Of Banias, Fish and Wursts

It’s another lovely, temperate evening here in Almaty. Along with Otis, I hope we can bring some of this weather back with us in a couple weeks. We went to the Arasan Bathhouse or bania this evening. There are three different kinds of baths available: Russian, which is steamy; Finnish, which is dry, and Turkish or as they call it here, Eastern, which is a large room with marble tiles which get hotter as you work your way to the center of the room. There are vendors outside selling birch and spruce switches for the Russian baths; you flagellate yourself with them. There are private sauna suites available for parties as large as four. If you are a couple this is the only way to enjoy the bania together; men and women are segregated otherwise. We rented a Finnish suite for two hours for $19.00, rental of bath sheets cost another $1.50, and I bought a pair of slippers for $2.00. Massages are available for $25.00. Other amenities available for delivery to your suite (by calling on a rotary phone on a small shelf in the private lounge area) include beer and vodka. The procedure is: you shower, enter the sauna for as along as you can stand it, then get into a small, icy cold pool of water, then go into the lounge for some beer, nuts and dried fruit (snuck in from the apartment), repeat cycle until it’s time to go, then shower and head home, all loosey goosey. The Arasan bania is a great tradition here, something like 2,500 people a week partake; it’s more a man thing, we’re told, a great way to bond over iced vodkas. (CD: However, most of the people we saw coming and going were groups of women – bonding, I’m guessing.) The style and condition inside is something like an early 1940’s YMCA.

CD: I thought the whole place was out of a ‘60’s movie about the Soviet Union – long gray marble corridors, our suite (bigger than many Manhattan apartments) tiled in six or seven different shades of hideous green and blue tile, matronly ladies waiting outside to serve you things and collect more money….. So much fun!

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Steve Tarpin asked about fish in the markets here; we’ve written somewhat extensively about the meat in the Green Bazaar but not the fish, says Steve. Being that Kazakhstan is a landlocked country, there’s not as much fish for sale here. That said, we’ve seen frozen shrimp, lots of caviar at inexpensive prices, some crayfish in tanks, pickled squid and other pickled fish from the kimchee vendors, freshwater fish called Pike-Perch and other freshwater fish we don’t recognize that looks somewhat like trout on steroids, and lots of smoked and salted salmon, whitefish and other assorted fish.

Steve also asked about the sausage here. I’m ashamed to say, I’ve been a little timid on that front. Early on, as we mentioned, Sagat pointed out some horse sausage, about an inch and a half around, encased in mustard yellow intestinal casings and said it was a Kazakh delicacy, we passed. The Ham Lady at the Green Bazaar has sold us two dried sausages, one called Kielbasa, tastes pretty much like a summer sausage; another is like soft garlicky pepperoni. We also tried a dried horse sausage that was very garlicky, would be good with beer. All of the local markets carry some sort of hot dogs that come wrapped in individual pink plastic casings, I’ve also seen an assortment of sausages in natural casings but, as I said, I’ve been timid. Well this is one more thing to get to before we get out of Dodge, a wurst festival. We’ll let you know.