first and final moments #3

Im Fernzug* nach Göttingen, circa 9pm (GMT +2)

The pilot plunges us into a thick soup of cloud that seems to stretch forever. For several rather wonderful minutes we are lost in a turbulent sea of white**, until suddenly – wham! – an impossibly vivid sunset crashes into view. The black undersides of the rain clouds are streaked through with überdramatic crimson, in a scene that would have black metal CD sleeve designers wetting their laced-up leather pants in delight.

This cycle repeats itself a couple of times (disappearing into cloud, re-emerging into the black metal sunset) until finally we are clear, and descending rapidly onto the biggest airport I've ever seen. In fact, it's not just bigger than other airports – it's a whole different kind of beast. In the same way that a whale isn't just a big fish, so the 'Fraport' in Frankfurt isn't just a big airport. It's a colossal City of Planes, with an infrastructure so complex that it makes me think they must employ Einstein's, Heisenberg's and Planck's direct lineal descendants to handle air traffic control duties.

We land and immediately join a long line of traffic, rolling along behind an Air China jet as though the two were cars on a motorway. We pause periodically at intersections, where sleek Lufthansa giants heading away from the terminal appear to have right of way. At one point, I see two of these giants heading diagonally towards each other, one turning at the last moment in obeyance of lane markings that I can't see from where I'm sitting. Not one to be overawed by machinery, but honestly, I've never seen anything quite like this. There are planes everywhere!

We disembark, and after a brief wait in the 'non-EU' line, I'm out in the street smoking, thinking, and preparing to enter the Deutsche Bahn rail network for the first time in nearly a decade.

Ok, skip forward. Everything I wrote above actually happened about two-and-a-half hours ago. On the flight over here I wrote lots of stuff about KZ, about the things I'll miss (and won't miss), and about my attempts to get acquainted with some of the country's further reaches during my third year there. Then I decided to delete all of that, and to put up a 'photo log' at some time in the not-too-distant future.

Instead, let me tell you what's happening now.

I'm on a train to Göttingen, about two hours north of Frankfurt. My flight was a little late, and it took me a while to sort out some 'arrival issues', so I just hope the hotel will be saving my room for me, despite the late check-in.

(Once, while on holiday in Sweden, my ex- Natalie and I lost our accommodation booking because our plane landed two hours late, and the owner gave our room to someone else. The result was a night spent walking the streets of Stockholm with our enormous bags ... nice city, but not a pleasant way to be introduced to it! Since then, arriving late to hotels and hostels has always made me a bit nervous.)

"So, Mr. Nerd ... any first impressions upon returning to Germany?"

Well, yeeeah. Lots of 'em, in fact. Let me share a few, as is my habit.

Firstly, Europe is not 'Europe'. I mean, as I learned somewhat to my horror this evening, the cost of a 90-minute train trip in Germany is roughly equivalent to a decent week's wage in Ukraine. You can easily see where the money is (and isn't) on this continent.

Secondly: if people here need a light for their cigarette, they say (in German, obviously) "Excuse me. May I have a light, please?" Then they explain apologetically how they came to be without their own lighter, and finish with a cheerful "Many thanks". This is a wild contrast to some more eastern-lying countries I could name, where you often get no more than a two-handed 'lighting my cigarette whilst sheltering the flame from the wind' gesture, followed by a grunt of thanks (and the grunt is optional).

I'm not saying that I prefer one to the other – in fact, the economy of Russian discourse is one of the things I admire about it. Russian-speakers can say so much with one or two words, it sometimes makes English with all of its clumsy auxiliaries ("Did you xxxx yesterday?", "Have you been xxxxing lately?") and elaborate politeness strategies ("Would you kindly pass the xxxx?") seem a little absurd. I'm just saying that it's a striking difference, when you come here from a place with a very different 'culture of communication'.

(One thing I want to add, though: "Darf ich Feuer haben?", which translates literally as "May I have fire?", is one of my favourite phrases in any language :-)

This cheerful politeness also extends to any encounter which involves asking for help and information. Germans aren't known worldwide for being effusive, but they're extremely keen to help travellers – perhaps, one could speculate, because they're such a nation of travellers themselves, and so can empathise with the experience of being in a railway station in a foreign country with little or no idea of where to go or what to do next. But whetever the reason, they help you gladly with anything you need to know, and either they're all excellent actors or their cheerful willingness to do all this helping is really genuine. If it's the second one, it's brilliant and I love them for it.

