Zombies or are they human creatures after all?

Clouds hang low and promise rain. We hurry to dismantle the camp and make it just before the first shower. As it’s not too far today, we can take our time. We fortify ourselves in a steppe rest stop. At the rest stop yesterday the food tasted very good, today we are served half-rotten food that is barely tolerable. What’s more, the landlady wants to cheat us. It still makes sense to check every invoice. Good faith is sometimes exploited here, as in many countries around the world. Unfortunately, there are black sheep everywhere. We pack up the rotten food and stale bread to protect a guest coming after us. “We’ll find a hungry dog to give the stuff to,” says Tanja. Barely two kilometers further on, we meet a horse herder. “For your dog,” we say. He understands and puts the food parcel in his jacket pocket. “Will he really give it to his dog?” I doubt it

We reach the ugliness of Pavlodar. An unattractive city like many in the east. “Destination” is written on the road. We take this lettering as a good omen. We roll attentively with the traffic over the broken asphalt, past block buildings with their crumbling facades, desolate factory halls, chimneys, rattling over bent, arching streetcar tracks and reach the center. We wait at a red light. It turns green and I pedal hard as usual. I overtake a bus. “Kräächchchchch!”, a terrible noise snaps me out of my thoughts and simultaneously jolts my limbs. I turn around in a flash and see my trailer scrape across the road on its own and come to a halt in the middle of the road. The cars brake, but luckily they make a U-turn. The bus honks its horn. Tanja has also managed to stop in time and stands next to the bus, her eyes wide with shock. “Tröööhhht!”, “Tröööhhht!”, “Tröööhhht!”, the impatient driver sounds his loud horn. The rear end of the bus juts out into the road and provides protection for my trailer from the oncoming cars. After the initial moment of shock, we have grasped the situation. Tanja quickly rolls over to me to hold my bike. I hurry to my sad-looking box on wheels. I grab it by the broken drawbar and pull it out of the traffic snarl onto the sidewalk. Then I get my bike. The whole operation takes no more than a minute.

Panting wildly, we now stand stunned at the bus stop and stare at the broken connection between the trailer and the newly installed support bracket. For a moment we are speechless. “Wow, we were really lucky,” I realize after a while. “You could say that,” Tanja replies. I bend down to the drawbar to inspect the damage. “Not a chance. It’s impossible to repair here. The drawbar is fine, but now the connecting piece between the drawbar and the bracket is broken at a very unfavorable point. It looks hopeless,” is my diagnosis. “How can something like that happen?” “We have a trailer from Used, a coupling from zwei plus zwei and a wheel from riese und müller. In the workshop, we had to convert the parts from the three different companies into one system. In order for the drawbar and the coupling to fit together, we had to heavily cup the coupling piece. This allowed us to bring the two systems together and bolt them together. At the time, we would never have thought that the cupped coupling piece could break. Absolutely impossible. But the killer asphalt and the bad roads did the trick. I can’t blame any of the companies. It broke again at a point that we manipulated. It’s not anyone’s fault,” I conclude. “I see. It doesn’t matter if it’s anyone’s fault. It’s happened now and thank God nothing happened to us. Now you know why I warn you not to exaggerate before the descents. I can’t imagine if it had broken there. Or the trailer could have crashed into a car here in the city. But that didn’t happen. Our angels have protected us once again. Now the only question is what we should do?” “How should I know?” I groan, thinking about our visa, which expires in a few days and we have to leave the country.

“I’ll call Heiko from riese und müller,” I decide spontaneously and switch on my cell phone. “It’s ringing,” I say hopefully. “Heiko Müller?” “Oh, how good to reach you at the first attempt. We’re in rush-hour traffic here in Pavlodar, not far from Siberia,” I say, explaining the precarious situation. “Can it be repaired?” “No Heiko, I don’t see any chance of that.” “No problem, we’ll send you a spare part. I’ll let our workshop manager Kay know straight away. He’ll take care of it and call you,” he says before the line goes dead. “The chip is empty,” I realize and tell Tanja about Heiko’s suggestion. “Very good, then all we need now is somewhere to stay. Let’s just deal with the shock for a while. Then we can think about how to get out of here,” Tanja suggests, sitting down on a low railing. Meanwhile, I cross the street and buy us an ice cream. As soon as I’ve tasted it, I decide to get a second one. “What about you? Would you like another one?” I ask. “Can’t hurt”, I hear with astonishment, because Tanja only eats ice cream on very rare occasions.

