Go East, Old Man

I remember well the day I found out my then girlfriend was expecting our son.  It was her birthday, and was also the day my decree nisi from my first marriage became effective.  There was no real celebration, for either piece of news, as I was not at home.  I was, of course, travelling.....this time in London, one of my increasingly rare excursions to the UK for work purposes.  She called me around half nine in the morning, and gave me the news.....we were both shocked but overjoyed.  We hadn't really been trying to start a family (but equally hadn't been trying too hard to prevent it happening) but after several months were rapidly coming to the conclusion it wasn't going to happen.  I didn't do too much work that wet February day five years ago, except walk around the client's office with a dumb grin on my face.....I was 52 after all, with three adult sons, and did not expect to hold a baby again until one of them presented me with a grandchild (to this day unlikely).

Anyway, as soon as the doctors back in Warsaw had confirmed the pregnancy, I notified my company of the impending birth (due that October) and requested that afterwards they assign me to relatively close client sites to minimize my time away from home.  They congratulated me and promised me there was plenty of European work coming up, including a pending project in Poland, so there should be no problems.

In October, my son Kuba was born.  He was a bouncing 5 kilos, over 11 lbs, and had a sixth finger on each hand.  Each one was complete, with knuckles and nails, but not skeletally attached to the hands, merely dangling useless by a flap of skin.  They were removed after a couple of days, leaving little stumps that were finally shaved off completely a couple of years later, before he started school.  Today there is no visible scar.  Apart from that, Kuba is the most wonderful, vibrant and handsome little boy....blond haired, blue eyed, a smile that lights up a room, full of mischief and energy, intelligent and increasingly fluent in both English and Polish.

I had a month's paternity leave (2 weeks allowance under EU regulations and a further 2 weeks saved vacation), then spent another couple of weeks on the bench (company slang for being at home without a project).  Then I had to go to Riga in Latvia for a week, to do a little workshop.  That was cool: flying time just over an hour, so I was able to fly up early on the Monday morning and back early on Friday afternoon (the one flight a day each way scheduled kindly) so I was not away too long.  Just what I wanted.

Then I had a call from my boss, advising me of my next scheduled project.  Potentially a year.  Full build.  In Almaty.

Kazakhstan......

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I had to dig out the atlas and consult Wiki for that one.

All I knew about Kazakhstan was that it was part of the old Soviet Union, and that the Baikonur Cosmodrome was there.  Oh, and apparently when Yuri Gagarin landed somewhere in the Kazakh steppes after his space flight the first people to happen upon the capsule, with Yuri sitting cheerfully on top of it, were a group of local Kazakh peasants, who were terrified as they thought he was a visitor from Outer Space (which in a sense he was).  That last factoid could of course be apocryphal, disseminated by the Russian politburo at the time to make Yuri seem even more amazing than he actually was, but it's a nice story anyway.

Wiki was more forthcoming.  I learned that Kazakhstan is the largest of the ex-Soviet republics.  In size (square miles) it is roughly the equivalent to the whole of Western Europe (so France, Germany, the Low Countries, the entire UK, the Iberian Peninsula and Italy).....bloody big.  It's total population, by contrast, roughly matches that of the Netherlands......so bloody empty.   It has vast wealth from oil, natural gas and minerals, and the government is busy spending it building huge modern cities that nobody lives in, while the bulk of the population remains crushingly poor.  Where is all that money going to?  As the Americans say, go figure.....

Yep, corruption is endemic, from the President down.  Nursultan Nazhabayev is an exceedingly powerful and wealthy man, and completely unopposed as President.  He calls himself the Father of Kazakhstan, the Great Ruler (remind you of anyone....perhaps a Georgian calling himself Joe Stalin?) and is in I think his fourth or fifth term of office.  Every few years there is a completely democratic election where some poor sod is put up against him, but trails home in second place whilst the Great Ruler picks up 98% or so of the popular vote.  Massive portraits of him smile benevolently down on you as you walk through Independence Square in Almaty (as I saw for myself later), with his arms around the shoulders of beaming boys and girls.....  In fact the bloke is actually very popular.....I never met anybody with a bad word to say about him (although that might have something to do with the fact that criticizing him verbally or otherwise is punishable by five years in the slammer).

