We continue our section "of the city and country." I suggest you attention a selection of beautiful landscapes of San Francisco, enveloped clouds of mist. Very nice.

The penultimate day of our stay in Alma-Ata was the most intense. In the morning we went to the police department to apply for temporary registration - Kazakhstani law requires the registration, if the alien spends in the country for more than three days. They stood in line, fill a number of papers, paid the fee and passed the passport. They had to pick up after dinner, so we just came time to go to the mountain tract Medeo that next to the Alma-Ata.




We caught a taxi and drove out of town. Every minute drive air is cleaner and colder - just felt that we were going to the mountains. The tract is famous Medeo several things. Here, firstly, is one of the world's largest ice rinks for speed-skating - "Medea. Ice, which was set 170 world records, pour water from a mountain and with the help of artificial ice surface remains frozen for 8 months of the year. Currently sports complex is reconstructed and podgatavlivaetsya for the VII Winter Asian Games 2011. It will hold competitions in speed skating and ice hockey with the ball. Throughout the walk builders everywhere boils work.
And, secondly, here, right directly behind the stadium, stands a huge 150-meter protivoselevaya dams built explosive way. It was at this dam and we climbed up the endless stairs of the 800-odd steps (if I remember right this terrible figure).




On the penultimate ascent, there is a cafe where tired of vzbiraniya the steps people eat barbecue, drink beer and look at the surrounding mountains. And then you are overflowing with food and impressions of what he saw, doing the most important, final, controlling roll - to overcome the last step and find yourself at the top of the dam, from which opens a form that is not put into words.




Then we planned to go to the gorge Worldwide (all the mountains in the photographs in this record is Chimbulak). There, at an altitude of 2200-2500 meters above sea level, is highest ski resort Chimbulak. Now, to get there, we must take the car and drive along the mountain road, but this will soon change. Now in preparation for the VII Winter Asian Games here are building a modern cableway, which will take place from the beginning Medeo "to" Chimbulak. The length of the road - 4,5 km; road will take no longer than 15 minutes. When this road is finished, I will once again be visiting these wonderful, prohibitively beautiful places to sit in a booth and ride above the canyon and look around.

On one of those beautiful mountains that we were constantly seen with a balcony, you can get directly from the city center by cable car that starts at the park at the corner of Prospect Abay. Gora Kok-Tube - a place of cultural leisure Alma-Ata.

Lifting starts at one of the tallest buildings in the city - the hotel "Kazakhstan", topped with a crown on the roof. One trip up the funicular is 800 tenge - about 160 rubles. The station is always crowded ocheridi plays a Kazakh popular music and fun rush children. In a small booth packed mass of people, like sprats in the bank. The whole mass together groans and sticks to the glass, when the cabin moves off and shaking, begins his painful ascent to an altitude of 1130 meters above sea level. Outside the window - covered with smog and smoke baggy city parks, suburban-type houses and overgrown with greenery and trees of the mountain.

Kok-Tube (or, in Kazakh, Kok-Tobe) - an excellent example of how the city administration of, to some extent, nothing makes a profitable, nice looking place. We put on the mountain cableway, laid out neatly plitochku, equipped with viewing platforms, set rides, a cafe on the cliff, shopping souvenir shops. Here is, incidentally, one of the three sites of the Beatles on the post-Soviet space (the I, unfortunately, did not photograph). View from Kok-Tobe offers breathtaking. Photograph is, however, very difficult.

Once we've done plenty of photos, we went to explore local attractions. I am with Maxim has attracted laid on a cable car up the hill and over the cliffs sharply winding narrow railway, on which now and then slid the people on some red pieces. It turned out that this is the most fashionable city in the fun - you pay 1,000 tenge per room, sit in a plastic sled with handles on each side, fastened, and when the command is given, go to the most ferocious flight that you can imagine. You are facing down the mountain and at a speed of 40 km / h you are on a constantly changing angle and winding path above the city, over the houses, parks and people. There are no words to describe how this exciting business. When we went to Maxim to ride a second time (so anyone who can show the ticket on the funicular, is given a second trip), it began to rain. So ride became even more interesting - the way soaked and began to slide sled at speeds of 50 km / h. And those two knobs, which I mentioned, are the brake and gas at the same time - if you're too scared, just pull the handle on the tub itself and stops to squeeze them out - with a whistle breaks down, sideways, left, right, up. In general, if I ever come back to Alma-Ata, then spend on these hills all day.


In Kok-Tobe high prices, but here all the same every evening coming local to rest. Similarly, once terribly unloved Parisian Eiffel Tower was to make money - rise up costs money. It seems a trifle - to see the city with a bird's eye - but pleased.

Due to the fact that we spent almost all their money on the sled down the hill we went on foot along the path. It takes about 25 minutes and the road can be directly under the 372-meter Almaty TV tower, the tallest building in the city. At night she constantly changes its color with the acid-yellow to bright pink, then green, blue, red and again. Indeed, the Axis of Evil.

Alexander Makovetsky, which, as I said, we have sheltered themselves in Alma-Ata, the uncle of an old friend of Maxim. For all the days (11-14 July), we held in Alma-Ata, Alexander moved us just a few words. Most of the time, Alexander was watching TV, smoked cigarettes and hid until the middle gobies throughout the apartment (in black, I suppose, day). Alexander's wife, Svetlana, was on a business trip, but the house lived a huge black cat named Sid. In Sid difficult times - we want a woman. But, as the cats were around every five minutes Sid furiously fuck miserable torn to pieces a teddy bear.



