Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 1
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 2
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 3
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 4
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 5 – Gellert
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 6
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 7 – Bulgari
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 8 – Cinecitta Studios
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 9 – flight to Almaty

Most of the day was spent doing business. That night I was invited to attend one of business colleague’s niece’s birthday party. We were driven up into the mountains to a beautiful restaurant. The tables were laid out outside.

There was plenty of drinking and plenty of food. A couple of the people there spoke some basic English. The rest of them spoke Russian and Kazakh. I started to ask through the translator what some of the food being passed my way was. There was a lot of horse dishes coming my way. Horse doesn’t really taste that bad. I wonder if horses are categorized like steaks. For example, is a thoroughbred a filet mignon? Is the pony like a hamburger?

At one point, they asked me to give a toast to the 16 year old. Having known her for all of 5 minutes, I wished her the best in her endeavors and complimented on her intellect.

After drinking too much soda, it was time to find the facilities. As I approached the outdoor restroom, I was surprised to find Japanese style squat toilets. A fancy restaurant like this with these kind of toilets? It was not the time to try and experiment so I just gave up.

As we were being driven back to the Holiday Inn we received another call from another business associate who invited us to join them at an Uzbek restaurant. I wanted to be polite and so we accepted though I was completely stuffed.

We arrived at the Uzbek restaurant that was quite ornate on the outside. It looked like a building straight out of the animated film Aladdin. We went inside and sat down at the table.

I had made the wrong choice filling up on horse meat. The Uzbek restaurant had all kinds of meats like lamb shashlik and plov and traditional dumplings called parmuda. It looked and smelled great. I took a couple of bites of the shashlik, it was so tender and seasoned so well. I will definitely return to the Uzbek restaurant if I come back to Almaty.