University Dreamland

Most universities in Central Asia I’ve visited since the mid-1990s are in some state of disrepair—from the curriculum and academic management to the facilities and classrooms. But there’s one where no expense has been spared—Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. 

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube         

I’d read about the heavy investment in construction and the contracts with leading universities in the United States, the UK, and Asia, but nothing prepared me for the view from the entrance portico. A long, wide mall, with fountains, palm trees, and carefully manicured shrubs, all enclosed under a huge atrium (palm trees don’t do too well in an Astana winter). Lining the atrium are five-story blocks, each reserved for one of the international partners. When one researcher showed pictures of the university’s interior to focus groups in Almaty, most participants thought it was a shopping mall.

Photo by Natalie Koch

Why did Kazakhstan spend millions on Nazarbayev University when facilities and conditions at other universities are lacking, when teachers have to take two or three jobs to make ends meet, when there’s no paper for the printer in the dean’s office and sometimes no chalk for the chalkboard? It’s about creating world-class education, of course, to provide the workforce for business and government. But it’s also about Kazakhstan’s image on the world stage.

            Location is everything, and Nazarbayev University is the first complex you pass when you drive in on the airport road. I approached the university from the other direction on the Number 10 bus. Workers were planting flats of flowers in the newly cultivated beds. Vehicles rolled up for the start of the workday, disgorging well-dressed administrators. A luxury bus arrived with what I assumed (by their more casual dress, balding heads, and laptops) were foreign faculty, bused in from apartment complexes in the new city.

            Will the investment succeed? Of course it will. The university has the president’s name on it, so anything short of success is unthinkable.  But how well Nazarbayev University creates the “international education on the steppe” experience remains to be seen. Although instruction is in English, most students are from Kazakhstan so they are not exposed to students from other countries and cultures. And the moment they leave the classroom and get on the bus back into the city they’ll be speaking Kazakh and Russian again. Graduates will certainly have a competitive edge in the job market, but creating an elite group at the expense of improving general standards in higher education leaves other talented students, especially in the regions, at a disadvantage.

The President's Dream City--Ak Orda

The left bank of the River Ishim in Astana is bisected by a broad pedestrian mall. At one end, close to the Pyramid of Peace and Accord, is the presidential palace—the Ak Orda (White House), its blue-and-gold dome topped with a golden spire.

There’s more gold inside in the majestic halls used for state and ceremonial events, including the pessimistically named Hall of Extended Negotiations. Twenty-one types of marble were used for the floor patterns. According to the palace website, “Metaphorically, it reflects a steppe civilization in the mirror of the European culture, a synthesis of arts of the planet’s largest continent—Eurasia.” I have no idea what that means, but it’s typical of the lyrical descriptions of most of Astana’s new buildings. 

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

The President's Dream City--Khan Shatyr

Astana’s monument to consumerism, Khan Shatyr, stands at the opposite end of the pedestrian mall from the Ak Orda (White House) and Palace of Peace and Accord.  Like the Palace, it was designed by the British architect Sir Norman Foster. 

Khan Shatyr has been described as “the largest tent in the world” but to compare it to something you can buy from an upscale outfitter or even to a large marquee is a gross understatement. The needle-tipped structure, 500 feet tall and with a floor area the size of ten football stadiums, is designed to evoke the traditional nomadic dwelling, the yurt. It leans sideways, as if blown by the wind from the steppe. Khan Shatyr is constructed from three translucent layers of a fabric called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene suspended on a network of cables strung from a central spire. The transparent material allows sunlight through, which, in conjunction with air heating and cooling systems, is designed to maintain an internal temperature of 15–30 Celsius (59–86 Fahrenheit) in the main space and 19–24 Celsius (66–75 Fahrenheit) in the retail units.

