We are in Kazakhstan. The land of Borat for some, but for us the land of driving on the west side of Altai without ever driving into Altai itself. There is a steppe on our right hand side and mountains on the left. Hundreds of kilometers of steppes and hundreds of kilometers of mountains which change their shape from the parched sandy hills to the white capped giants and back again. As we drive south and the weather is getting warmer the Trabant's "windows down air conditioning, windows up heating" seems to be a little insufficient. No matter for how long we open the windows, the warm air coming in helps only to dry off our sweat...for a few seconds.
The other notable points of interest here are the stands with different kinds of melons and the other stands with the less welcoming police presence. As much as we would love to stop at every melon stand, we don't. Yet as much as we don't care about the police stands, they seem to like us; so far we have been stopped five times. It appears that the police here is significantly underpaid, if you know what I am referring to. Hmm, this is not even funny. As I wrote the previous sentence, we were stopped again. This time they only wanted to see the car and discuss the Czech hockey players. I call that a good stop.
Between the mountains, the plains full of yellowing grass, the melon stands and the police controls we are slowly closing on our final stop in Kyrgyzstan. The roads are worse than in Russia, but, of course, way better than in Mongolia. Surprisingly though, some of the nice roads have 50 km speed limit. Why? The only answer I can give you is: Why not? We are in the Central Asia, where anything and everything is possible. And we stopped applying our logic quite a while ago. Here it really is what it is.
The life here can sometimes pleasantly surprise you. Like yesterday when we wanted to see Almaty and ended up with a totally different course of action. Here, in the central Asia, where our normal is sometimes impossible, impossible is sometimes normal. And so, wherever we are, we always try for a bit of this fleeting thing called impossible. Impossible like finding an atypical bolt and an atypical washer for our rear control arm that we had lost somewhere along the way on the Kazakh road. In a tiny, grease smudged store, in a pile of used, half greased and half rusted bolts we found a great replacement. That solved one problem. Yet we are demanding customers. And thus we went to find the windshield on Trabant 601 in Kazakhstan, a country that never imported a single one.
After a few questions we found a bunch of guys who were changing car windows. Since they operated in a middle of a housing development with no obvious store front, they seemed to be our kind of guys - the street smart fellows who usually know about everything in the town. We asked them about the Trabant windshield and found out that somewhere close by is a little shop that makes car windows. By "make", we understood that they would probably cut the larger pieces into smaller ones or something similar. We went there irregardless and found a little store with two workers that, as advertised, made car windows. And by "make" they meant make. You take two sheets of flat glass. You measure the window and make a frame/form. Then you cut the flat glass and put it into the frame and into a glass oven. Just like your home-made bred. The glass in the oven bends to fit to the frame. When you pull it out, you pour some liquid polymer between the two sheets of glass and make sure that no air remains there to cause any bubbles. Afterwards you use the ultraviolet rays freely provided by the sun, fix the size of the window to fit perfectly into your car and then instal it. All in about 4 hours and with a price of about $140. I have to admit I was blown away by the way these two guys were able to make our windshield out of flat glass; their skill in making this all hand-made windshield was simply incredible. Perhaps I should try it at home sometimes? Then again I should probably stick to my bread making in my 100% automated bread machine. Evan that does not taste too well sometimes...
Now, in our little car with a glass windshield again, with the fixed control arm and other problems more or less under control, we should be riding into the sunset as in any popular sentimental movie. But there is this little problem - Kyrgyzstan just entered the Russian dominated Euroasian Common Market one week ago. That totally changes all the custom procedures, including the import of cars. Something I did not plan for when I was designing our little trip that included a car storage in Kyrgyzstan. These plans are now as useful as all the warm clothes I took with me on this trip. I think that the things will get really interesting in the next week or so.
Note: Above is a picture of a common cemetery in Kazakhstan. Sometimes the dead are living in better houses than the living...at least here.
The other notable points of interest here are the stands with different kinds of melons and the other stands with the less welcoming police presence. As much as we would love to stop at every melon stand, we don't. Yet as much as we don't care about the police stands, they seem to like us; so far we have been stopped five times. It appears that the police here is significantly underpaid, if you know what I am referring to. Hmm, this is not even funny. As I wrote the previous sentence, we were stopped again. This time they only wanted to see the car and discuss the Czech hockey players. I call that a good stop.
Between the mountains, the plains full of yellowing grass, the melon stands and the police controls we are slowly closing on our final stop in Kyrgyzstan. The roads are worse than in Russia, but, of course, way better than in Mongolia. Surprisingly though, some of the nice roads have 50 km speed limit. Why? The only answer I can give you is: Why not? We are in the Central Asia, where anything and everything is possible. And we stopped applying our logic quite a while ago. Here it really is what it is.
The life here can sometimes pleasantly surprise you. Like yesterday when we wanted to see Almaty and ended up with a totally different course of action. Here, in the central Asia, where our normal is sometimes impossible, impossible is sometimes normal. And so, wherever we are, we always try for a bit of this fleeting thing called impossible. Impossible like finding an atypical bolt and an atypical washer for our rear control arm that we had lost somewhere along the way on the Kazakh road. In a tiny, grease smudged store, in a pile of used, half greased and half rusted bolts we found a great replacement. That solved one problem. Yet we are demanding customers. And thus we went to find the windshield on Trabant 601 in Kazakhstan, a country that never imported a single one.
After a few questions we found a bunch of guys who were changing car windows. Since they operated in a middle of a housing development with no obvious store front, they seemed to be our kind of guys - the street smart fellows who usually know about everything in the town. We asked them about the Trabant windshield and found out that somewhere close by is a little shop that makes car windows. By "make", we understood that they would probably cut the larger pieces into smaller ones or something similar. We went there irregardless and found a little store with two workers that, as advertised, made car windows. And by "make" they meant make. You take two sheets of flat glass. You measure the window and make a frame/form. Then you cut the flat glass and put it into the frame and into a glass oven. Just like your home-made bred. The glass in the oven bends to fit to the frame. When you pull it out, you pour some liquid polymer between the two sheets of glass and make sure that no air remains there to cause any bubbles. Afterwards you use the ultraviolet rays freely provided by the sun, fix the size of the window to fit perfectly into your car and then instal it. All in about 4 hours and with a price of about $140. I have to admit I was blown away by the way these two guys were able to make our windshield out of flat glass; their skill in making this all hand-made windshield was simply incredible. Perhaps I should try it at home sometimes? Then again I should probably stick to my bread making in my 100% automated bread machine. Evan that does not taste too well sometimes...
Now, in our little car with a glass windshield again, with the fixed control arm and other problems more or less under control, we should be riding into the sunset as in any popular sentimental movie. But there is this little problem - Kyrgyzstan just entered the Russian dominated Euroasian Common Market one week ago. That totally changes all the custom procedures, including the import of cars. Something I did not plan for when I was designing our little trip that included a car storage in Kyrgyzstan. These plans are now as useful as all the warm clothes I took with me on this trip. I think that the things will get really interesting in the next week or so.
Note: Above is a picture of a common cemetery in Kazakhstan. Sometimes the dead are living in better houses than the living...at least here.