First day in Astana. It’s a bit different to Almaty. To put it mildly.
After travelling 1,234km, our train pulled into Astana bang on time. 8:48 of the AMs. We stretch and groan, compare how badly we slept on our beds of nails, and trickle out of the station.
The surrounding area looks nothing like the ultramodern city we have read about. Dodgy looking taxi drivers give us the hard sell but we opt to stick with YandexGo app. Luckily a car arrived, that could easily accommodate all 4 of us and our luggage. Back in Almaty we had to have two cars, which was a pain because I couldn’t book the second car till Posh and Becks had got to the station in the first car.
After ten minutes driving through unremarkable city blocks, the much vaunted new city starts to climb up to the sky around us.
For those first ten minutes I briefly thought driving standards were better here, but soon a red mist came down and we were once again in the hands of a demolition derby driver. Between the railway station and the hotel I spot three different pile ups with plod in attendance.
We arrive at our hotel five hours before we can check in, so leave our bags and head over the road to the Hilton, where tickets for the game are to be collected, and hit the bar.
Astana is very different to anywhere else in Kazakhstan. It’s practically brand new, the whole city having been conceived by Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev the first President of Kazakhstan. Yep, him from episode seven of our Kazakhstan blog, the guy that built a park in honour of himself.
Initially founded as Aqmoly in 1830, the city was later renamed Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, and Aqmola before adopting the name Astana in 1998, which means “capital city” in Kazakh. In 2019, the city briefly adopted the name Nur-Sultan in honor of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, but it returned to the name Astana in 2022: Wikipedia
Yep. The first president briefly named the entire city after himself.. indeed the city’s airport is still named after him.
It is now the capital city of the country, taking over from Almaty in 1997. Some say that decision was because Almaty is prone to earthquakes, some say it is because expansion of Almaty is restricted because of mountains, and some say it was because it was too close to the Chinese border. There is another school of thought. Some argue it was entirely a vanity project by Nurusultan, who wanted a legacy to leave behind when he’s gone.
Prior to the moving of the capital it was an unremarkable place in the middle of nowhere. Now it resembles Dubai, or one of the other major Middle Eastern cities that has got rich quick through oil. Nothing in the main city is older than 1997 and most of it is much younger than that. It’s one saving grace is that they have utilised imaginative architects and each building has a character of its own. But the city is still bland and soulless, as any city that has been built to order rather than evolved. Like Milton Keynes or Cwmbran.
I have a bizarre conversation with the girl serving in the Hilton cafe. I had wanted a draught beer, and ended up with a can of draught Guinness. When I asked for a glass to drink it out of, I was handed a straw. I sit there drinking it, without a straw, and catch up with old friends arriving to collect their tickets for the game.
After I have munched my way through my Irish stout, we collect our tickets. A new level of security has been added for this game. You have to show a voucher on your FAW app, as well as photo ID, to prove you qualify for the ticket loyalty scheme and have not just bought a ticket for a friend to keep your loyalty points up. I think in country collection is great, it helps cut out ticket harvesting, but it’s unclear why turning up with your passport wasn’t enough. I’m not going to moan though.
After picking up our tickets we sit in the bar with the Caerphilly Massive for a while, but we are in the Post Meridian phase of the day now and all we have eaten today is a hard boiled egg. And we had to share that.
I check out Google maps. We don’t want to wander far, we still haven’t checked in to our hotel, and spot ‘The Roast Beef’. We head there ,expecting a British themed pub with real ales and veggie lasagne on the menu. We find a very plush French restaurant with walls of wine bottles breaking up the room. We are too tired to quibble, so go in.
The restaurant is busy. I’m probably the only man here not wearing a suit. I can smell the business deals being done over meals being bought on expenses. They don’t seem to mind us sat there in shorts and t-shirts and soon we are tucking into unfeasibly delicious spinach and ricotta ravioli. Washed down with gin and tonic. If only twenty year old me could see me. The bill is expensive by Almaty standards, but to eat in a restaurant of this calibre in the UK would have been three times the price.
After food we check in to our hotel and have a siesta on a bed that spans two time zones.
After a few hours recharging the batteries we all head out foraging for more food. We walk for half an hour, trying to decide if we like this ultramodern city. Opinions vary, but for me it is characterless, sanitised and boring. Having seen the meagre lifestyle of those loving outside of the cities i think the place is just an obscene representation of inequality and greed. It is very western in design, as if the west is a good example of how to live. But even i can’t help but grudgingly be impressed by the architecture.
Eventually we find a large cafe selling ‘pan-Asian’ food. The food is cheap, wholesome and tasty. We contemplate making it our ‘regular’ for the next five days.
We then go for a wander in search of a pub. We wander for a bit, then wander some more, and when we finish wandering, we wander some more just for good measure. No pubs were found in the making of this paragraph.
Out of desperation, I Google ‘Irish Pubs’, and we then follow where our virtual friend takes us. There’s much criticism from my fellow travellers, who think I can’t read a map. Google is trying to take me into a posh hotel. Two young girls are having a break outside the staff entrance, they have no idea why Google is bringing us to them. In the end we decide to go back to the Hilton. I think this is the sort of place where most of the drinking is done in hotel bars, or expensive restaurants.
After a while the Caerphilly Massive join us. They had a similar problem. Now if they can’t find a pub, there isn’t a pub. Tank can sniff out a boozer from three miles away. They had actually found the Irish Bar. It was inside the posh hotel Google was taking me to. It was basically just a hotel bar.
We sit for a while catching up on how Aaron Ramsey is doing, the price of cigarettes the last time Tank bought his own, and the convoluted travel plans of people too tight to take the simplest routes to Kazakhstan.
Our final ten minutes in the Hilton involved a polite discussion with the bar staff who had put the last round of drinks we ordered on our bill, without actually delivering the drinks. We might have stayed if the drinks had actually arrived but we left vowing to never darken the doors of any Hilton in the world again. Ever.
Then we had an early night. After eleven days in Kazakhstan, match day is finally upon is.