This Place I'm Going

The city I'm going to is called Kazan. It's here:


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Last time I was in St. Petersburg, which is here:


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As you can see, they're quite far apart.

Kazan is basically on the other side of the world from us here in the Portland area; to find out what time it is, just switch AM for PM, and voila! So noon here is midnight there, and vice versa.

Kazan is an old city- it was founded roughly a thousand years ago, and was conquered by Russia in the 1500's.

What's that, you say? Conquered? Well, the truth is that Kazan is actually the capital of Tatarstan, which was eaten by Russia a good while back but has maintained its quasi-national status. A little more than half of the population identifies as and speaks Tatar, and a little less than half identifies as and speaks Russian. Almost everyone understands Russian, but the street signs, schools, and other public things are all bilingual. Tatar and Russian have basically nothing in common, so that's going to be quite the adventure.

Here's the Tatarstan coat of arms:



There is lovely Islamic architecture throughout the city, too.



I'm looking forward to experiencing a completely different culture in Kazan; St. Petersburg is a young, European city by Russian standards, and Kazan is an ancient, Tatar and Islam influenced settlement.

And just so you know, it's supposed to be 'hot' there- in the seventies!