The night after our arrival we went for a walk. Window exchanger, where we exchanged dollars for Kazakh tenge, was completely covered by a plastic curtain, only a hole for money openly. You come to such a exchanger and never quite sure that there is someone there, it all works, then you are somehow resolved shove money into the opening and the next moments, not at all sure that you will return something back. We decided that this is done to people has always been on our toes, always a bit on the nerves that knew the value of money and their time.


Several considerations about the Alma-Ata.
Alma-Ata, it is immediately clear, the present and rich southern city. Low light buildings, trees everywhere, hot asphalt, all travel mostly on expensive cars, mostly white. City something similar to Sevastopol, which became rich as a trading Odessa, but managed to maintain a balance between the charm of a rural seaside town and trendy cafes and boutiques. But here's the dangerous part of this wonderful green city: when you walk through the streets and alleys, you're not left feeling that if we now turned the corner, there will be, there simply must be the sea. But the sea here.
But instead it is huge, incredible snow-capped mountain tops. Moskvich quite impossible to believe in this form: how does it do so, the mountains in the city? Photography, which begins this recording was made on the balcony of the apartment Makovetsky. When the three of us, tired of the way, walk around the town all night, came at 6 am for a smoke before bed, then speechless for a moment. In rassvestnoy haze seemed arm's length stretched majestic cliffs. I still think that if it was not a dream, then just a fiction: if someone has pulled in its addictive nature wallpaper.



In order to survive here, you need to remember the first rule of Alma-Ata: a green light does not mean that people can safely cross the road. Drivers in the Alma-Ata absolutely insane. Makovetsky, for example, drives as if it was his last day on earth. Another big trouble with public transportation. Buses and troyllebusy, like every self-respecting Kazakh (all because of the terrible heat), and rarely moves sluggishly. When you finally get in a bus, I understand that the driver most likely a driver's license acquired in a set of Happy sweet with fries and gamburegrom. Every three meters - a sharp brake, a sharp start, jog, stop, do not announce. But the most surprising thing is that you are, nevertheless, in the right place somehow magically falls.
All posters, name schools, restaurants, schools, all the pointers, all billboards and signs are written in two languages - Kazakh and Russian. The exception, for some reason, are just hanging on the houses with the street name plates



Alma-Ata - a beautiful and pleasant eye town. Here, however, impossible to live. From noon until evening incredibly hot, and the absence of the sea, sometimes altogether hopeless. So the day the streets are empty, only the brave, desperate people and the owners of cars with air conditioning, are selected out. In the evening the whole city on the streets.
What is truly surprising in Alma-Ata, is the Kazakhs. They are incredibly beautiful. So beautiful that you are ready to stay in Alma-Ata. All well-groomed, clean skin, nice smile. And even if the girl is not very likable person, that she has in any case, beautiful legs. Never, honestly, not seen in one place so beautiful, shapely female legs. This is, in fact, surprising because it is very fatty foods. For example, lamb. Maybe this is the case when the plus to minus make plus?
But men are large, heavy, moving slowly and reluctantly. And I very quickly realized why. In the morning you find the strength to wake up (here the air is so that you sleep like a log), for some reason to go out, buy the "Green Bazaar" (his trade rows are depicted on the cards), fresh watermelon, a bucket of peaches come home, cook lamb, eat it all, sit on the balcony, lit a cigarette and you realize that this is the end. Just because there is no way to even move. On the street hell, you ate, and fall asleep.




And then you, as a foreign element, somehow suddenly falls down with the disease, though the city itself, taking you by the virus, trying to banish from his body. Who was sick in the summer, to understand how to us then was lousy. In general, the story about how the three of us fell ill with a headache, fever, cough and snot, could end in tears if the house is not returned, finally, Svetlana, his wife Alexandra. Svetlana, cheerful woman, just turned the house in order - gave the cat a kick, gave Alexander bowl cherries, feed us and pokoldovat, handed us a huge circle with a sugary-sweet-smelling orange mass. Svetlana told us to drink swill, just lie on their beds, taking a towel, and go to sleep. At night, she promised, so we peretryaset that morning we will be able to dig trenches and build the Great Wall. If anyone reads these records, I beg you to remember the following: a mixture of rum, aspirin, oblipihovogo jam, hot water, honey and sugar - a monstrous, indigestible, overly sweet, ad nauseam, tangle-legs. But the devil take her, helps.



Tomorrow I will tell how we saved a miracle drug, went to Almaty Kok-Tobe mountain and chased on plastic sled on rails at speeds of 50 km / h.

On Sunday, September 13 in San Diego took a great show dogs, surfers, collect 4 thousand spectators. The event was held for the fourth consecutive year. Its purpose is to raise funds for dog shelters

September 11 Belgian(Belgium) farmers held a mass protest against the sharp decline in purchase prices for milk. Milk crisis shakes Europe is not the first month, and since the beginning of the year milk prices have fallen almost by half - to 18 euro cents per liter, while experts say the price should be at least 50 cents. Farmers refuse to deliver milk to the retail chains. Charleroi protesting farmers simply poured it on the surface, thereby demonstrating their opposition.
How good is lost, e-my.

The strongest over the past 80 years rainfall turned a few highways of Istanbul in the turbulent river. A lot of cars caught up in disaster. Flooded railway station. Does not stop with Monday torrential rains caused flooding of large areas in the north-west of the country. Killed several dozen people. Former capital of the country suffered a multimillion-dollar damages.