Khan Shatyr roughly translates as the tent of the khan, or king, but it’s all about business and entertainment, not politics. Underneath the tent is a huge shopping mall with squares and cobbled streets, movie theaters, a botanical garden, boating river, mini-golf, roller coaster, water park, and indoor beach resort, with sand, palm trees, and tropical plants shipped in from the Maldives. If Dubai can have its indoor ski slope, then Astana deserves its tropical beach.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs and Articles) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

The President's Dream City--Nur Astana Mosque

The Nur Astana mosque in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on the left bank of the River Ishim is the largest in Central Asia, with room for five thousand worshippers inside and another two thousand outside (presumably only in summer).

The glass, concrete and granite structure is 40 meters (131 feet) high, symbolizing the age of the Prophet Muhammad when he received the revelations; the minarets are 63 meters (207 feet) high, the age of Muhammad when he died. Unlike other left-bank buildings, the government did not pay for construction. The mosque was a gift from the Emir of Qatar.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

The President's Dream City--the Palace of Peace and Accord

The President's Dream City--Bayterek

The most popular destination in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, for domestic and foreign tourists is Bayterek, the monument and observation tower in the new city on the left bank of the River Ishim.  Bayterek represents a poplar tree holding a golden egg, a central symbol in Turkic mythology—the tree of life. Samruk, the magical bird of happiness, is said to have laid its egg in the branches of a poplar tree. Not coincidentally, Samruk is also the name given to Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth corporation which owns the government oil, gas, and mining companies, the railroad system, postal services, the national airline, and financial groups. In Astana, Samruk literally laid a golden egg.

The observation deck is 97 meters (318 feet) above ground level, corresponding to 1997, the year Astana became the capital. One level offers 360-degree views of Astana and beyond, with a three-dimensional model of how the city will look in the future. The second and higher level features a wooden sculpture of a globe and a gilded print of Preseident Nursultan Nazarbayev’s right hand. Bayterek has an almost shrine-like quality. It is easy to see that, after Nazarbayev’s death, it will likely become a place of pilgrimage, where citizens, cursing the latest set of scoundrels ruling the country, will solemnly place a hand in that of the Great Leader and ask him to return from the grave to restore national pride.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

Planet Astana

For many visitors, the capital of Kazakhstan is an astonishing sight—unlike any other city they’ve seen. My first impressions—from the air and then from the airport highway—evoked otherworldly metaphors. Strange shapes rose out of the steppe—spires, domes, globes, ovals, and pyramids in gold, silver, blue, and turquoise. The taxi passed the gleaming facade of Nazarbayev University, then sports stadiums and arenas built for the 2011 Asian Winter Games, with their massive, curved metal and concrete spans. Then triumphal arches, monumental public buildings, upscale apartment blocks, the huge Nur Astana mosque, shopping malls, and manicured parks, most of which on a chilly Saturday afternoon in September were almost deserted.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

Photo by Natalie Koch

Whatever you think about futuristic architecture (or what it cost to build it, and whether the money could have been better invested in Kazakhstan’s social needs), Astana is unlike any other capital city in Central Asia. Almaty (the former capital) and Tashkent look like other Soviet-era cities with their colonnaded public buildings and monotonous apartment blocks. Bishkek and Dushanbe have similar architecture, but are rougher around the edges. Astana looks more like Dubai. It is growing fast, but even by the latest (2012) population estimate of 775,000, it is still less than half the size of Almaty or Tashkent (each of which has about two million inhabitants). However, the futuristic architecture makes Astana look and feel bigger. Which is exactly what its chief conceptual architect, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, intended.

Photo by Natalie Koch

Like other capital cities throughout human history, Astana is designed to impress visitors. Just as medieval travelers returned home with tales of the fabulous cities of the East, modern travelers to Astana are treated to a visual spectacle. Astana is a twenty-first-century version of Karakorum, the thirteenth-century capital city of the Mongol Empire.  Contemporary visitors to Karakorum were suitably awed, perhaps because they thought the Mongols were too busy rampaging and pillaging their way across Asia and Eastern Europe to actually build anything more than siege fortifications and campfires.