His family, meanwhile, hold positions of power within the country's infrastructure, without actually being in government.....a daughter, as I recall, runs the country's main television station, whilst a sibling runs its biggest selling mass circulation newspaper; another was a senior figure in the oil industry.  Below the First Family there is layer upon layer of officialdom, all with their hands out for reward in making business easier to pursue there, both in and out of government.  Graft, in that sense rather than the more normal definition of hard work, is a way of life (unless of course you're part of the masses).  OK, it was nearly five years ago, and things may have changed since then (frankly since I left I haven't bothered to keep up to date with Kazakh current affairs) but somehow I doubt that.  Someone I know has been working there for some months now - he has his own import/export concern - and despite having good contacts "at the highest level", as he put it to me, and spending months in meeting after meeting, discussion after discussion, I don't think he's any nearer to closing the deal than he was when he first went through Kazakh border controls.  I hope I'm wrong....  Perhaps he hasn't greased enough palms yet.

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So anyway, my wonderful employer, ever mindful of my wish to work close to home for a while, after my new parenthood, insisted I had to go to Almaty (roughly 100 miles or so from the Chinese border) for an unspecified period of time.  From past experience, I had a feeling it would run to months, even years.  I was not impressed.

We discussed it.  I tried to get a time limit imposed, pointing out that I didn't speak Russian or Kazakh (the place has its own language, not dissimilar to Russian, even down to the use of Cyriilic script...it might as well be Martian to me).....they pointed out I didn't speak German or French either but had been quite happy to work in Zurich and Geneva.  I pointed out that I was employed by the company's Central European region and wherever Kazakhstan actually was it was most certainly not in Central Europe.  They pointed  out I had also accepted assignments in Mexico, the US, Kenya and Saudi Arabia in the recent past, and none of them were in Central Europe either.

In the end, they appealed to my vanity......you're the best person for the job, no-one else has your breadth of experience, blah blah blah.  It works every time, doesn't it?  We agreed I would go there in January, spend two weeks on-site and one week off, until such time as they were able to find a local resource to take over, not later than March.  Maybe three trips then.  OK, I'll do it.

I should really have known better after nearly 7 years with the company.

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It took about a month to get prepared, mainly because of visa issues.  As a UK citizen living in Poland it can sometimes get a bit complicated explaining why I choose to live in Warsaw rather than say Wigan.....I guess it's some kind of bizarre Cold War hang up....and Kazakhstan has a small presence in Warsaw.  Its Embassy is in a little villa in the expensive Wilanow district, within walking distance of the old Royal palace and its beautiful gardens, and is only open to visitors three days a week.  Then once the formalities are completed and fees paid (cash only, no credit cards) the whole package including your passport is sent to Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) for processing.  I wasn't very happy about having to give up my passport but had no choice in the matter.  It meant at least that I would not be able to leave Poland, meaning my company couldn't send me somewhere else at short notice (as they have a habit of doing).  In the event it took a little longer than expected, due to the Christmas holidays delaying the post, already slow in Poland at the best of times, but my application was granted and my passport safely returned carrying a very colourful full page visa of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in both the local language and English.  It ran for three months and was multi-entry, so that I could return home during the period of its validity as often as I wanted.

So off I went.  There are, of course, no direct flights between Poland and Kazakhstan, so I had to route via Frankfurt.  It's not my favourite airport - it's huge, badly signed, in a constant state of upgrade and has more security checkpoints than any other airport in the world....more in fact than some countries.  Getting around is a nightmare, and involves huge amounts of time queueing to be searched and your bags x-rayed,, and if you're leaving the EU on your connecting flight a terminal change as well.  Since the majority of passengers are indeed leaving the EU, the airport being one of the biggest transit hubs in the world, there are always thousands of people jostling to go through the handful of checkpoints that are open at any given point.  Can anybody tell me why there are always more checkpoints closed than open, even on the busiest days?  I have no idea......but it seems to be the norm, and is incredibly frustrating.  I've missed flights as a result.  There are also insufficient gates, meaning that half the time your flight arrives and parks out on the apron somewhere, and you have further delays while you're bussed into the Terminal.

