7NNT25: Day 5 – Samarkand
Soundtrack: “Sugar, Sugar” – The Archies
Today was mostly a make our own fun day, so we used the opportunity to have a bit of a stroll around the city, mostly in the Tsarist Russian part. We’d noted a couple of shopping malls within walking distance, so thought we’d check them out.
The first excitement in the walk involved a chicken. It may have been trying to cross the rather busy road, or it might have just wanted to loiter under a parked car, I don’t speak any language of chicken so I couldn’t ask. A couple of Uzbek gents appeared to be trying to direct it or catch it, but weren’t succeeding. Trust me, dear reader, I have as many questions as you, as it was in a fairly built up area in a busy street, neither gent looked the sort to be transporting an uncaged chicken (they looked more like workers from the nearby shop, a shop that didn’t sell chickens), and there was no nearby cage or other likely chicken transport device, so i don’t think they had a plan of what they’d do if they caught it. Samarkand, land of mysterious chickens.
Second mystery was a large bright green building down a side street, apparently called Ko’zmunchoq. Aside from being bright green, it had colourfully painted columns, and a small red and yellow car mounted above the doorway. I know that I could probably google this and have an answer easily, but so far I’ve resisted, instead content to wonder. For all I know it’s an unexciting office that sells pocket calculators or something, but part of the fun sometimes is not knowing the boring truth.
Our first stop was the Makon Mall, 4 floors that weren’t very mysterious at all. The basement level was a furniture shop, the ground floor had occasional clothing shops breaking up a plethora of mobile phone and electronics shops, first floor was clothing for men, women, and small people, while the top floor was a mix of food and amusements (every mall needs a shooting gallery, right?). We were there not long after opening, so a lot of the shops were just getting organised. As malls go it wasn’t the most exciting, though the same can be said of a lot of such places these days: far too many seem to be 50% generic stores and 50% empty spaces, so at least Makon had better occupancy going for it. It’s also one of the only malls I’ve seen where you could leap over the side of the central atrium escalators and land on a couch, if you so wished.
We took a stroll through Samarkand’s central park, an expanse of paths, trees, statues, and occasional imperial-Russian style buildings, plus a red Lada parked in the middle for some reason. At strategic points sat old women selling bags of strawberries and some sort of small green fruit that might be a sour plum, choko, or a weird dwarf apple, we didn’t stop and try. At other places cafes seemed to be having a duel of sound systems, filling the park with loud music while they appeared to be setting up. It might be a Friday observation, as Fridays are a special day in Islam, but I definitely get the feeling that Samarkand isn’t a city that embraces early mornings, as at 10am most shops just seemed to be opening and getting ready for the day. Maybe it’s the nature of the city, as it’s more about tourism and agriculture, rather than commerce.
Today did seem to be a day to take small people on school excursions, as we passed several groups of excited children being led/escorted by teachers who had that universal demeanour and expression found only on cat-herders and teachers on excursions. The expression that says they’d rather be trying to get a chicken out from under a car than have duty of care over a hyperactive horde.
Out of the park we wandered down to the M.Baraka mall, past the closed amusement park that featured a large structure shaped like a pomegranate, foreverafter to be known as Pomegranate World. M.Baraka is smaller than Makon, featuring a large supermarket on the ground floor, and some amusements and food on the upper floors. We do enjoy wandering through strange supermarkets, seeing the similarities and differences to those back home, the different products, the styles of labels, and even the price differences (don’t tell anyone, but you can get 15 eggs for under $5 here — though I’m not sure if the concept of free range is a thing here yet, or maybe it’s the norm). One product that isn’t popular in Uzbekistan is diet soft drink: we’re yet to find a restaurant that has any, while at the supermarket today L found a few bottles of Coke Zero. We may well be in the only country in the world that has never heard of Pepsi Max.
We had a quick stop into a patisserie called Chocolate (that didn’t have a lot of chocolate, but many other sweet pastries) on the way back to the hotel, having done many steps, only to find that our wine-tasting had been rescheduled, giving us some additional nap time.