            In 1253, the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck, who had accompanied the French king Louis IX on the Seventh Crusade, set out from Constantinople for Karakorum. Louis had given the monk the medieval version of mission impossible—convert the Mongols to Christianity. Whether or not William knew the futility of his assignment, he set out to record his party’s journey in detail, producing one of the great travel narratives of the age, comparable to that of Marco Polo.

            After traveling for almost seven thousand miles William and his companions entered a wealthy, bustling city at the heart of a major trading network, with markets, temples, and a cosmopolitan population, including Christians. The Great Khan even staged a debate at court among adherents of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. William’s detailed account of the journey and the six-month stay at Karakorum, and the reports of other missionaries and merchants, helped to counter popular views of the Mongols as a murderous horde.

Photo by Natalie Koch

Like Karakorum, Astana is the concrete symbol of a modern and business-friendly Kazakhstan, an emerging economic and cultural power at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. In his writings and public speeches, Nazarbayev positions Kazakhstan within Eurasia, arguing that the nation embodies the best of the West and the East in its economy, education, religion, civil society, and values. The Eurasian motif is visible in the signature architecture of Astana, where elements of Western and Eastern design are combined. Astana hosts Eurasian conferences and events; businesses claim to reach the Eurasian market; Eurasian National University is the largest institution of higher education in the capital.

Photo by Natalie Koch

For Nazarbayev, Astana was never the otherworldly, utopian fantasy that its critics have claimed.  Astana is a combination of Karakorum and Dubai, the center of a new Mongol empire built, not on military conquest, but on oil and gas revenues, authoritarian government, investments in technology and education, and soft diplomacy with the West, Russia, and China. In a commentary to mark Astana Day, the city’s fifteenth anniversary, on July 6, 2013, Nazarbayev wrote: “The fate of Astana is the fate of all Kazakhstanis who have boldly crossed the threshold between two centuries. This is the fate of independent Kazakhstan, which has walked the great path from the obscure fringe of a fallen superpower known to few in the world to a dynamic modern state which the international community knows and respects.” Astana Day was also (not coincidentally) Nazarbayev’s seventy-third birthday. For the crowds who attended the birthday celebrations and the millions who watched the spectacle on TV, the association between city, country, and president was more than metaphorical. Astana was Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev had created Astana. Ergo, Nazarbayev was Kazakhstan.

This is how Russians live?

          As the train pulled out of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, Valery opened the first bottle of cognac and was figuring out how much alcohol our compartment would need for the 15-hour overnight trip.  It was only 4:30 p.m. and, with several hours of daylight left, I wanted to look out of the window, not drink.  But to be sociable, I agreed to a couple of shots.   

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

Miles and miles of Kazakh steppe

             Half an hour later, I escaped to the corridor for an hour before returning to the compartment.  Valery and his friend Igor were already almost through bottle number two, and had bought a bottle of vodka from the drinks trolley.  The restaurant car served vodka and cognac by the glass, but for those who want to drink in compartments, a vendor plies the corridors. 

             Sensibly, Valery and Igor were also eating—dark bread, cheese, sausage, piroshky and strong Russian mustard.  Valery slapped mustard on a slice of bread and cheese and passed it to me.  I felt as if my head was going to explode.  “Good for your health—you won’t get a cold,” Valery laughed as I gasped and turned red.  “Here, have more vodka.” 

             As the evening wore on and the alcohol took its toll, the conversation became more animated and difficult to follow.  Valery and Igor were on their way to Kostanai oblast in northern Kazakhstan for a hunting and fishing trip.  I must have skipped the chapter on winter outdoor sports in the Russian textbook because most of the vocabulary was new to me.  There was a lot of extending of arms and simulated “boom boom” gunshot noises as virtual ducks fell to earth. 

             Valery, who said he loved all sports and was wearing a David Beckham T-shirt, wanted to know why I had never served in the military.  He was reluctant to accept my explanation that there was no military service requirement in the U.K. and that I had arrived in the U.S. too late to be drafted for Vietnam.  Military service was compulsory in the Soviet Union, and Valery served in Afghanistan.  “A useless war,” he admitted, yet he still seemed to resent those who, in his opinion, had not served in the military.  My argument that there are other ways to serve one’s country did not impress him.