Bob's Law (that's mine) states that the shorter my connection time at Frankfurt Airport the farther away from the Terminal I will arrive.  On my first trip to Almaty this was indeed the case.  We parked somewhere half-way between Frankfurt and Mainz, had a 10 minute wait for the bus (I assume the driver got lost in the January blizzard), and a 15 minute drive back to the Terminal.  By the time I hit my first security checkpoint 35 of my available 65 minutes to departure time had already been used up.  Passport control....big queue.  Rush through.  Down a flight of steps.....security check point.  Bigger queue.  Force my way through that.  Another flight of steps, and hit a quarter mile tunnel between terminals.....and the moving walkways are busted.  I gallop through and arrive out of breath, lugging my laptop and sweating profusely.  Big queue at the lifts, so I take the stairs.....up four floors.  Arrive at the top, into the Departure hall and check my gate.....it's at the far end of the Terminal, another quarter of a mile away, and my flight is showing Last Call.   I gallop off through the crowds, and half way along.....security checkpoint.  More x-rays (my fourth so far, 2 in Warsaw and 2 here).  I get through, and charge off down the rest of the hall.  I arrive at my Gate....two ground-staff just beginning their closing procedures.  They rush me through (the last passenger), through the doors, down a flight of stairs and onto....another bus..  Three other people looking equally pissed off and breathless.  We drive off into the snow, and 15 minutes later pull up at the plane for Almaty......parked next door (say 20 yards) from the LOT plane I arrived on an hour earlier.

Germanic organization, eh?  Legendary.......

The flight was a night one, 6 1/2 hours, and there is a 5 hour time difference from CET.  So my arrival in Almaty was in the early hours of a very cold morning.  It was comfortable enough, the food was ok, the in-flight entertainment pretty good.  I tried to sleep but as usual failed....I can never sleep on planes for some reason.  Coming back from Mexico once BA gave me an upgrade to Business Class, complete with flat bed and screen to seal myself off from the outside world, and I couldn't sleep there either.  It's a real pain.  Anyway, I spent the entire flight contemplating not the project, not my family but what a total farce travelling through Frankfurt can be, and dreading having to put up with a scramble like that every couple of weeks.  And wondering if my baggage had made the flight - I wasn't too hopeful.  In the event it did make it, but the next two trips I made resulted in missing bags, and since the flight isn't daily I was without fresh clothes until the Wednesday each time.  I bought new stuff from a local supermarket, shirt, tie, underwear, socks, and it was servicable enough.  I claimed the cost back on expenses.....one of my 80 claims.

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My first couple of weeks there were quite busy.  The bank were pleased to see me, and presented me with a very attractive lady as interpreter.  Like most Kazakhs, she was Asiatic (could easily be mistaken for Chinese in fact), about 25 I guess, fresh out of university.  She knew very little about banking and next to nothing about the securities business, but spoke fluent English with a lisping American accent and was a quick learner.  I worked with her closely the whole time I was there and know absolutely nothing about her except that she didn't come from Almaty but a small town with an unpronounceable name somewhere miles away.   I can't even remember her name.  But she was very efficient, and a huge help organizing my meetings (many of those) and making sure I understood what the client was asking and they understood what I was saying.

I was placed in an apartment about 15 minutes trudge through half a metre of snow in -15C temperatures from the office.  Its proximity was about the only thing to recommend it......it was truly awful, the worst I've ever had.  It was in a typically crumbling and smelly Soviet era apartment block, on the ground floor, and comprised a single room.  The kitchen area (sink, 2 ring gas stove, a couple of cupboards and a microwave) was opposite the front door, which had a double security lock for some unknown reason....there was nothing worth stealing.  In the opposite corner was a bathroom of sorts - basically a shower stall, sink and toilet - separated from the rest of the room by a raggedy curtain.  The rest of the room represented the lounge/bedroom, sparsely furnished with a small formica topped table and chair, a sofa bed, and on a shelf a small tv.  There was also a rickety cupboard for my clothes.  The two windows, barred outside, were covered by ratty brown curtains that did little to dispel the light from the street lights that stood immediately outside both sides of the block.....darkness was not an issue.  There were no English language tv stations.