Money-making or help?

When I come back, a man about 50 years old is standing next to Tanja and talking to her. “Cycling is very bad for you. It’s very bad for women,” I hear. “This is my husband,” Tanja introduces me. The man immediately turns to me and tries to convince me how bad cycling is for women. “It’s not good for you either. There, that must hurt, right?” he asks, suddenly pressing his thumb into my chest. “No, it doesn’t hurt,” I reply, too stunned to take his hand off my body. Then he presses on my left ribcage with the same result. I try to ignore the strange gentleman and bend over the clutch again.

“Doesn’t look good,” says the man. “No,” I reply and am just thinking about dismantling Tanja’s trailer to attach her coupling to my bike. This would allow me to attach Tanja’s trailer to my box and we could at least achieve a gastiniza this way. “It’s a good idea,” she praises my idea. “I’m a cab driver. My car is right over there. I’ll drive you to a hotel and then to my friend. He’s a top mechanic. He can repair something like that without any problems. In Soviet times, I was a chief engineer myself. I know my way around mechanics. We can manage that. It’s easy,” I hear the chest pusher say and look at him scrutinizingly. “Maybe the cab driver’s suggestion will save the day,” I say. “Who knows?” Tanja ponders. “How much does it cost to get to the hotel?” I want to know. “300 tenge” (1.62 euros), he replies.

After a short deliberation, we decide to trust the cab driver. We load Tanja’s trailer into the trunk of his car and attach the intact coupling piece to my bike. So I can click my hanger back onto my Intercontinental. The plan now is to look for a hotel with the cab driver while Tanja looks after our bikes. I will then leave Tanja’s trailer at reception, the cab driver will take me back to Tanja and we will ride our sumo bikes to the hotel together. Then we would already be accommodated and we’ll sort out everything else afterwards. A good plan. “If you’re looking at the Gastiniza, don’t leave the trailer in the car!” Tanja warns me as we speed off. I am relieved when I arrive at the hotel. The chest pusher leaves his cab and walks with me to reception. To my delight, one of the two receptionists speaks perfect English. “The room costs 11,000 tenge. (60 euros) Is that too much?” she asks. “A lot of money,” I reply, shocked, whereupon the two ladies rummage through their booking plan for a cheaper room for 8,000 tenge (43 euros). “The gentleman has a problem. He has two large bicycles with trailers,” the cab driver suddenly intervenes. The two ladies look at me in horror. “A bicycle? You can’t take that into the room!” “But why not? So far, we’ve been allowed to put our bikes in the room or a room almost without exception,” I reply, annoyed at my companion who has stupidly messed up my tour. “No, we’re afraid they’ll ruin our nice room,” says the lady, which is why we’re back in the cab a minute later. “I knew this hotel was too expensive. I’ll take you to another one,” says the driver. I look at him skeptically. On the way back I ask myself why he spiced up my soup with the bikes and why he took me to a hotel that is known to be expensive? After a few minutes we speed past Tanja. I wave to her. On the outskirts of the city we find a simple Eastern Bloc hotel for 5,000 tenge (27 euros) a night which also accepts our bikes. Although I’m getting fed up with the eternal run-down accommodation and my morale is plummeting, I pay for the first night. Then it’s back to Tanja. When 20 minutes later the bikes are stored in the Gastiniza, the cab driver suggests taking me to his mechanic friend today.

Although I’m dog-tired after the thunderstorm rides, the broken clutch and the constant back and forth, I decide to continue trusting the man. So far, everyone in Kazakhstan has helped us. He also makes an honest impression. On the way through the city I wonder if he charges the trips as normal cab costs? “We’re working together now. Don’t we? I have relatives in Würzburg. I’ll help you solve your problem,” he says suddenly, answering my current thoughts.

Zombies or are they human creatures after all?