The wine-tasting was at the corporate offices of Khovrenko Winery, one of Uzbekistan’s largest producers, where our host led us through 10 regular and fortified wines. We started with a semi sweet Riesling, that wasn’t so much like the Rhine variety, but was a little like a Semillion Sauvingon Blanc. Next was a very quaffable slightly dry Rose. Then we had a series of 4 red wines, and unusually these were presented from driest to sweetest. All were quite drinkable, not huge and complex reds like Australian types, but with hints of dark fruits, coffee, chocolate, and not huge tannins. I wasn’t able to properly articulate a question as to how they manage the sweetness, whether it’s from deliberately stopping the ferment once the desired sugar level is reached, or if the local yeast just doesn’t fully attenuate. I suspect the former but can’t be sure. Then came one of their rarer reds, a wine they only produce some years when the conditions are just right, so we tasted the 2010 vintage which was amazingly full of sweet dark fruits, quite sherry-like but without the heavier viscosity. Lastly were the the fortifieds, the first was a single-distilled brandy aged with barrel chips rather than in wood and was possibly my least favourite, the second was a cognac — and could be labelled as such as it was produced accordingly and in partnership with a French organisation — that when warmed slightly was a delightful drink, though my experience to cognac to date is extremely limited so I couldn’t say if it was a good one or not, but I liked it. We finished off with a balsam liqueur, and as such drinks go I’ve definitely had worse, this one didn’t feel like I was being hit in the mouth by a baseball bat coated in Irish moss, instead having gentler woodland flavours, a bit more earthy and less medicinal herb. Overall, the quality we sampled was decent, and I can see how, by favouring the sweeter wines, they were catering very much to the local tastes. Interestingly the predominant grape variety they used was a new one to me, saperavi, which comes from Georgia (and apparently some is grown in Australia, so I might try to find out who and where).
Feeling somewhat relaxed, we headed off to what we thought was to be a cooking masterclass in making plov. It seems that something got lost in translation, as on arrival we were seated and the food started coming out, an assortment of entree salads. We sat, ate, and looked a little confused, but fortunately our driver picked up that this wasn’t what was supposed to happen. We had the same driver today that we’ve had the last 2 days, but a new guide, so while we didn’t totally follow the conversation, we did her them say “master class” several times. Our guide then asked the restaurant host, and it seems she wasn’t aware of this, so there was an exchange of calls between guide, host, and tour company, while L, I and our driver sat and wondered (I also google translated “no problem” — hammasi joyida — as I’ve found being able to say this in the local language is great for diffusing things when crap like this happens). Eventually we were ushered downstairs to the outside kitchen where we got a 5 minute run through of the recipe, spices and equipment used to make plov. Then we headed back upstairs where there was a big plate of plov on the table waiting for us. What makes Samarkand plov different is that the components are all cooked separately: first huge chunks of meat are simmered until tender, and an onion is added; then the carrot is cooked; and finally the rice is cooked in the same pan where it takes on the flavour of everything cooked before. So there’s no actual stock used, however by using the same cooking liquid throughout all of the stock elements are there. The plov was delicious, so while I wasn’t able to add plov-master to my list of abilities, I’m beginning to at least earn my plov-eater badge.
The restaurant also had a couple of larger tour groups present, so we were all treated to a small performance of local dance, drumming, and other music. We’re seeing a full performance tomorrow in Bukhara, so I’ll at least know a little more about this style, but at a first impression it’s very fast, and has a fair amount of spinning, so it’s possibly like the Turkish whirling dervish dance in that regard, but you really should see what L has to say because she’s the dance expert. So maybe tomorrow night I’ll be a little less full bottle of wine, and a little more full bottle on Uzbek traditional dance.
Tomorrow’s a slightly less early morning, catching the fast train to Bukhara, seeing some more old and cultural things, and then seeing what mysteries that city has to offer.
