My host, Jana, hosts also 2 other guys in this weekend: one is from France, but living in Moscow, and one is from California travelling around for years by now. They are both nice. Here in Tatarstan mostly everything is about the river Volga. Most of the important settlements and sights are along it. Yesterday we went (by Jana's car, a small Audi) to an island, Siyazhsk, where there are former Kreml building what some Tsar floated on the Volga to here, to preserve them from the upcoming wars. It's a really nice island, and even friday late afternoon, there were 30-40 people worning on making it more tourist-friendly (public lighting, more asphalt, ...).

 

Today, we went to a similar place, just its a monastery, very well preserved, UNESCO listed (just like the Kazan Kreml and the Siyazhsk (CNRжСK) island. On the way there, we visited the all relegions temple, it's a private project of a multi-culti fan guy, then he of course got govt. support to build a common church for all the relegions (all well known religions). After the monastery i had to catch a marshrutka back to Kazan, so Jana dropped me to Zelenopodsk from where it was very easy. They went to see a huge old rail bridge over the volga in what i would also be interested, but i had to go.

 

I watched the match with the dutch guy from the hostel. Usually in cases of sport events i write a summary of the game, but now something is more important to write about. So the match is just briefly: Kazan played, Anzhi won 3-0. Kazan performed terribly in their own penalty box, so every Anzhi attack was a goal. And also performed terribly in front of Anzhi's goal.

 

And the more important thing: I guess you would not be surprised if you read the next lines: On the way to the stadium the home supporters had some light fight with police, and they damaged a metro, but with hundreads of police following them on the route, they arrived the stadium. Then, inside, rocket followed rocket, and the ultras thrown beer cans into the pitch, and repeated racist slogans for Anzhi's african player. Then after the third goal they climbed the fence and riot police had to keep them off the pitch. On the way to the metro the disappointed fans damaged another metro and then walked in the middle of the road cousing huge traffic jam.

 

I wouldn't be surprised either if i wasn't there. But i was.

 

And the fact was that everything was more european then in most of europe. There was no fence between the tribune and the pitch, and no one has thrown anything to anywhere, not even to the ground (in most football match if u see back to the tribune after the match, it looks like a rubbis tip. Here: nothing is on the ground, and just some tickets and left on the seats. Everybody used the bins. In the whole territory of the stadium, smoking and alcohol is forbidden. In our sector, only one guy started to smoke and the people nearby convienced him to stop it. People go to the buffet in the break, and buy mineral water and cocholate. The crowd clapped every persons name of the home team in the team listing - and then also the away team's! When Roberto Carlos left the pitch at 0-2, he got a long clapping from all parts of the crowd, and so did every player from both sides, when entered or left. The only whistle noice was by the referee, even when he said offside at a goal of Kazan, nobody questioned the decision (almost i was the only one, but fortunately i realized in time that here it is not fashionable). In the 93. minute at 0-3 there was still ovation when a rubin player made a nice tackle.

 

After the match, on the was to the metro, there is a road crossing: the lamp was red but no cars were coming anywhere. There was one(!) policeman nearby, and hundreads of people waiting for the green lamp, except for 2 guys whe started to cross, and the policeman just had to show a strict face, and they turned back and waited. In the metro, there were 3-4 policemen, and a lot of people ran to catch the metro, but when the door lights and sound turned off, the policemen whistled, and the runners stopped in front of the open door and let it close (metro comes every 10 mins at that time).

 

I hope i transmitted a bit of the feeling, that in a way, Kazan, and especially the behaviour of people of Kazan is more european then in most of western europe. Maybe the only exception is the driving morale, which is more like southern european. I will write more about rule-following attitude in Russia, in a later post.

 

Todight at 4:45 my elektrichka is going to Izhevsk, to the Republic of Udmurtia. I won't sleep a lot, maybe mostly just on the elektrichka. Btw, elektrichka is usually riding in smaller distances, it only has seats and non-reservable. This small distance is 370kms in this case :)