             By 10 p.m., everyone had settled down for the night.  Then the snoring started.  It didn’t bother me while we were moving because it was drowned out by the sound of the train, but it woke me when we stopped at stations, as we did four or five times after midnight.  At 3 a.m. at an isolated town on the frozen steppe, there’s no traffic and no people.  Only snoring. 

             At 6 a.m., the attendants knocked on the doors to tell passengers we’d be arriving in Kostanai in an hour.  Valery swung down from the top bunk, opened a bottle of beer and offered me another.  I politely refused.  He smiled.  “Now you know kak russkiye zhivut (how Russians live),” he said, with a smile.  I wanted to say I hoped not all Russians lived that way, but recognized the sincerity of the hospitality.  It was another warm memory of a cold winter.  

Snow days in Astana

          Kazakhstan’s capital Astana is renowned for its futuristic and eclectic (or ostentatious and jumbled, depending on one’s aesthetic) architecture.  It also has a more dubious distinction: it’s the second coldest capital city in the world.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers. Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs and Articles) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube

           If you’re looking for steady, seasonal work, try snow removal in Astana.  In January and February, the city clears snow almost every day.  It’s an impressive operation.  In some North American cities, snow piles up alongside roads and sidewalks.  In Astana they literally remove it.  Workers break up the snow and ice with pickaxes, and shovel it into front loaders that dump it into trucks that haul it out of town.  I don’t know where they dump it, but if some farmer’s field is still under snow in May, we’ll have a clue. 

                Astana is, according to climate data, the second coldest capital city in the world, with Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia (another city where I’ve shivered in April) in first place. It attained this dubious status when it became the capital in 1997, knocking Ottawa out of second spot. Understandably, the government and the tourist agencies don’t talk much about temperatures in their promotional brochures.  They’d prefer foreigners to think that other Northern Hemisphere capitals, such as Moscow, Helsinki, Reykjavik and Pyongyang, are colder. 

                Of course, defining “coldest” raises methodological issues.  Are we looking at average temperatures across the year, average winter temperatures or just extreme conditions, when the temperature plunges to, say, minus 40 Celsius?  I vote (with my cold feet) for average winter temperatures.  Astana has an extreme continental climate with warm summers and long, cold, dry winters.  Temperatures of minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) to minus 35 Celsius (minus 31 Fahrenheit) are common between mid-December and early March.  The city also holds the record for the lowest air temperature ever recorded in Kazakhstan (minus 51 Celsius). Typically, the River Ishim freezes over between the second week of November and the beginning of April.   It can feel even colder because of the wind chill.

                My Fulbright Fellowship began in mid-January and I was prepared.  My wife Stephanie had bought me a warm down coat, an alpaca wool hat, gloves with liners and two pairs of silk long johns.  Unfortunately, United Airlines stored my checked luggage at Dulles Airport for three days before handing it over to Lufthansa for delivery.  The long johns, of course, were in the luggage.  I ventured out the first morning wearing almost all the outer clothing I had, my legs yearning for those long johns.  As I stood shivering at the bus stop, my U.S. embassy liaison nonchalantly remarked that it was “not too cold today—only minus 30 Celsius.” 

                Some parts of Astana are definitely colder than others.  On the left bank among the high-rise apartments, government ministries, malls, parks and public squares, the wind blows hard off the steppe, funneling along the boulevards and buffeting the few pedestrians brave enough to be outside.  On the right bank in the older city, the buildings are closer together, providing shelter from the wind.  Maybe it is partly psychological, but it feels warmer—or, in Astana terms, not as bone-chillingly cold—there.   