We park in front of his friend’s workplace. “The company was closed 10 years ago,” says the porter. “Strange,” it goes through my tired brain. “How can it be that he doesn’t know that his friend hasn’t worked here for ten years?” We drive to another small machine factory. Four people sit on crumbling bricks in front of a dilapidated building. The cab driver, whose name I forget right after he introduces himself, goes to the men. He shows me my broken clutch and explains where I come from and where we want to cycle to. None of the four people present look up or give me a glance. One of them picks up the item disinterestedly and stares at it. The right side of his face is disfigured with warts and a red skin lichen. Bored, he gives the clutch to his neighbor who keeps pulling sunflower seeds out of a bag, putting them in his mouth, biting on them and spitting the shells on the floor at our feet. Only now do I realize that the sunflower spitter is a woman. Her breasts are clearly showing through under her completely soiled blue overall. Her hair is just as short as the men next to her. Her facial expressions are those of a man. Never in my life have I met a woman who has adapted to the male world like this. Even her voice barely betrays her femininity. She also stares at the piece of aluminum with hollow, dull eyes and passes it on, just like the man next to her. The soot-smeared neighbor, whose face is marked with wrinkles, doesn’t even bother to hold it in his fingers for more than two seconds or to hand it to the fourth man next to him, whose grey face is hidden behind thick horn-rimmed glasses, but hands it to the cab driver, shaking his head. He gets angry and scolds him. On the way to his cab, the director arrives. We exchange a few words. The director doesn’t give me a glance either, which is why I’m starting to feel like I don’t even exist. He mumbles a few Russian words, shrugs his shoulders and simply turns around.

“Bolshoi problem”, (big problem) “A real bolshoi problem”, says the cab driver, repeating himself as the journey continues. I think of Heiko from riese und müller, Nick from zwei plus zwei and Bob from Used and sincerely hope that they can help us more. This time we stop in a workshop yard. Behind every door, metalworking machines pound and groan. Dressed in my short cycling shorts and sweaty cycling shirt, I follow the cab driver into one of the windowless workshops. The air is thick and the noise is loud. Scrap, metal and iron parts are everywhere. Diffuse light falls from the few lamps onto the workstations. I feel as if we have entered a cave where mute beings of the underworld work. The mood is sad, joyless, jaded. Nobody notices us here either. The men behind their lathes and drills don’t lift their heads for a moment as we walk past them. A thirty-something man with a headscarf and earring points to the door and sends us across the courtyard to another workshop. There, pop music hammers towards us. Pin-up girls decorate the walls and it looks a little cleaner. Daylight falls through the gate and the mechanic present takes a quick look at me. My hopes rise and are immediately dashed by his shaking head.

“Bolshoi problem (big problem) you really have a bolshoi problem,” says the cab driver again as we continue our journey through the city. “Yes,” I reply, now also apathetic and dog-tired. “I call Tanja to explain that I’m still on the road without success. “I don’t know what he wants. He says he’ll help us,” I reply to Tanja’s question about how much the cab service will cost.

“We still have a chance. There is a large factory here that builds track gates. In Soviet times, 25,000 people were employed there. A lot is broken now, but the company still exists. They can certainly help us,” explains the cab driver, which is why we stop in front of huge halls that look like they fell victim to a bombing raid many years ago. The old gatekeeper fills out a pass for us, allowing us to enter the facility. First we walk half a kilometer past buildings whose glassless windows look like empty eye sockets. Then we step through a rusty and bent gate about 15 meters high into a huge hall where there are no people. We walk a few hundred meters, turn a corner and suddenly find ourselves in the machine factory. People stand at meter-high drilling, milling, planing and turning machines. Again the same picture of unresponsive human and pathetic figures. The only difference is that everything is so much bigger here. “This must be what it looks like in hell,” I think to myself, because it can’t be much worse in the place of damnation. Sparks and glowing metal splinters fly through the air like in a well-produced thriller. We walk right past it. I hold my hand in front of my face to protect my eyes.

“Ewww!” a man of about seventy suddenly shouts after us. The cab driver is already too far ahead to hear the crooked-legged man’s call. To avoid running into any of the machines or being injured by any of the glowing splinters, I concentrate on my way through the poorly lit underworld. “Ewww!” the little old man yells after us. When he notices that we don’t react, he limps after us. The cab driver suddenly stops, turns around and notices the wildly gesticulating old man behind us. “That’s where you have to go!” shouts the worker from a bygone era, pointing the way to the end of this construction hall. We pass heavy, coarse iron parts, half-finished axles, wheels and other rusty stuff that I can’t define in a hurry.

