Kazan — summer 2012

Of course, you don't always have to order the same thing. Here is a tort made of layers of chocolate genoise, light chocolate mousse, and covered with a banana layer. Now that banana layer is not made with chemicals. They used real bananas, and the contrast of flavors was glorious.

It's odd. Back in AZ I almost never buy sweets. Heck, even the soda I drink is diet. Here I'm a glucose junkie.

Here's a more typical Russian dessert, сметанник ‘sour cream cake.’ Oh, so good. And next to that is кофе три в одном ‘3-in-1 coffee,’ i.e. coffee with creamer and sugar. Lots of the instant coffee in Russia is sold that way.

The closest mall to my apartment is called Кольцо ‘The Ring.’ You have no idea how weird that sentence is. When I first started coming to Russia, there was no such thing as a mall. The idea that there are now malls with food courts and movie theaters is just bizarre. Of course, these are changes for the better, but they are still so very strange.

The local mall has a food court. You are not allowed to take pictures in the mall. Here is a picture of my favorite food place there. It is called "Barbeque," which sounds so bizarre in Russian, I can hardly express it.

This place is definitely overpriced, but I still like some of the items. One of the items I like here is the lasagne. But it's an odd lasagne. First of all, it has Russian sour cream in it, which of course is superior to every American sour cream I have ever had. But there are none of the typical cheeses you might expect, like mozzarella or parmesan. And the meat is a boringly unspiced groud beef. But somehow it works. And the salad is a Greek salad.

Inside the Ring Mall is a restaurant that wasn't here last year. It's called ‘Das Kolbas,’ which is fake German for ‘The Sausage.’ I say fake because the Russian word for sausage is kolbasá, so they have Germanified it to Das Kolbas. I'm pretty amused. It's like the ‘no problemo’ pseudospanish line from Terminator 2.

That said, now that I'm convinced that the whole vegetarian mindset is complete malarky, I'm delighted to eat meat in as many forms as I can find it. So the other day I went here and asked the buxom clerkess which was her favorite. She pointed out this sausage.

It's a sausage made of chicken, pork and cheese. The cheese inside is hot, so when you bite it, it spurts a glorious cheesy mass onto your tongue, and you are immediately transported to sausage heaven.

I ordered a side of mushrooms. I would never have done that in the States. I mean, why the hell would you deliberately put some vile fungus into your mouth? The idea is freakish and obscene. But of course in Russia it is merely normal, so I ordered them. Entirely adequate. I'm afraid I just will never have the Russian passion for mushrooms.

Except maybe in the case of mushrooms Julienne, about which I probably should write soon.

Here are a few of the night shots from my apartment on 6/26 at 11:00 p.m. at night, when it was finally dark. My shots aren't as good as this photo of Yulia's, but they still have something to recommend them. If it's daytime, don't bother to look at them. Look at them at night when all the lights in your room are turned off.