           On the streets, walking can be hazardous to your health.  The snow may be only a few inches deep but it is hard-packed.  However, it’s safer walking on the snow than on the sidewalk, which is often a sheet of pure ice.  I moved slowly, looking for patches of snow that would give me a firmer footing.  The locals seemed to be equipped with all-weather feet, walking briskly, some of the women in fashionable high heels.  My complaints about the winter fall on deaf ears.   Alexander, a taxi driver, told me the winter had so far been mild.  He recalled that when he was growing up in a village in northern Kazakhstan, the snow reached almost to the roof (almost 10 feet high) of the family’s one-story home and they had to dig a passage through to the street.  He said they never got too cold, because they had an ample wood supply and because the deep snow around the house had an igloo effect. 

                Even after my long johns arrived and my legs were reasonably warm, I didn’t walk any further than I had to for risk of falling.  In almost three months, I left my apartment in the evening only three or four times to meet friends for dinner, and always took a taxi.  At weekends, I would walk 15-20 minutes along Valikhanova Street to the covered market, four blocks away.  Sometimes I stopped at a coffee shop that doubled as an English-language library with books and DVDs.  It also offered old newspapers and magazines donated by customers.  You could learn that “Republicans Win 2010 Midterm U.S. Elections” six months after the fact in case you missed the story.  I asked a British couple, Paul and Sarah, what they did for fun in Astana in winter.  There was a brief silence.  “Well, we often come here, have coffee, check out a DVD and go home and watch it,” said Sarah.  This was not encouraging news. 

                The government of Kazakhstan has spent lavishly to make its capital a city where people will want to live and work.  It has worked hard to brand Astana as a business destination, and as a host city for international conferences and sporting events.  The city has a modern airport, five-star hotels, new conference and exhibition halls, upscale shopping malls and the usual range of “international” cuisine—from sushi and tapas bars to the somewhat incongruous Irish pubs.  It’s now the sort of city that merits a glossy spread in an airline magazine, the writer gushing about his “24 Hours in Astana, Jewel of the Steppe,” the architecture, museums and nightlife.  But neither government policy nor business investment can change the climate.

The Dubai of the Steppe

Photo by Natalie Koch

Excerpt from Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia published by the Ohio University (Swallow) Press in March 2016

            For many visitors, the capital of Kazakhstan is an astonishing sight—unlike any other city they’ve seen. My first impressions—from the air and then from the airport highway—evoked otherworldly metaphors. Strange shapes rose out of the steppe—spires, domes, globes, ovals, and pyramids in gold, silver, blue, and turquoise. The taxi passed the gleaming facade of Nazarbayev University, then sports stadiums and arenas built for the 2011 Asian Winter Games, with their massive, curved metal and concrete spans. Then triumphal arches, monumental public buildings, upscale apartment blocks, the huge Nur Astana mosque, shopping malls, and manicured parks, most of which on a chilly Saturday afternoon in September were almost deserted.

Photo by Natalie Koch

            Whatever you think about futuristic architecture (or what it cost to build it, and whether the money could have been better invested in Kazakhstan’s social needs), Astana is unlike any other capital city in Central Asia. Almaty (the former capital) and Tashkent look like other Soviet-era cities with their colonnaded public buildings and monotonous apartment blocks. Bishkek and Dushanbe have similar architecture, but are rougher around the edges. Astana looks more like Dubai. It is growing fast, but even by the latest (2012) population estimate of 775,000, it is still less than half the size of Almaty or Tashkent (each of which has about two million inhabitants). However, the futuristic architecture makes Astana look and feel bigger. Which is exactly what its chief conceptual architect, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, intended.

Photo by Natalie Koch

        Like other capital cities throughout human history, Astana is designed to impress visitors. Just as medieval travelers returned home with tales of the fabulous cities of the East, modern travelers to Astana are treated to a visual spectacle. Astana is a twenty-first-century version of Karakorum, the thirteenth-century capital city of the Mongol Empire.  Contemporary visitors to Karakorum were suitably awed, perhaps because they thought the Mongols were too busy rampaging and pillaging their way across Asia and Eastern Europe to actually build anything more than siege fortifications and campfires.

