Kazan (meaning a cooking pot in Tatar) is the Istanbul of the Volga, is a place where Europe and Asia curiously inspect each other from the tops of church belfries and minarets. Kazan is an ancient place, about 150 years older than Moscow . Its millennium celebrations were with much pomp in 2005.

The city, with 1.1 million inhabitants is the capital of the Tatarstan Republic. It's the land of the Volga Tatars, a Turkic people commonly associated with Chinggis Khaan’s hordes. They prefer to see themselves with the ancient state of Volga Bulgaria, devastated by the Mongols. Tatar autonomy is not just about bilingual street signs . The Tatar on top of Russian to make the point. It also ensures that much of the profit from vast oil reserves stays in the republic, which has an economy that is quite visibly booming.

The post-Soviet cultural revival, manifested by popular modern Muslim fashions and Tatar language literature, is watched warily by Moscow, which has recently blocked the much desired switch from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. Tatar nationalism is strong but not radical, and the local version of Islam is super moderate.

Ethnic Russians make up about a half of the population, but tensions along ethnic lines are generally uncommon. After all, as the old saying goes, scratch a Russian and you’ll find a Tatar. It's also true the other way round.