Blissful brews and Belgium blokes

To those who are interested, here is the beer list of beers tried while on vacation. The rating is from 0-4, 4 being the best, 3 being drinkable and good, 2 marginal (“eh”), 1 not very good, 0 bad. Not all of these beers were tried in their respective countries, sadly. The Austrian beers were easy to get, though, being so close to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. And the Hungarian beer was in the airport, sadly.

1) KEO (Cyprus) – 2

2) Borsodi (Hungary) – 3

3) Falcon (Sweden) – 1

4) Norrlunds Guld (Sweden) – 1

5) Bishops Finger (Kent, England) – 3

6) Three Hearts, Halländsk Svagdricka (Sweden) – 0

7) Åbro, original (Sweden) – 3

8) Vimmerby, pilsner (Sweden) – 3

9) Åbro, arton 56 (Sweden) – 3

10) Grebbestard, Koster (Sweden) – 4

11) Wisby, pilsner (Sweden) – 3

12) Mariestads (Sweden) – 3

13) D. Carnegie & Co., porter (Sweden) – 2

14) Småland, pilsner (Sweden) – 0

15) MB, porter, Årgäng (Sweden) – 3

16) Jämtlands, postiljon, pale ale (Sweden) – 4

17) Nils Oscar, india ale (Sweden) – 4+

18) Nils Oscar, Kalasöl (Sweden) – 3

19) Oppigårds, golden ale (Sweden) – 3

20) Zeunerts, ale (Sweden) – 3

21) Benediktinerabte, Platkstetten, dinkel (Germany) – 3

22) Riedenburger (Germany) – 3

23) Unertl, Bio-dinkel weisse (Germany) – 3

24) Puntigamer (Austria) – 2

25) Murauer, Märzen (Austria) – 2

26) Gösser (Austria) – 2

27) Dom Bräu, Red Chili Pepper (Austria) – 4

28) Dom Bräu, Styria dunkl (Austria) – 3

29) Gambrinus, schankbier (Austria) – 2

30) Salzburger, stiegl (Austria) – 2

31) Wieselburger, gold (Austria) – 2

32) Mönchsbräu, schankbier (Austria) – 1

33) Ottakringer, helles (Austria) – 2

34) Schwechhater (Austria) – 2

35) Hacker-Pschorr Faßbier hell (Germany) – 3

36) König Ludwig, dunkel (Germany) – 3

37) Oettinger, dunkles hefeweizen (Germany) – 3

38) Wittenwalder, jager dunkel (Germany) – 3

39) Andechser, bergboch hell (Germany) – 3

40) Süffiges Kloster, edel-hell (Germany) – 3

41) Klosterbrauerei Ettaler, edel-hell (Germany) – 3

As you can see (if you were dorky enough to read that entire list ;-) ), number 17 was an exceptional beer and by far my favorite beer on the entire trip, thereby receiving the “4+” mark. I had a great time trying all of these, even though the Austrian beers weren’t so great – perhaps they’d taste better in Austria, who knows. Well, I guess I’ll have to give them another chance on their home territory next time.

Recently, one of my only good local friends left for China for two years. She’ll be back on winter and summer breaks, but I was really sad to see her go… I went to the bus station to send her off and tried to look strong in front of my friend :-) She’ll have a great time studying there, though, and learning a completely different culture and language. We loved to talk about cooking together over a glass of wine and I’ll miss those times, but that simply means that she’ll have to cook Chinese food for me when she returns.

Back to work was about what I expected – the first week was slow because everyone wanted to hear about my trip and see my pictures, so I didn’t get much done. But things are moving along – I need to get my project promoted and funded back home so that we can get things moving along here. Please look at the project and see if you want to help me do good things here :-) We’ve also got a big sponsor’s event coming up soon to thank our sponsors and re-energize them for the coming year. Preparations are under way, but as usual, it still wasn’t early enough and we’ll be scraping at the last minute to get the details taken care of. Welcome back to Kazakhstan, I suppose…

Couchsurfing is going full circle right now as well. I couched surfed in Sweden and Germany and when I returned, a guy from Britain who had been in China for 6 months couchsurfed with me for a few days. He left Saturday and Tuesday arrived another couchsurfer from France/Belgium. As I’ve always said, I could never imagine so many people would come through Pavlodar. Perhaps it’s because there is a chapter about Pavlodar in the Central Asian Lonely Planet guidebook…

Nina had a bunch of people over to her place for dinner the other night, including myself and Saule, to show her pictures and tell stories about her trip. It was a really nice time, even if I did have to deal with the shock of one of Nina’s white lies catching up to me when her very Azerbaijani and Muslim friend, Gulia, saw me drinking a beer. You see, to impress Gulia, Nina told her that I didn’t smoke, have sex, or drink. Well, a couple of those are correct, but drinking is definitely not one of them. So I got this look from Gulia throughout the evening as if I had kicked a puppy or something. I felt bad, but not really for me.

To return the favor, I invited Nina and Saule over for dinner at my place last night. It was a fairly good meal, but I realized that I don’t know how to pair foods too well, haha. I made ratatouille and pasta tossed with pesto sauce. Both were good with the semi-dry red wine I had, but definitely shouldn’t have been eaten together. I should have heeded my friend Cho’s advice about the ratatouille being too heavy (which it was, with pasta), but it was good and everyone seemed to enjoy. Rounded off with some ice cream, a nice treat here, I’d call it an enjoyable evening with two important people to me and a nice start back to life as usual in Kazakhstan.

My english club student, Эльвин (Elvin), presents at the Azerbaijan festival.


Azerbaijan traditional dancing.


Big man on the floor, watch out!


For those of you who get the humor, cool. For others, well, it says "1337." Basically, ask a computer geek.


A conception drawing of the the swimming pool project we're interested in.


Preparing genuine beshparmak with real horse meat is no easy task, especially if the bone is too long for the pot. Trim time!


Saule is the beshparmak master.


Enjoying some meat and noodles.


Full from magical beshparmak, everyone is in a dreamy stage of happiness.


At nina's, her return to Kazakhstan party.


Saule, myself, and Tom, the couchsurfer from Britain who had spent 6 months in China and 4 months in Prague.


Another great lunch: mushroom salad, baba ganoush, pickles, "chechel" cheese, mini leposhka bread, and a beer. Mmm :-)


Herve, myself, and Saule enjoying a beer after some local food at an outdoor cafe.