The Chak-chak Museum

Chak-chak is a traditional Tatar sweet. It’s almost like thin funnel cake bound together in large mounds by a honey/sugar mixture. Most of the stuff you by commercially is so hard, you could break your teeth on it. The homemade stuff is great. Chak-chak was the goal of our Sunday adventure. Sonia and I had wanted to go to the Chak-chak museum and the Nicholai Tesla Museum. We found out that we couldn’t get a tour at the chak-chak Museum in English until 1 pm and since it was already after 11 when we got into the city, we figured we’d better do the Tesla Musem another day and just went to hav a coup of coffee at the Internet cafe. It took us about 20 minutes to walk to the museum and we had to ask directions once. The people in Kazan don’t know where it is. But the museum has had visitors from all over the world. The museums’s website tell you straight out that you have to remove your shoes in the museum and it is very clear why. It’s located in one of the remaining old wooden houses of Kazan with lovely homemade throw rugs and tapestries. The museum was basically an homage to the Tatar culture, and chak-chak is a big part of that. Chak-chak was originally made for weddings; you needed lots of eggs for it and the prospective bride had to make it for the grooms’s family to show that she was worthy. the number of eggs and the size of the chak-chak indicated how prosperous the family was. It was onLy Sonia, Fouad and me. The lady gave us a great demonstration and explained about the traditions, then we got to drink tea and eat real chak-chak. And the house and furnishings were beautiful. You could see the middle eastern influence on the Tatar culture. We all sat cross-legged on high, wide benches that serves as beds at night. Tables that stood on the floor didn’t exist for them I. The old days, although the house had them now to accommodate the visitors. It was an hour well spent. We left there and I headed up to see some German movies at the German film festival with Anna. At 4 there was one about A Turkish woman born in Germany who marries a rurkish Guy. It was a very complicated situation and was a pretty brutal film. There was a discussion after the film, which I couldn’t really follow. The next film didn’t start till 7 so we went to the cafe to grab a cup of tea. Then we went back to the cinema to see a documentary about the current refugee situation in Germany. It was very well done and was again followed by a discussion. And the great thing was, both films wer3 free of charge, thanks to a lot of German and Russian sponsors. I grabbed a bus to go home and a young woman on the bus recognized me from the theater because I had been talking to Anna in English. She’s studying English and French here in Kazan and we had a great chat all the way to our bus stop. It was a really busy weekend for me. We’ve got the Tesla museum on our list for next weekend.