I stuck it for a week, mainly because I didn't want to rock the boat on my first trip.  By that time, I was cold and miserable (the heating system in the place was another Stalinist relic) and had had enough.  Then I caved in.  On the second Monday I asked my project manager to find me a new place or find someone else to do the job.  He clearly hadn't seen the place before I arrived and was absolutely appalled, and profusely apologetic.  We spent the rest of the day being driven around to find somewhere else.  I finally settled on a two bedroomed apartment in a block about a mile away, opposite the huge mausoleum of the Presidential Palace, and with truly spectacular views over the mountains just outside town.  The block itself was pretty shitty, the stair-wells stunk of piss and the lifts only worked sporadically (I was on the 14th floor) but the apartment itself had been re-furbished to a surprisingly high quality - most of the furniture was Ikea - and it had cable tv.  Still not a lot of English language (I found a local news station that broadcast what amounted to government propoganda in English 24 hours a day, and a German cable news channel that every two hours had a 30 minute news show and 30 minute documentary strand in English) but at least I had MTV and Eurosport.....and thanked God for the Australian Open tennis championships and in football the African Cup of Nations, both of which were extensively shown.  Between them, they kept my sanity!

The block was surrounded by other, smaller blocks, separated by well tended and manicured gardens, and where the estate road met the main road into Almaty (about 100 yards away) stood the local equivalent of a Tesco superstore, so I was pretty comfortable.  Prices were very low and there was a lot of produce I recognised....global brands like Heinz Beans, Dolmio pasta sauces, Kellogs Cornflakes, various Birds Eye frozen stuff, Nescafe coffee.  The bread was a bit doughy but edible, the fruit and veg fresh and surprisingly tasty considering the time of year and the fact that it was all imported.  Fresh meat was more of a lottery....chicken and turkey, even pork, was recognizable, but the darker meats more of a risk, if you will.  The Kazakhs eat a lot of horse meat, and uncooked (or even cooked for that matter) it was difficult to tell it apart from beef, especially if it was minced.  All the packaging was of course in Cyrillic script so for me it was really a case of taking pot luck.....buying it and hoping for the best.  I'm sure over the time I was there I inadvertantly ate a lot of minced horse....but when properly cooked and flavoured in a curry, or bolognese, or home made cottage pie with baked beans, I couldn't tell the difference.  So all in all I ate very well.

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The weeks passed.  I went home, spent time with Ania and Kuba, visiting family and friends and relaxing, then returned to Almaty.  Then again.  And again.  And, dammit again.  March came and went with no sign of a replacement.  I was asked to extend until the end of May, and assured offers had been made to potential replacements with answers eagerly awaited.  Reluctantly I agreed.  Softening the blow somewhat was the arrival in Almaty of some guys I knew well from the London office in April, some to join my project, others to start a new one at the central bank.  I was then assigned to that project too....and alarm bells rang.  My deadline was May remember......I didn't want to get too involved in a second project for only a few weeks.  I was told not to worry, your replacement when he comes on board will take over both, you're just minding the shop in the meantime.  Again I had little option but to stay there. 

May came and the snows went.  That was extraordinary.....I went home for my week off on the Friday night, leaving still well over a foot of snow and a temperature hovering around zero.  When I returned the following weekend, it had all vanished completely, the trees and flowers in the parks were coming into blossom, and the temperature was a balmy 23 or 24C.  Of course, my wardrobe was still largely for winter, so I sweltered uncomfortably through that fortnight.

And still my replacement failed to materialise.  May went and in came June, with the 2006 World Cup in Germany to look forward to.  By this time we had identified the best bars to watch sports, as expats do the world over, so despite the time difference meaning we'd be watching some matches until the early hours of the morning we were looking forward to that.  Then July.....scorchingly hot, temperatures over 30C.  Still no sign of a replacement....and I had a row with my line manager back in Greece who told me I had to stay there as long as I could, replacement or not, because there was no work for me in Europe so she would have to "release you soon....".  Point taken.  I stayed, but sent a mail to HR complaining bitterly about the way I had been lied to and strung along for six months, my personal wishes completely ignored.

