Shots with Eric

One evening we decided to pay a visit to our old friends at the Windmill, our hotel for the first nine days in Karaganda, to enjoy a dinner of their delicious borscht soup. They were happy to see us and the one English speaking woman took our order. This was shaping up to be a nice, quiet dinner, when, as we were bundled up and heading out the door, we bumped into Eric: a little history is in order here. Earlier in this blog, we posted about our Christmas Day dinner and the office party we became part of. Toward the end of that evening, a man approached us as we were heading upstairs to our room: he was Eric, and in his broken English said "my English is not good enough....this is mine, all this is mine. He was gesturing to the room full of his employees, indicating he was the owner of the company and certainly very proud of that fact.

Returning to our current story, here now was Eric, smiling and asking us "please, join me, have drink with me". The woman who could speak English, came over to assist and told us Eric wanted very much for us to stay and have a drink with him. While we were all bundled up and ready to go, John looked at Sherri and said, "let's not miss this cultural exchange opportunity!!". Eric ordered a bottle of what turned out to be very very smooth vodka, along with a table full of hors d'houvres. Our "interpreter" joined us at the table and had her work cut out for her, as Eric clearly had started drinking earlier and had a strong desire to chat for awhile. We covered a range of topics, from Eric's time in NYC on 9/11 (for a Ringo Starr concert), to American and Kazakh politics, to how much Sherri reminded him of his deceased first wife (or was it his current wife?). He (supposedly) has 51% ownership of Efes Beer and manages a plant here in Karaganda. The vodka shots continued (let's just say we fulfilled all the credits earned by the blog posting challenge we issued earlier) and at one point, Eric reached over the table to assist John in scratching his shoulder. Eric continually asked us whether we were having any problems in Karaganda and assured us that he could help us with anything; he really meant it and we appreciated the gesture. Two hours and many vodka shots later, we rose to leave and were offered Eric's personal cell phone as a parting gift (a few days later he tracked us down at the baby house and politely asked us to return the SIMM card, but to keep the phone).