Courtyard Sculptures

The statues of Almaty have been well-documented. There's a whole Wikipedia page, actually, telling you where to find each and every bronze hero and politician, and they are always in the most public of public spaces - in squares and parks and anywhere people gather. Yet there's another world where people gather, away from the streets, in the chattery courtyards that this city's apartment blocks have opened up between them. In a very European fashion, buildings jut around corners and go around the block and come back again, forming a footprint that looks like a thick picture frame. Inside, in the space people call the dvor [двор], the same landscapes are reiterated: a row of garages, a boiler room, a playground made with metal piping in rainbow colors. This hidden world has its own heroes, and they get their own sculptures: Gena the Crocodile and Cheburashka, gnomes and bears, all at the approximate height of kids eyeballs.