My Journey to Aktobe
SK
Saltanat Khakim
Thu, 22 Jun 2023
At the age of 17, I finished school and left provincial Aktobe for good. But for the past 25 years, I have consistently been drawn back, every year for at least a few days. I frequently had to guide tourists around our city's landmarks. Aktobe is translated from Kazakh as "city on a white hill”. Every time, I begin our outing in the Old Town because it was here, in the 19th century, that hill with the white stone Mazar atop it that gave the city its name was situated.
The Eiffel Tower, as the locals jokingly refer to our TV tower, is located at the summit of the hill and is visible from nearly every location in the city both during the day and at night thanks to colourful illumination.
Pushkin park, founded at the end of the 19th century as a City Garden, is situated one block from the TV tower. More than one generation of the citizens of Aktobe used to ride here on "Romashka" and "Merry hills" - these retro-attractions still work but the risk to ride on them, it seems, only for the most desperate.
The park is quite small in the modern sense, it looks quite neglected - but this is its beauty. In recent years greenery is cut down quite actively in and around Aktobe, so Pushkin Park is one of the few corners of the city, where you can still hide from the dust and the scorching sun in the summer heat in the shadow of the huge elm and maple trees.
Another place you should visit when walking in the Old City is the only planetarium in Kazakhstan that opened back in 1967.
During the lectures on astronomy here, they use not a digital projector, but a mechanical-optical device made by Carl Zeiss, which was presented to the residents of the Aktobe region in gratitude for the surplus grain harvest sent to the GDR. That is, the image of celestial bodies is obtained with the help of many thin beams of light directed on the planetarium dome, but not with the help of a digital picture, as we are used to. The cost of admission is ridiculous; there are sessions for both adults and children.
Now the centre of Aktobe is not the Old part, of course, but Abulkhair Khan Avenue, almost no different from other central streets of the former CIS. But if suddenly in days of your stay in Aktobe there will be a home match of FC Aktobe at the Central stadium located on Abulkhair Khan avenue - I very much advise you to go, even if you are quite far from soccer! Very cool, charged atmosphere! By the way, this stadium was one of the first in the Soviet Union and the first in Kazakhstan! - built without racetracks, in other words, it was originally meant only for soccer.
Usually, the stadium named after Koblandy Batyr is packed to capacity, tickets for matches sold out in a jiffy. I have even heard that Aktobe is called the "Mecca of fans". The stands are roaring, shouting, singing, and going in waves, and you, fascinated, submit to this incredible heat and shout at the top of your lungs with excitement.
Within walking distance of the stadium, there is a small museum of the Hero of the Soviet Union Aliya Moldagulova, a sniper, whose name is familiar to every Kazakhstani.
The citizens of Aktobe are so proud of Aliya that the airport and one of the main avenues in the city were named after her, there are several monuments to her. In the museum there are collected copies of military equipment and uniforms of times of the Great Patriotic War, letters, photos and memoirs of girlfriends and teachers of Aliya, her fellow soldiers and relatives, and also information about each Aktyubinsk man - the Hero of Soviet Union. Admission to the museum is free and I think it is very important nowadays to visit such museums and take our children to them. To talk to them and explain that life is meant to be peaceful. And there is no excuse for war.
If you are in Aktobe with kids, you can take them for a walk in the Park of the first President of the RK, a new Ferris wheel was put there this year - the highest point gives a wonderful view of the small town on the white hill!
And finally, let me tell you what my acquaintances and I take with us when we leave Aktobe. First of all, they are tary - roasted millet - and talqan, which is made by grinding tary into fine flour. No tea party in Aktobe can do without tary and talqan, they are obligatory when serving dastarkhan to the guests. They add tary to the hot tea and after enjoying the drink to the bottom of the bowl, they eat it with a spoon together with butter or sour cream. Several times, I even saw that the Aktobe housewives put tary in the teapot already at the stage of brewing - so it gets more fragrant.
You can buy tary at the markets in Almaty or Astana, but believe me, it will taste completely different. It's not without reason that my late grandmother always gave pregnant and nursing granddaughters in the southern and northern capitals Aktobe golden tary in cloth sacks.
According to her, it improved lactation and helped increase the fat content of breast milk. Probably, experts on breastfeeding will laugh at me here, but the fact remains that among my grandmother's great-grandchildren there is not a single one who grew up on artificial formula.
Secondly, I recommend trying chocolate-covered zhent in Aktobe for sure, and even taking it with you as a gift.
Again, zhent is a product made from tary. Tary is crushed into a talqan, and by adding butter to the talqan, you get zhent.
The new age trend is to pour the tender zhent with chocolate. The most delicious chocolate-covered zhent is from Vanilla Confectionery. I swear it is not an advertisement - you can buy similar zhent in supermarkets and markets, but it's "Vanilevsky" that will be, firstly, beautifully packaged and, secondly, melt in your mouth. There are branches of the confectionery throughout the city, but, which is convenient, for Air Astana passengers, you can also buy this zhent at the airport.