Bazaar: Kara's perspective

We had a beautiful sunny afternoon today and decided to spend it at the Bazaar. So Linda, Wayne, Quentin and I walked down Tole Bi Road to find the Bazaar. It was definitely my kind of place! Think one gigantic flea market or yard sale. Some of the stuff was obviously used, but they had new clothing, books, scarves, handmade items, fabric, electronics, coats, music, baby items, etc. The Bazaar is set up in lanes. You enter a lane and head toward the back, and you go back, and back, and back. The lanes branch in either direction several times.

We headed straight back one of the lanes - after a brief stop for me to buy a hand crocheted baby hat - and turned left. There we found books, shoes, music, and all kinds of goodies. We stopped at the book stand and bought a children’s alphabet book, a fairy tale book, and a map of Taraz. Now we know very little Russian. I know how to ask “skolka” (how much) and then I hand them a notebook and pen so that they can write it down. Then I write down how much I want to pay. Then they either look at me and shake their head or write down a compromise. That is the extent of my bargaining skills.

After the book stand we headed further back into the Bazaar. I am not sure how many turns we took, but I found some baby clothing that looked like it would fit Symbat. I had Quentin dig out the phrase book to ask what size an outfit was and I think she told me there was no size. Not sure how there can’t be a size, but the outfit didn’t have a size marked. I was eyeing it trying to see if I thought it would fit when I remembered my fabric tape measure in my backpack. I just learned today that Symbat is 74cm long. So I took my tape measure out and measured the outfit. I bought it (after a very brief bargaining session). I hope it fits=)

We headed further back then and eventually found some fabric stands. Linda wanted to look over the fabric. She is planning on making a blanket to hang on their little boy’s wall. I was looking too, but decided to wait on that. We wandered some more until I found some scarves. I found one in particular I liked as well as a flashy pink sparkly one I knew my daughter Lauren would like. So we asked about them. I ended up with the scarf I liked, but didn’t get the pink one (sorry Lauren). They wanted 3000Tenge for it and I figured we could do without it=) The shop keeper did try to sell me all sorts of interesting scarves though, but I really didn’t need any zebra prints.

We called it quits soon after that and wound our way back to Tole Bi. We only saw a small portion of the Bazaar. It was huge and a bit confusing. I really wanted to find some ethnic Kazakh items, but either we didn’t get to that part of the Bazaar or there weren’t any. We are definitely going back!