At the end of the factory cave, a man in a white shirt, good trousers and polished shoes is waiting for us. It is the manager of this department. He wears a cross around his neck, has a neat haircut and looks absolutely like a boss. While the cab driver explains our problem, pointing at me again and again, I let my eyes wander through the world of doom. A yellowed poster about 15 meters long and 5 meters high dangles above us in the dilapidated ceiling construction of the building. It shows the ideal world of the worker and the ideal world of promising communism. My hair is standing on end and I can hardly believe what I’m seeing here. Of course communism has collapsed. Hardly anyone seems to believe in the viability of this system any more. Of course I came across one of the old production facilities here by chance, which have nothing to do with the present day. And yet the people here still seem to toil under the same inhumane conditions as ever. It really shakes me and I’m glad I wasn’t born into such a fate. I am delighted and happy to be able to live a free life as a traveler and adventurer. What chance do these people here have of ever leaving their miserable, miserable existence? Only death can free many of the dirty, lifeless-looking figures from the horror here.

The incessant chatter of the cab driver reaches my ears again. The manager or director doesn’t give me a second glance. I look at him intently, but not once does his eye or even a twitch of his pupil wander over to me. A completely new situation for me here in Kazakhstan. Until now, people have always wanted contact with us. People gave us presents, applauded us, congratulated us and we were even guests of a mayor. And now I am invisible to those present. No doubt I’m just a poor foreigner here who doesn’t have his status symbol with him. Yes, our bikes often create contact with people, not our looks or our appearance. At this moment, this fact is a soon to be dramatic disillusionment. Continuing to dwell on my thoughts, I follow the manager and cab driver into a large workshop in a side wing. There are also powerful machines here. They still seem to be in operation, but we only meet one person whose back is bent over his workbench. When he notices us, he looks at us with lifeless eyes. He doesn’t say a word and doesn’t respond to my greeting with a single syllable. “Sure, I’m a worthless invisible nothing here,” it goes through my head. The manager speaks a few words to the man, who is about 1.90 meters tall and has thick, broken glasses on his nose. While the manager is still talking to his worker, he gets up without comment and leaves the room.

“You have to give the director money,” the cab driver whispers in my ear. Now I am completely overwhelmed. “Money? Why? And if so, how much?” I ask myself. “I have to go to lunch now,” says the man in the white shirt. The cab driver doesn’t react and continues chatting. “I have to eat now,” the man in his patent leather shoes repeats emphatically, turns on his axis and leaves the old workshop smelling of smoke, oil and grease. My gaze crosses with that of the cab driver. He just shrugs his shoulders. “I told you to give him money,” he says succinctly. “For what?” I want to know. “So that we can make progress here,” he explains. “Okay, I see. And how much money do you give in such a case?” I ask. “No idea.” “No idea? Well, if you don’t know, how am I supposed to know?” I say, which is the end of the story. The cab driver now rummages around in the tool. “What are you doing?” I ask. “Well, we have to dismantle your clutch. We need to know how it is constructed. Then the part goes to the designer on the second floor. He looks at it and designs a new one. If we’re lucky, it will be built here,” I hear and my mouth falls open. “That sounds like it will take a while. We have to move on in a few days, and besides, something like this can be incredibly expensive,” I stammer in Russian as best I can. The chest pusher does not respond. I assume that I have not been understood. He now clamps the clutch in a vice, takes an iron bolt and hits it with a hammer on a small screw attached to it. “There she goes,” I think, hoping fervently for help from our sponsors.

The worker with the horn-rimmed glasses returns to his workshop. He doesn’t seem to care that the cab driver is helping himself here. The two exchange a few words. I stand next to it and am still overlooked. Even when I say something, it looks as if the worker is also deaf. He now takes the hammered-on clutch, shuffles to one of the large drills and works on it with the drill that is currently clamped in. “That’s it. Now the rest of the clutch is dying,” it goes through my head. In fact, a metal pin falls out and the plastic housing can be pulled off the metal casing. The manager has since reappeared. He talks to the worker. He grabs a packet of cigarettes, opens it and, to my amazement, puts his mouth over it. He skillfully fingers out one of the sticks with his lips and tongue and lights it. Meanwhile, the cab driver pokes around inside the clutch with a screwdriver and after the lock and all the other small parts clink out, he laughs with relief and gives me the thumbs up. “She’s dead now,” I know. Just a minute later, the boss leaves the room. The cab driver shrugs his shoulders again, grabs the individual parts of the clutch and quickly leaves the workshop. “That wouldn’t have happened in Soviet times. They would have repaired everything then. But now nothing works at all,” he grumbles on the way to the car.

