Kazan, the Muslim Meets The Communist

Sticking it to the man, giving the middle finger to Maccas, and to Vegetarians

Typically you’d travel through Perm on the way over the Urals to Yekaterinburg if you’re doing the Trans-Siberian. We opted for the southern version of this rail because it goes through the city of Kazan. Kazan is a interesting city that has recently been redeveloped due to the 1000 year anniversary of its founding. That mixed in with a new wealth created through recent exploitation of near by resources makes it a great place to stop.

Another train station, Kazan Station, on the way to many more

We spent two nights here which were rather pleasant. The first day we had that fun battle of finding a place to stay. It happened to be a Saturday which meant that every hotel in Kazan was booked up except for expensive rooms that hotels keep for suckers, such as us, who don’t pre book anything. After walking around town for about 4 hours, getting in a good view of the city with the addition of a 20 kg pack on our backs we’d found a tourist information centre which got in touch with one of the hotels we’d previously tried and managed to find they had a room for 2500 rubles, 700 less than we’d be told at the hotel. So we headed back there, but unfortunately weren’t allowed to check-in till 7 pm. Waiting around we finally were allowed in, paid for one of the most expensive nights in Russia and blobbed out for the rest of the night. Waking up early, we continued the search of hotels for a reasonably priced one, and managed to find somewhere straight up, so by midday having spent about 24 hours already in Kazan were finally settled.

The Kremlin, at night!

The mix, cathedrals and mosques

Seeing we’d seen a lot of the sights already by scouring around for a hotel, we decided to go in for a deeper look at the best ones. The Kremlin in Kazan is amazing. The place is built up on a small hill overlooking the great rivers of the city and also giving views to other well developed parts of town. The kremlin hosts a mixture of Islamic temples and Russian Orthodox cathedrals. This makes for an interesting mix, but shows that religious harmony is possible. The mix represents the whole city which is getting close to the country of Kazakhstan which doesn’t share Russias orthodox views.

I ponder life as nature puts on an awe inspiring display

After seeing the cathedral we went for a long walk out to the port on the Volga River. Hopeful that we could get a ferry to go for a short cruise over the immensely big river we walked for ages to find out that there was nothing available. But all was not in total vien as the river was a really impressive view, it stretches about a kilometer wide and the overcast skies were breaking allowing a divine touch to be intervening with the rivers majestic flow.

A youthful Lenin strides into university

A walk back past a statue of Lenin when he was a university student studying at the local university was capped off with some drinks at a café with supposed free wifi and an expensive german styled bar. After staying the night in the cheaper hotel, Hotel Fatima, which had way better facilities than the previous nights Hotel Volga (eg a shower), we spent the day waiting around for our train out of town which was pretty non eventful. But we did visit the best supermarket found in the whole of Russia, which was near the Kremlin, with actual aisles of food instead of the typical aisles of vodka and no food.

Costs:
1 Night at Hotel Volga: 850 rbls, 1 at Fatima 550 rbls
Train ticket to Yekaterinburg: ~700 rbls
Food: eat at supermarket = cheapish...
Running total ~ $5400