Getting used to cold showers

In my opinion, one of the signs of civilization is the ability to take a hot shower every day. When you are backpacking in the wilderness you suck it up and jump in the cold lake but when you are staying at a hotel, getting hot water out of the shower in the morning should be assumed.

Not so at the Hotel Skif. If you don’t get yourself through the shower prior to 9:00am you are out of luck as around that time the water runs cold. The funny thing is that there isn’t any hot water for the rest of the day from what we can tell. Luke-warm is the best you can hope for.

Bit of a mystery here….

More pictures of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan

There aren’t a lot of pictures of the town of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan on the Internet from what I can find so here are a bunch more that we’ve taken as we travel about the town. They will give you a flavor for the town and what it looks like.

Art Gallery in Petropavlovsk

We had a chance a few days back to visit the local art gallery. It is located in a 100 year old building in the traditional Kazakhstan style that used to be the home of a wealthy merchant. It was renovated a number of years back and turned into an art gallery.

It is small but has a pretty varied collection of more traditional art as well as modern interpretations from local artists. We got a tour from the Director as we were the only people there. It is worth the hour or so it takes to walk through.

Are here it is on Google Maps:

Some pictures of Jennifer

It has been awhile since I posted some pictures of Jennifer so here they are. Bonding period is officially done and the court date is this coming Tuesday.

City wide heating in Petropavlovsk

One of the weirdest things we found when we first came to Petropavlovsk is that the majority of the buildings in the downtown core are heated centrally. I don’t mean that they have central heating systems but that they are all heated from a central, city-wide heating plant and the heat is piped to each building via a network of above ground and below ground pipes.

Each residential or commercial building has pipes running to it in which hot water (or steam?) is moving to transfer heat from the central plant to the building. The entire city is covered in these huge pipes.

The other strange thing is that there is no way to limit the heat from this system. The buildings don’t have thermostats or any other limiter on the radiators. So whenever you walk into a room, the hotel Skif included, the temperature is always sweltering. We’ve spent the entire trip wearing t-shirts inside and leaving the windows open even though it has almost always been near or below freezing.

Apparently in early May the heating system is shut off for the season and for several weeks the situation changes and everyone freezes. Then in the fall they flip it back on and for awhile the residents of the town are back to roasting until it gets cold again.

I guess this is the result of Soviet central planning at its finest but in today’s age of green heating technology and skyrocketing fuel costs, just keeping the heat on must be a huge financial drain on the town of Petropavlovsk.

So bring light clothes to wear around the hotel or rented apartment if you come…you are going to need them.

Here are some more photos of the pipes: