So this was our train to Karaganda on Saturday Morning. We had only a short visit with Aitugan before we had to head to the station, but we were thankful to have a chance to get out of Astana for a little break, and looked forward to staying with Elena for a couple of nights.



This woman sat across from us and I just couldn't resist sneaking off a shot of her.



The men do love their big hats. We saw several hat sellers set up outside a mall in Karaganda over the weekend and I tried on several, including one that fit really well and was very warm, but at a price a bit over US400, I thought it best to let someone else claim those Mink.



We got off the train as the sun was getting low on the horizon and I just loved the look of all the men and women in their dark fur coats and hats. Dress code norms for men seem to suggest that the color spectrum begins around dark brown, passes briefly through dark grey, and then finds it stride with black.



The balconies of many of the apartment buildings are a study in individualism. Left completely to their own devices, apartment owners are at liberty to embellish the standard cement platform in any fashion they choose, leaving their mark upon otherwise humorless monolithic facades.





Sunday morning began lazily at Elena's apartment, and featured more of Elena's fine cooking.



Somewhere mid-morning we called a taxi to take us on a nearly 2 hour driving tour of Karaganda that featured several ornate churches, a Chocolate factory (store), different parts of town, the university, many other sights along the way. It was a great way to see a number of things quickly.









The chocolate factory store had this marvelous blend of old and new. A digital scale to measure and calculate price, and an abacus to add up the total. Watching the mysterious summations come together intrigued me, though I in no way figured out its madness. Perhaps it would make a good google search - for surely someone out there has it clearly explained.



Our taxi tour of Karaganda ended at the studio of Oleg Drozdov(www.odrozd.com), and this photo is of KJ, Oleg and Elena in front of a number of his works. He showed us roughly 60 paintings spanning several years of painting. Many of his works featured dancers and musicians in bright colors and abstracted visages.



This is the larger of the two oil colors we bought from Oleg. You can see it in the group shot on the easel at the far right. Unfortunately our other painting is placed facing it and obscures much of it from view, though you get a sense of its size. For this painting we paid US150 which felt criminally low but it was the price he asked, and he seemed happy with the sale.



We left Oleg's studio on foot and walked through Central Park, and continued right on across the pond to a Armenian restaurant.



Lunch now over, we headed back through town to Elena's apartment once again to rest up for dinner. It was a bitterly cold afternoon and the wind continued to stay directly in front of us no matter how many corners we rounded.













The top of Elena's apartment building proclaims 'Karaganda City of perfect order and high culture' - a monument to the lofty ideals of Soviet era propaganda.



We hope you've enjoyed your brief tour of Karaganda. We certainly did. The bus ride home this morning was photographically uneventful as the windows of the bus (van) were frosted over and we were facing backwards. Excepting a brief bathroom stop, we literally saw nothing apart from the other 14 passengers in the van for the whole three hour journey.

So that brings us to our visit with Aitugan this afternoon. I'll go over those photos in a bit and get something up before heading off to bed. Take Care.