Border Life

Just like everything else in the world from TV standards to electric currents, train tracks differ from country to country, which means I had a few hours to kill on the Kazakh border as they changed the wheels on our train (at least I think that's what they did). I don't even remember the name of the little border town, and perhaps there were no signs identifying the name anyway, as it was mainly just an outpost town lined with hastily constructed 2-story apartment buildings. It appeared that the primary industry in town was the railroad, and the vast majority of the population was Kazakh (compared to Almaty, which is almost an even split between Russian and Kazakh people). I wasn't sure if I was allowed to take pictures in this town because of security issues, but my futile attempts to ask people in the station (despite using both words in my Russian vocabulary quite fluently) produced no answers. So I figured why not just start taking pictures, and if it weren't allowed someone would surely be kind enough to tell me. Or start shooting at me. Sure enough, not three minutes out of the train station and with my camera poised for action, some rough-looking guys drove by in a rough-looking car and gave me VERY rough-looking gestures that basically said 'NO PHOTOGRAPHS AROUND HERE BUDDY'. I got the message and nodded politely, quickly turned back toward the station, and felt my pants for any wet spots. Walking back to the station though I realized that I hadn't seen any military posts around town, and figured those guys just didn't want me taking pictures of their neighborhood. So instead of going in the station and watching them change the wheels on our train, I headed in the opposite direction of my 'new friends' and kept my fingers crossed that I wouldn't run into any more 'rough-looking' guys. It turned out pretty much everyone in this town was pretty rough-looking, but fortunately there were no more rough-looking gestures in my direction telling me to put my camera away if I wanted to keep it, so I snapped off a handful of pictures and headed back to the station for the second half of my journey to Almaty.