubles (about US$13) per hour. I figured I'd roll a few frames for half and hour or so and call it a day, but for some reason, the automatic scoring system would not initialize properly, so I wasn't able to keep score, so at the end of my time, the management only charged me half price.
Almost immediately after I laced on a pair of house bowling shoes and picked out a ball, a bunch of kids installed themselves at the lane next to mine. It was a hoot to watch them bowl. They went at it sort of instinctively, with no regard for bodily coordination, attempt at ball control (one girl lofted her ball so vigorously, I wondered if she thought she was playing petanque, which I don't have the time to explain right now, but involves either rolling or tossing a ball at a target). There was also not the slightest hint of basic bowling etiquette, e.g., waiting for the bowler in the next lane to release his/her ball before starting one's own approach, and although I tried to set a good example, paying for a lane by the hour may make that courtesy hard to come by.
In the end, I was happy the scorer had malfunctioned. Despite not having bowled for probably 15 years, the number of gutter balls and other idiocy I committed would have made for an embarrassingly low score.
Overall, the scheduled hours made for a pretty town visit, but I somehow managed to muddle through and make the designated rendez-vous for the trip home. I am now fully recharged for another week (at least) of stand-down activities.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2013-07-28 04:05 pm (UTC)I'd love to go to a town in Khazakstan. It sounds fascinating. I'm assuming that the spoken languages are Russian and Khazakh? Does anyone speak English off the base, or on it, for that matter?
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Date: 2013-07-28 04:29 pm (UTC)Baikonur Cosmodrome is located north of Baikonur city, which is cheek-by-jowl with the village of Tyura-Tam. You are correct as to the town's location; we are not very far from the Aral Sea, which has shrunk dramatically as a result of government irrigation efforts over the years.
There is a certain fascination to Kazakhstan. If you come, you will doubtless see things you've never seen before, and your mind will get wrapped around some concepts that may just blindside you. Over the years, I have come to regard such influences as positive.
I would imagine that a majority of folks in Baikonur, which was built specifically to support the cosmodrome back in the day, speak both Kazakh and Russian. I know that some folks speak only Russian, too. On the other hand, I would not be surprised to find a greater percentage of Kazakh-but-not-good-Russian speakers in Tyura-Tam, which was a pretty old Kazakh settlement back in the 19th century, when the railroad that passes next to the village was built.
Not a whole lot of folks speak English, aside from the kind of word-here-word-there that's useful at the market. That happy circumstance helps explain my presence here.
Cheers...
P.S. Karaganda is the transliteration of the Russian name; Karagandy is the transliteration of the Kazakh name. Apropos of which, I had originally spelled Shymkent with an 'i' instead of 'y' because I erroneously assumed the name was Russian, which it isn't; the old Russian name was Chimkent, apparently.