Then, early in August, I walked into the office and was introduced to a lady, Tatiana, who was my replacement.  Finally!  I was so happy I kissed her......much to the amusement of everyone in the office and her embarrassment.  We spent the rest of the week going over everything on both projects, I sent my line manager a mail and told her I had been replaced so was coming home and she'd better start looking for a new gig.  Then I packed my bags, got totally pissed. and flew home.  Frankfurt Airport has never looked so good....I even got an upgrade to Business Class for some reason (they did it on the half-empty plane, and I still have no idea why).

My six weeks in Kazakhstan had stretched to just over 8 months.

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Despite all the crap that went on, and with the benefit of hindsight, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm glad I went there.  Part of it of course was the company I had for most of the time....it's one of the best parts of my job.  Frequently you run into people you've worked with previously and perhaps haven't seen for several years, so of course there's a lot of catching up to do.  So you sit in a bar somewhere, drink the local beer, and eat well, and swap war stories.  There is much laughter, much piss taking, and much exchanging of advice and rumour (both good and bad in each case).  You help each other with specific problems and questions relating to your respective projects, you complain about the client (who may always be right but is usually wrong and  invariably a pain in the arse) and you bitch about the company and its internal politics....my God, how you bitch!!!!  You put the world to rights, argue sport and religion and politics, debate books and music and movies, complain about local tv (always crap).  You go sightseeing on the weekend, which always involves trying out new bars, and may even involve using local transport (which can be challenging).  Then at the end of it all, you head off to the airport and go your separate ways....with the parting shot of "Great to see you, mate, take care and see you in a bar somewhere".

It's great.  Best job I've EVER had....

It's also sort of a tradition that the first person on site does all the prospecting for nightlife (for which read any bars with big tv's showing Sky Sports) and decent clubs and restaurants, and then introduces everyone else to them in due course.  It often works that you get an e-mail from someone announcing he's on his way in a week or two, heard you're there, got any info?  Sometimes they just turn up unexpectedly, which is what happened with my mates here.  As it was still absolute brass monkey weather I hadn't done a lot of exploring, apart from a trawl through the various internet Almaty tourist sites (hundreds of them) and made a few notes.  I hadn't even explored the town.....I must have been a huge disappointment to the boys.

When the weather moderated, in late April, a couple of us spent a weekend exploring, wrapped up in our thermals and overcoats (living in Poland I was probably better off in this area).  Almaty is laid out in blocks, a bit like New York and other cities in the US.  There didn't appear to be separate business and shopping districts, rather everything was lumped together centrally, including the better hotels, restaurants and nightclubs.  To the south, the land slopes up to a splendid range of mountains, an offshoot of the Himalayas, that separates Kazakhstan from its neighbouring ex-Soviet republic of Uzbekistan.  They are high enough to be snowbound all year round at their highest levels, and summer sunrises and sunsets particluarly were spectacular as the snowy peaks turned golden and orange and red by turns.  To the north, the city ran out of steam somewhere around the airport, and roads and railtracks then led off into hunderds of miles of featureless and largely uninhabited steppe.  About 40 miles east, towards China, was a massive lake that in summer became the nearest thing Kazakhstan has to a tourist resort.  At the time there was much public debate about a proposed casino development there: its supporters said it would be hugely popular, a Central Asian Vegas that would bring in billions of dollars of tourist money.  Its opponents said it would be horrible, a Central Asian Vegas bringing in billions of dollars of tourist money, as well assorted low-life gangsters, prostitutes and various sexually transmitted diseases that didn't sit well in a predominantly Muslim society.  I have no idea who won the argument or whether the development went ahead, but it was an interesting discussion all the same.  Beyond that, and slightly north, was another area that had been used for 50 years by the Soviet government to test it nuclear weapons and dump all its toxic waste.  I'm told the place is of course uninhabited and so polluted it glows in the dark....I was told it was the most polluted place on earth.  Whether true or not, it's an ecological disaster to match or exceed the more famous destruction of the Aral Sea on the country's western border.