            In 1253, the Flemish Franciscan William of Rubruck, who had accompanied the French king Louis IX on the Seventh Crusade, set out from Constantinople for Karakorum. Louis had given the monk the medieval version of mission impossible—convert the Mongols to Christianity. Whether or not William knew the futility of his assignment, he set out to record his party’s journey in detail, producing one of the great travel narratives of the age, comparable to that of Marco Polo.

            After traveling for almost seven thousand miles William and his companions entered a wealthy, bustling city at the heart of a major trading network, with markets, temples, and a cosmopolitan population, including Christians. The Great Khan even staged a debate at court among adherents of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. William’s detailed account of the journey and the six-month stay at Karakorum, and the reports of other missionaries and merchants, helped to counter popular views of the Mongols as a murderous horde.

Photo by Natalie Koch

           Like Karakorum, Astana is the concrete symbol of a modern and business-friendly Kazakhstan, an emerging economic and cultural power at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. In his writings and public speeches, Nazarbayev positions Kazakhstan within Eurasia, arguing that the nation embodies the best of the West and the East in its economy, education, religion, civil society, and values. The Eurasian motif is visible in the signature architecture of Astana, where elements of Western and Eastern design are combined. Astana hosts Eurasian conferences and events; businesses claim to reach the Eurasian market; Eurasian National University is the largest institution of higher education in the capital.

Photo by Natalie Koch

            For Nazarbayev, Astana was never the otherworldly, utopian fantasy that its critics have claimed.  Astana is a combination of Karakorum and Dubai, the center of a new Mongol empire built, not on military conquest, but on oil and gas revenues, authoritarian government, investments in technology and education, and soft diplomacy with the West, Russia, and China. In a commentary to mark Astana Day, the city’s fifteenth anniversary, on July 6, 2013, Nazarbayev wrote: “The fate of Astana is the fate of all Kazakhstanis who have boldly crossed the threshold between two centuries. This is the fate of independent Kazakhstan, which has walked the great path from the obscure fringe of a fallen superpower known to few in the world to a dynamic modern state which the international community knows and respects.” Astana Day was also (not coincidentally) Nazarbayev’s seventy-third birthday. For the crowds who attended the birthday celebrations and the millions who watched the spectacle on TV, the association between city, country, and president was more than metaphorical. Astana was Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev had created Astana. Ergo, Nazarbayev was Kazakhstan.

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers, or from your local bookstore.  Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs and Articles) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube, http://bit.ly/davidhmould

Tagged: Kazakhstan, Astana, capital, architecture, image, Karakorum, 

This is how Russians live?

Astana railroad station

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia is published by the Ohio University (Swallow) Press (2016)

                As the train pulled out of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, Valery opened the first bottle of cognac and was figuring out how much alcohol our compartment would need for the 15-hour overnight trip.  It was only 4:30 p.m. and, with several hours of daylight left, I wanted to look out of the window, not drink.  But to be sociable, I agreed to a couple of shots.   

                Half an hour later, I escaped to the corridor for an hour before returning to the compartment.  Valery and his friend Igor were already almost through bottle number two, and had bought a bottle of vodka from the drinks trolley.  The restaurant car served vodka and cognac by the glass, but for those who want to drink in compartments, a vendor plies the corridors. 

                Sensibly, Valery and Igor were also eating—dark bread, cheese, sausage, piroshky and strong Russian mustard.  Valery slapped mustard on a slice of bread and cheese and passed it to me.  I felt as if my head was going to explode.  “Good for your health—you won’t get a cold,” Valery laughed as I gasped and turned red.  “Here, have more vodka.” 

                As the evening wore on and the alcohol took its toll, the conversation became more animated and difficult to follow.  Valery and Igor were on their way to Kostanai oblast in northern Kazakhstan for a hunting and fishing trip.  I must have skipped the chapter on winter outdoor sports in the Russian textbook because most of the vocabulary was new to me.  There was a lot of extending of arms and simulated “boom boom” gunshot noises as virtual ducks fell to earth. 