Another possibility

“Ahhh, that reminds me of something else. There’s one more possibility,” he says, whereupon we drive off somewhere again. “Wait here,” he orders me and disappears into another workshop 10 minutes after the factory disaster. When he returns, he explains: “The best mechanic in town works here. He’s my friend. I should have thought of him straight away. He’s an alcoholic but when he’s not drinking he’s a genius. His boss says he’ll be on the late shift in 30 minutes. We should wait here.” Already at the end of my tether and barely able to think straight, I agree and wait with the man in his old Audi. He is now talking about the Russian presidents. Which was good and which was bad. “Putin is a good man. So is our president. Your Kohl wasn’t bad and your Angela Merkel is unassessable. She moves this way and that way in politics,” he chats without point or comma.

In the meantime, 40 minutes have passed. We left the cab and he wants to convince me that my upper back and lumbar vertebrae are completely tense. I know from the many conversations that he earns part of his living as a masseur. At least now I realize why he pressed his thumb on my chest at the bus stop almost five hours ago. “I do two massages a day. No more. That’s too strenuous. I’m a top masseur. Five to ten treatments and people have lost their problems for at least three years. I also show them how to behave after sitting. Look like this,” he says, pulling his head in up to his shoulders, sticking out his chest and pacing back and forth in front of his cab. When I imitate him, he says: “No, not like that. You have to tighten your stomach muscles at the same time. Like this. Look,” he says and walks around like a stick. Then he stops telling me about massage and posture. He turns abruptly, opens his trunk, takes out a sponge and a couple of water bottles and starts cleaning his old box in front of me. “What movie have I slipped into,” I think to myself. By now it is 19:00. The vodka-drinking genius has still not appeared. It’s probably just hanging on the bottle or doesn’t exist at all. “Denis? What are you doing here?” whispers an increasingly louder voice inside me. “That doesn’t make sense any more. Let’s drive back. We can try again tomorrow,” I say after the car has almost been washed. “He doesn’t have a shift tomorrow,” I hear. “And he’s drunk today,” I reply, to which he jumps into his car without any further objection and drives me to the Gastiniza, which, to my amazement, is only three minutes away.

“What do you get for your services?” I now ask the question I should have asked hours ago. “Normally I get 1,500 tenge an hour. But since you’re my friend, you only have to pay 1,000 tenge an hour. So that means 5,000 tenge.” Since, according to his own account, he gets 300 tenge per massage as a well-paid masseur and it lasts 1 ½ hours, I am surprised at his high price. However, I am too tired to negotiate with him now and hand him a 5,000.00 bill. “It’s your own fault if you don’t ask. Are you a travel professional or not?” I hear the inner voice. “I’ll go back to the garage later. If he’s not there, I’ll bring the parts by tonight,” he offers. “How much does it cost?” I want to know, having learned my lesson. “Nothing,” he replies. I wonder if I can leave him the two clutches. If he doesn’t come back, we have a problem. Unfortunately, he needs the still intact connecting piece as a comparison, he says. I trust him again and give him the two parts.

An hour later, he is back. “Apparently he really is drunk,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, as he has done so often that day. “I’ve left your parts at reception. I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ve come up with a few more ideas,” he laughs. “How much does it cost?” I ask right now. “How much does it cost?” “Well, what does it cost if you drive me back and forth?” “I don’t understand?” he says with a guiltless expression. Now I finally realize that he’s playing dumb and smells another extremely lucrative deal in me. “How much will it cost if you drive me around?” I ask again in very clear Russian. “I see! Well, you know. 1,000 tenge an hour. But only for you.” “No thanks. That’s too expensive.” “That’s not expensive! An hour in a cab in Germany, that’s expensive.” “I don’t use cabs to get around in Germany.” “But what do you want to do? Your clutch is broken. You know you have an otschin bolschoi problem (very big problem) an otschin bolschoi problem.” “I know. We’ll get to grips with it,” I reply, no longer giving in to his fear-mongering, and say goodbye.

We look forward to your comments!