Kazan — summer 2010

A former student just wrote to me:

I've enjoyed your pictures (can't believe how "modern" (i.e. Western?)) some of the scenes look. To what degree is Russian still a lingua franca in Central Asia? How about German? I know that there had been a sizable German community in Kazakhstan pre-1991, but there's supposedly still about 170,000 German-speakers there, mostly in/around Astana and Oskemen. Could be an interesting research project someday.

Russian is still the lingua franca over all of Central Asia. When those countries want to do business with Europe, they know that more Europeans will know Russian than know the local tongue. Among the older generation there are still quite a few people who speak German, and in fact people often come up to me and speak German to me because they assume I'm German. (By appearance I seem Lithuanian, but by behavior I'm more European. Oddly enough, not once has someone here guessed I'm American. I managed to get three sentences out in German the other day from my "German for Reading" college courses, but that's probably as far as I could get.)

I had assumed that more Germans would come here than Americans because it is so much closer, and one of our instructors here suggests that that is true, particularly because Germans take boat cruises down the Volga and this is one of the stops. (I asked the waitress at the Capital cafe this morning whether she had more American or German tourists. She said there were more Americans at her cafe. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. The cafe is a bit pricey. Perhaps Germans are more clever at selecting their eateries?)

Just a couple other notes:

• As far as I know there is only one public school here that has a German-language focus, which is Школа № 36.
• The lack of German language skills is becoming a difficulty according to one of our instructors here. She is often asked to help find a Russian lawyer or programmer who also knows German, but they are hard to come by.
• One source suggest that there are currently about 3,000 Germans living in Tatarstan.

Last but not least, I have a moment to whine. It's high 90s here. It's 7:42 p.m. as I write, and sweat is streaming down my back.