Over the months we were there we only once left the city.  Travelling anywhere by public transport was very difficult as there wasn't a lot of public transport to travel on.  There was a fleet of minibuses that cruised around, all of which looked as though they were about to break down.  The destination boards were of course in Cyrillic and as none of us spoke Russian or could read it we had not the faintest idea where they went.  The same applied to the bigger long-distance coaches and the trains.  Distance was also a big issue.  Almaty, in the bottom right hand corner of Kazakhstan, is literally hundreds of miles from anywhere.  Astana, the capital, is a day's trainride away to the north-east, Moscow four days.  I did think about making a trip to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, now parts of it at least are open to the public, but I found out you needed to apply for a permit, wait a month for it to be given, and then spend a day each way on a train to get there and back, so I didn't bother.  So unless you can persuade a work colleague to give you some time away from his family to ferry you around you're really stuck in town.

But we did manage one trip, in March, when there was still a lot of snow around.  A couple of bank people offered to take my mate and I sight-seeing one Sunday.  We of course agreed, so at 11:30 that Sunday, they picked us up in a very battered but servicable Toyota mini-bus.  We headed out of town, south into the mountains.  We drove for maybe an hour, climbing all the time on a winding but well maintained road through woodland, smothered in a blanket of fresh snow (and it was still coming down as we drove).   Eventually we came to what looked like a football stadium complete with floodlights, but passed it without stopping.  We continued for another 10 minutes or so, then pulled over into a lookout place.  Well below us we could see the stadium, and saw that it was after all not a football ground but instead a huge (and at that time crowded) ice rink.  Beyond it, across the tree tops, we could see the city spread out, and in the distance just make out the airport buildings, floodlit on the northern extremity.  The atmosphere was hazy due to the continuing snow, although towards Almaty the clouds were breaking up and blue sky increasing.  But the mountains above us were still shrouded in cloud and the snow continued to fall.  We shot off some pictures, got back into the van, and pressed on.  A couple  of miles further on, we reached the base station of a chair lift that continued up the slopes,  and it was busy.  This was Tchimbulek, the local ski resort.  Later that year, an application was made to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, but Almaty was beaten and the games awarded to another Russian applicant, Sochi.

We went for a ride up the ski lift, to the top station.  It was way above the tree line, surrounded by bare rocky slopes, the peaks themselves lost in the now close clouds.  Spectacular, but bitterly cold.  Our Russian colleagues asked if we would like to sled down....with some hesitation we agreed.  We sat on what was not much more than a plywood door with rope hamdles looped here and there to hold onto for safety.  There was a guy roped to the front, on skis, and another behind.....and off we went.  The guy in front started us moving downslope, then spent the whole ride sideways, like the guy behind, acting as a very rudimentary set of brakes.  The ride took maybe five minutes, it was terrifying but exhilerating, and we reached the bottom safely, looking like 2 snowmen.  Great fun.  Our colleagues took the lift, so we had to wait a quarter of an hour for them.

Back into the van, and we headed back to Almaty.  Just beyond the ice rink we stopped and picked up some more bank people, including my interpreter, who had been hiking through the forest (a popular passtime in any season).  When we reached Almaty, we turned down a side street quite close to my apartment block, and after a few minutes pulled up outside a very shabby-looking bungalow with a corrugated iron roof.  I assumed we were visiting someone's home but no: it turned out to be a local restaurant.  We were given a back room that had a single massive round table to seat 15, laden with food.  There were salads, fresh rolls, loaves of fresh bread hot and steaming from the oven, slabs of butter and cheeses, pots of jam and honey, and fruit.  Waitresses busied themselves bringing in plates of pizza, massive (and very tasty) pies that looked like cornish pasties but filled with (I think) minced horsemeat and spicy vegetables, potatoes and beans, all hot and freshly cooked.....no microwaving in this place!  For drink, we had a choice of juices (apple or orange), coca cola or vodka.......and between us we got through a good dozen bottles of the stuff.  The Kazakhs drank it like water, and it seemed to have about as much effect.  My mate and I ate like kings and left there pissed, and our local friends were still sober.  They drove us back to our apartments to end a fantastic day.

And thoughout the entire day, our host had never switched off the engine of the van - it had been running all day, even when locked and parked at Tchimbulek and the restaurant.  It was the only way to keep the heater running and prevent the thing from turning into a block of ice.

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The rest of the time we stayed in town. 

