Still in Kazakhstan, squeezing in a few more sights before going home.
Don’t Take Me home. Please don’t take me home. I just don’t want to go to work. I wanna stay here, drinking all the beer. Please don’t, please don’t take me home: Wales Away
I’ve retired. I’m not going home just yet. I’m not going to work ever again and I’m still here drinking all the beer. Well, mead actually.
London has The Mall, Rome has St Peter’s Square and Cardiff has Roald Dahl Plass. Astana has Nursultan Boulevard: a long park that leads up to The Palace Of The President. Although, unlike the other three spaces in front of seats of power, officially, you’re not allowed to take photographs of the presidential gaff. Which is a bit weird, because it’s a magnificent (albeit excessive) building and everyone takes photos of it. Presumably it is designed to be admired (and envied?)
The boulevard stretches for over a mile and a half, it is a series of gardens, sculptures and fountains, 100m wide.
One of the advantages of building an entirety new city from scratch, rather than it evolving over many years, is that you can design things like this into the planning. Walking down the boulevard you are treated to a showcase of some pretty tidy examples of modern architecture. As soulless as the city is, they have pushed the boat out in terms of making many of the buildings interesting and attractive. They have pushed the boundaries of state-off-the-art design bling, with gravity defying curves, classical pillars and smart cladding.
Not far from the First Fella’s Pad is the Baiterek Tower, which allows views up and down the boulevard. At the opposite end is a magnificently grand looking building with a huge arch in the middle. Is it a posh hotel? Is it a government building? Is it a museum? Nope, apparently it is the headquarters of the national gas company. Impressive nonetheless.
Through the arch can be seen Khan Shtyr, an impressive structure designed by the legendary Norman Foster. It is a tent-like construction and is the tallest structure of its kind in the world. It is also credited with being one of the most eco-friendly structures in the world. The experimental fabric of the roof can resist temperatures as varied as 40c and -40c.
Whilst our trip has been notable by the incredibly hot, dry, weather, the country is prone to extremes and come winter this place will be covered in snow and the rivers in the city will freeze. With the country being so vast, if you time your trip properly, you can experience all four seasons in one day.
Kahn Shtyr is billed as an entertainment complex, it has a boating river, indoor beach, mini golf and a shopping centre.
We walk the length of the boulevard. It’s pleasant enough, but I can’t help thinking, given the spectacular buildings around us, they missed an opportunity to make the boulevard even more special. Perhaps most disappointing is that, like most of the streets in the city, whilst on the whole in good condition, there’s far more subsidence, broken paviors and uneven surfaces than you would expect from an area so new.
After a hearty lunch in our favourite cheap restaurant, The Kitchen, we go back up the Baiterek Tower to check out the views by day, then book ourselves onto a bus tour of the city.
We grab seats upstairs at the front. Becks think he has bagsyed the upstairs drivers seat, but hadn’t taken into consideration that it’s left hand drive. Sucker.
There’s a lot more to the city that the centre, where we have been staying. There are numerous areas with art centres, sports facilities, universities, museums etc. Not all of them are named after Nursultan – but many are.
The bus briefly wanders over the river into the ‘old city’. When I say the river, like many cities Astana is built on a river. But in Astana’s case, there are three major rivers running through the city. And when I say ‘old city’, I mean built in the sixties to house agricultural workers brought here for the Soviet ‘Virgin Lands’ project, which ploughed up humongous areas of grassland to grow crops, devastating the natural ecosystem.
The bus makes two stops where we can get off for ten minutes, but it’s not really enough time to appreciate the stops. Especially when you spend the entire time looking for a toilet.
We go through the area where the football stadium is located. There’s also a stadium for marshal arts, a skating rink, a velodrome and a tiddly winks arena. I might have made one of those up.
There’s construction ongoing, what appears to be a long viaduct running above the road for future trains, monorail or similar. Workers are hard at it up scaffolding with no evidence of any PPE. They seem to work long hours, seven days a week. I can’t help but wonder if they are paid well. There doesn’t appear to be much inequality in the city, but that’s because it is designed to be a home and a playground for the rich. There are no beggars on the streets and no one covered in artex popping in the pub after work. But the lights must be kept on, dishes washed and the toilet paper in the hotel rooms renewed. Presumably it is done by people who cannot afford to go to Roast Beef for a meal. They seem to be hidden from sight.
Through the trip we zip past many interesting landmarks that we might have revisited if we were here for longer, although the Grand Mosque is noticeable by its absence from the route. I briefly consider coming back to the impressive looking Expo Centre, with its clever spherical construction, but as with everything in the city, it’s lacking in real character. As Megan puts it, “all fur coat and no knickers”. But not in a good way.
On departing the bus we are tackled by a young lad who is keen to tell us he has visited Wales, and in the process practice his English. He’s a pleasant chap and asks many questions.
His final question is interesting. He asks if we are proud to be British. It’s a loaded question these days. There is a fine line between being proud of your own heritage and hating people who do not share it. An increasing number of people in the UK are cloaking xenophobia as national pride. It’s a worrying time. I get the impression that this is becoming obvious even to people in Kazakhstan. It must be difficult for them to comprehend, as of all the places I’ve ever visited, Kazakhstan is the most harmonious, in terms of different ethnicities getting along famously. I’m sure there are underlying tensions, particularly in more conservative rural areas, but the cities are models of cosmopolitan harmony.
We head back to our favourite Russian punk craft beer pub and finish off what’s left of the mead in their fridge. The barman is wearing a Wales bucket hat and says ‘Diolch’ when we pay. A local musician comes over and offers to buy a round. I briefly try to recall what I had read about it being very rude to turn down a drink, but we decide that it’s just too expensive to let him pay.
We head back to our hotel. Posh and Becks head for their room whilst Megan and I hit the bar for one last time.
Becks soon returns to complain about the WiFi not working and their shower being cold. It’s late at night and I’m thinking he’s wasting his time. There will be no one around to sort it. Fair play, without any fuss, he says he’s happy to wait in reception until it is sorted. We head up to our rooms, but his quiet persistence pays off. Hot and cold running WiFi is restored within the hour.