After picking up the car from the rental company, we were ready to get started. Our first Brehm stop: the East Kazakh city of Pavlodar. Five and a half hours of driving through the steppe lay ahead of us. The view from the car: sky, endless, light blue sky. Somewhere in the far distance it touches the grass of the steppe. No wonder that the national flag of Kazakhstan shows this light blue sky and the shining sun.
In Pavlodar we were greeted by Liuba and Balbek, good acquaintances of my parents. They took us to the museum of Dmitry Polikarpovich Bagayev. He founded the first photo studio in the town around the turn of the century and took portraits of both the inhabitants and the town. In addition, he documented the life of the Kazakh nomads in impressive pictures.
Pavlodar itself was famous above all for salt processing and owes its development to this industry. From here, the salt, drawn from the lakes in the surrounding area, was processed and further delivered to the entire Soviet Union via the river Irtysh. Today, salt is still processed, albeit on a much larger scale.
It was also in Pavlodar that Volker got his new, Kazakh name. Balabek christened him “Marat”.