                Valery, who said he loved all sports and was wearing a David Beckham T-shirt, wanted to know why I had never served in the military.  He was reluctant to accept my explanation that there was no military service requirement in the U.K. and that I had arrived in the U.S. too late to be drafted for Vietnam.  Military service was compulsory in the Soviet Union, and Valery served in Afghanistan.  “A useless war,” he admitted, yet he still seemed to resent those who, in his opinion, had not served in the military.  My argument that there are other ways to serve one’s country did not impress him.

                By 10 p.m., everyone had settled down for the night.  Then the snoring started.  It didn’t bother me while we were moving because it was drowned out by the sound of the train, but it woke me when we stopped at stations, as we did four or five times after midnight.  At 3 a.m. at an isolated town on the frozen steppe, there’s no traffic and no people.  Only snoring. 

Miles and miles of the Kazakh steppe ...

                At 6 a.m., the attendants knocked on the doors to tell passengers we’d be arriving in Kostanai in an hour.  Valery swung down from the top bunk, opened a bottle of beer and offered me another.  I politely refused.  He smiled.  “Now you know kak russkiye zhivut (how Russians live),” he said, with a smile.  I wanted to say I hoped not all Russians lived that way, but recognized the sincerity of the hospitality.  It was another warm memory of a cold winter.  

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers, or from your local bookstore.  Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs and Articles) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube, http://bit.ly/davidhmould

This is not English ...

Excerpt from Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia, published by the Ohio University Press (2016)

            “Those are English words—but this is not English.” The phrase, which I dutifully attribute to my wife, Stephanie Hysmith, seemed apt when I opened a book presented to me by Eurasian National University (ENU) in Kazakhstan's capital Astana on my first visit in 2010. It was a hefty tome titled Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Eurasian Education Space, published to mark the country’s advances and investments in higher education in the post-Soviet era and a higher education conference at ENU.

            The introduction claims that Kazakhstan’s trilingual policy in higher education (teaching in Kazakh, Russian, and English) has helped the country advance economically and promoted peace. There’s some truth to that. However, if this book is any guide, the English part of trilingualism has still some way to go. Let’s start with the title. Russian speakers often translate prostranstvo as space, but in this context it sounds silly; “sphere” is better. Not as silly, however, as the captions to the photos, most of which featured conference speakers, signing ceremonies, and group shots of participants. There are the “orderly rows of professors of natural sciences faculty,” some of whom look as if they are quietly snoozing. A picture of four unidentified delegates is bizarrely captioned “In the cycle of supporters of the Eurasian integration.” The group shot of university rectors is modestly titled “The memorable photograph.” Then there’s “The Eurasian vector of intercultural dialogue” (the ENU rector with delegates in national dress at the Palace of Peace and Accord). I don’t know about the after-conference parties, but the daily activities apparently got pretty lively. A picture of a mildly enthusiastic standing ovation is titled “The wild audience applauds.” And then there are “the wild discussions behind the scenes of the forum.” I can imagine the conversation. “You know, Erlan, I’m just crazy about this Eurasian integration idea.” “Me too. Another cup of tea?”

            Of course, it’s all too easy to poke fun. This was a significant conference, and the participants discussed serious issues. But if you’re going to avoid the Borat make-benefit-glorious-nation-of-Kazakhstan tag and present the country (and university) as players on the world stage, the least you can do is hire a good English copy editor. This was a costly publication, with high-quality printing and glossy color photos, but the budget apparently did not include a close review of the text, which was probably translated word for word, the editor sometimes opting for the second or third dictionary meaning.

            Unfortunately, literal translations are all too common in official communications. My friend Irina Velska, who has excellent English, told me that she once offered to correct the numerous errors in a coffee-table history book produced in her home city of Karaganda. Her offer was refused. The book, she was told, was translated by a “leading professor of English language and literature.” Who was she to think she could improve the text?

Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia (Ohio University Press, 2016) is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and other online retailers, or from your local bookstore.  Read excerpts at www.davidhmould.com (Travel Blogs and Articles) or Facebook /PostcardsFromStanland/ or view readings and interviews on YouTube, http://bit.ly/davidhmould