There is a lot to see.  There are several nice parks, all immaculately maintained, that are very nice to relax in during the hot summer months.....plenty of benches under shady trees, fountains, nice flower displays.  I announced one time I was intending to get my shorts on and shirt off in one close to my apartment one hot summer weekend, get the suntan started, and my interpreter was horrified....she said I could be arrested for "offending the public decency".  I did it anyway, got a few dirty looks from the older locals (although no-one under about 30 seemed to take any notice) but wasn't arrested. 

There are museums, art galleries, concert halls, mosques (the majority of the country being Muslim) the biggest of which stands right next door to the Orthodox Cathedral, both close to the train and bus station.  There is a huge Presidential Palace, parts of which were open to the public when Yer Man wasn't in town.  Crossing the roads, especially around Independence Square (where stands the Palace) can be dangerous as the majority of drivers seem to go on amber without waiting for green.  There is one road entering the square that is four lanes each way and with the central reserve maybe 100 yards across.  It's impossible to cross it within the light phase, and you always end up running the last 10 yards or so, with impatient Kazakh light jumpers blasting their horns at you impatiently.  Great stuff.

There are bars and restuarants of every nationality.  One, close to the Palace again, specialized in Belgian beer and housed a casino too......you couldn't miss it, because outside the door stood a 30 foot scale model, brilliantly lit up at night, of the Eifel Tower.  Ridiculous but a good landmark, and the beer was good.  Close to the office was a favourite hang-out, the San Siro sports bar.  It was divided up into themed areas devoted to a top football club.....one corner was Manchester United, another Real Madrid, another AC Milan....you get the picture.  Each area was decorated with signed memorabilia.....shirts, photos, programs and so on...from that club, and there were several big screen tv's that were tuned to a Dubai based sports channel (a clone of Sky Sports) that broadcast wall to wall sport.....Premier League football, La Liga, F1 racing, test cricket and so on.....all with English commentary and studio presenters.  During the World Cup it was open until the middle of the night, broadcasting the games, and was always packed with ex-pats.  The food and drink was very good and reasonably priced.  I had one altercation when I wanted to put a bill on my credit card and instead of bringing the machine to our table the guy took my card out the back to the kitchen area.  I had read that card fraud was common across all ex-Soviet republics (and elsewhere of course), and I was damned if I'd stand back and let them clone my card, so I followed the guy......there was much screaming and shouting, a bit of pushing and shoving, but he backed down and let me in, where I could make sure nothing untoward happened.  I paid the bill, we left, and for safety's sake I never went back.

Most of the time we used one or other of the three Irish Bars in town.  The biggest and most publicised was the Guinness Pub, in a cellar next to the Hotel Kazakhstan.  It was ok, the food and beer acceptable, there was live music and sport tv, but it was pricy and somehow lacking in atmosphere.  We only went there once.  Not far away, tucked in a little side street behind the Presidential Palace, was the Dublin.  This was probably our favourite, as much as anything because of its location; we all lived in apartments scattered around town and the Dublin was kind of in the middle of them all.  It had a much better atmosphere, was smaller and snugger, more Irish-feeling, and the food was very good indeed.  It also had a good range of beers both local and imported (as well as Guinness there was Kilkenny and Murphy's from Ireland and John Smith's Yorkshire bitter) at sensible prices.  And of course the same sports tv.  And an outside terrace that was nice in the summer.  We got to know the owner, a Russian guy called Ivan (if I remember correctly) who had left Moscow for Almaty to seek his fortune.  He seemed to be doing ok.  Finally there was a place called Mad Murphy's.  This was in a residential street off the city centre, and had a good garden with tables and umbrellas and a play area for kids.....again, really nice in summer.  Good selection of drinks and a fine menu (their cottage pie was really tasty).  I spent many happy hours there through July weekends, with a good book, relaxing through the weekend, enjoying the beer and food.

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So that was Kazakhstan.

Initially I hadn't really wanted to go there, and for the first weeks at least didn't really think too much of it.  But as I settled in (as often happens) and started to get my bearings, I grew to quite like Almaty.  It's an interesting place and I know I only scratched the surface of what is there (both in the town and the country as a whole).  It's becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination, and offers trekking in the steppes and mountains, rafting trips on the rivers, and much more besides nowadays.  It may even have its own Las Vegas now.....

I'm glad I went there.

But I'm not sure I'd want to return.