The modern city of Aktau was created a little over 40 years ago, and was designed in a very Soviet modern fashion. There are no street names in the whole city. I’m sure you’re asking yourselves, “how can streets not have names?” It’s a good question … and a bad idea. Natives seem shocked at the notion of naming streets after people and places. Like it’s some sort of quaint country tradition. Instead, the whole city is divided in “microdistricts,” (микрорайоны). Twenty-eight to be exact. I get really tired of saying “microdistrict,” and I always want to say simply “district.” I’ve been told that it immediately marks me as non-native of Aktau, which is a bad thing. Everyone here has told me it’s a bit of a dangerous city, and not to walk around alone at night. So fine, I’ll say “microdistrict,” but I don’t like it.
Addresses are a string of numbers. “Easy to remember,” say the natives, “like a phone number.” My address, for example, is 14351. That means the 14th microdistrict, 3rd building, and 51st apartment. I will admit a certain degree of ease in the concept of remembering a series of digits. And it does work with telephones. Unfortunately, the theory breaks down in practice. People tend to use the numbers only when finding something for the first time. After that they base it on geographical memory. People can point to their friends’ place, but they’d be hard pressed to tell you the address.
To illustrate this, last week I was looking for 148. The 8th building in the 14th microdistrict. Easy enough, you might think, I’m in the 14th after all. How hard can it be to get from the 3rd building to the 8th? Well, rather difficult if you’re using the address. I walked out of my building and asked the people standing in front of my building. “We don’t know,” came the answer. Fine, I thought, the next group must surely know. Nope. I must have asked around 10 people before I finally found it on my own. And by the way, it’s only 2 buildings down from mine. Literally, a minute and a half walk. The problem is that sometimes the numbers aren’t very clearly labelled on the buildings. If it’s such a great system, how come people don’t even know the buildings in their own microdistrict!!!
Though actually, I think the problem may be more widespread than that. People in this city are nearly oblivious to their surroundings. Sunday was the first day I’ve had off from work since landing in this country almost two weeks ago. I decided to use it to walk around the city. I hoped to find an internet club and get a general idea for the “downtown.” I put that in quotes because the downtown is one street, with a few stores. In any case, earlier in the week I had seen an internet club off the main drag, and decided to check my email. I strolled leisurely down the main street until I found the place. It wasn’t an internet cafe, like I thought. It was actually the office of “Kaztelecom,” which, as the name implies, is Kazakhstan’s main telecom agency. Inside you could make long distance phone calls. Unfortunately, the internet was experiencing “technical difficulties.” From my time in Russia, I know that this can mean anything from actual technical problems to the staff wanting a cigarette break. I asked the lady working there, a Russian, if it would be open soon. she stared like it was the dumbest question she’d heard all day, and generally gave the impression that it hadn’t been working for a long time, and wouldn’t for some time to come. I then asked the logical follow up, “Is there another internet club around here?” She snidely responded that she had no idea, though the tone implied that I was interfering with her alone time and should have left several minutes ago.
As a general rule, if you want to find an internet cafe, you should ask kids from the ages of 10 to 14. These are the ones that play Counter Strike, Warcraft, and Diablo. In that order. Armed with this knowledge, and feeling slightly like a German in Thailand, I sought out groups of teenage boys. My usual source of informational help, cute teenage girls, don’t usually know about the locations of internet cafes.
I have never, in all my journeys, come across a more directionally challenged citizenry than the inhabitants of Aktau. One group would point in a direction and say “in the 8th.” When I arrived and asked, I would be pointed in another direction, “in the 6th.” I spent over two hours wandering around the city center, and like the cities of gold, the internet cafe was always “just behind the next building.” I covered the same area several times, finally giving up in desperation and resigned to return home. Even if people know what region something is in, they rarely know the building number, so you still have to search all over that microdistrict!
Finally, about five minutes away from my house, I saw some girls advertising for a cell phone provider. I wanted to get some information about that anyways, so after I was fully informed on the merits of Beeline, I threw out the internet question. Shockingly, they knew. There was an internet club mere minutes away from my house. I went, and the exceedingly rude Russian woman working there took her time to get to me, then told me I had to wait twenty minutes for the internet. It was late, and I already had my fill of wonderful customer service, so I decided to just head home.
Microdistricts - just one more example of a semi-cool Soviet concept that fails to make the transition to reality.