Also, there's the food. This country is full of edibles that don't look like they want to hurt me. Everywhere I look, I see the word "organisch" ... and the place brims with freshly squeezed juices, salads with leaves (a feature noticeably lacking from the former-Soviet diet), succulent pineapples, freshly-baked bread, and other thoroughly wholesome-looking stuff. It seems nothing less than a minor miracle, after having arrived from the Central Asian Culinary Badlands.

Most miraculous of all, though, are the sausages. In Ukraine I was repeatedly warned that under no circumstances should I buy a sausage on the street. This advice was usually offered in the form of a question like "Where do you think all the tramps and stray dogs go?". And when you looked at the sausages there, it took little imagination to convince yourself that the warnings were genuine. So, as a fan of a good sausage, imagine my delight to be in a land where they look not only safe and edible, but actually tasty. My stomach is very happy that we came to this country )))

Lastly, the concern for hygeine here really leaps out at you when you first arrive. A German public toilet experience goes something like this: you go into a pleasant-smelling room and do what you need to, and when you're done, flushing occurs automatically. You then proceed to the sink, where you wave your hand in front of an electronic sensor to receive a generous amount of soap in your palm. A second electronic sensor also awaits your attention, releasing a generous amount of water in response to your hand-wave. You may then choose from a variety of hand-drying methods, all of which are similarly 'remote activated'. And lastly, the doors are usually turnstile gates that respond to forward pressure from any part of the body – a little push from the knee will get you through. So you walk out of the public toilet without having touched a single surface. I just can't tell you how much I love this. Really, I can't.

However, having enthused so much about the wonders of being a traveller in Deutschland after just a few hours back in the country, I have to say that things have changed for me a little since I was last here. I've already had moments when I've felt that there was 'something missing'. I mean, Germany is great, the people are super-nice, and the language is the most wonderful collection of sounds ever assembled outside of an orchestra pit***. And being here gives me lots of reasons to smile, whether at the stunning landscape or in response to the smiles I get from locals. But ... and here's the big "but" ... it somehow feels a little lacklustre compared to the intensity of life in the East, and I'm already missing that. Not sure if I could ever go back to this Western life. I just don't think it's really 'me' anymore.

Btw, what you've just read is one reason why I like working (at least now that I'm in a profession which I actually like). If I don't work, there's nothing to stop me from musing endlessly on questions like this ... and if I did that every day, I'd be as mad as a lemon before long.

(What, you don't think lemons are mad? You clearly haven't observed them very carefully. They're all insane! Just try and stare one down for ten minutes or so, and see how you feel after that.)

Ok, time to stop writing. It's been a ridiculously long day, starting at 5am and considerably lengthened by flying westwards through five time zones. Anything I've said in the last few hours can probably be written off as the delirious ramblings of a lemon ... I mean, of a madman.

Bye!


* Can someone please tell me if it should be Am Fernzug"? I can't make up my mind. Thanks )))

** I love turbulence; it's easily the most enjoyable part of flying. Rough descents are especially good )))

***. I realise that not everyone agrees with me on this, but frankly you'll never convince me that German isn't a gorgeous language. So unless you're going to tell me that Russian is more elegant and more tender – the only counter-argument I'm prepared to hear – please just nod politely and let's move on.

first and final moments #2

V drugom aeroporte, Astana KZ, circa 1pm (GMT +6)

You know what I want? I want to go through that security gate. Like, really, really want to. Security won’t let me, ‘cause my flight doesn’t board for another four hours. But on this side of the gate the shops only accept Kazakh tenge, and I’ve already exchanged all of mine for dollars, and I really want lunch!

You know what else I want? I want a razetka (an electrical socket ... but razetka sounds much better). Really, really want one.

I’m just a bundle of wants right now.

Anyone the tiniest bit familiar with Buddhism, Shamanism or any other want-abhorring philosophy would be ashamed of me, and I’d be duly lectured. And I probably deserve to be. Still …

Let me through, you bastards!!!

Part 2 of my ‘day of airports’ takes place in Astana, KZ’s gleaming capital-on-the-steppe, where I’m doomed to wait for five hours for my connecting flight to Frankfurt.

A brief wander outside confirms something that I already know about this city: it’s one of the coldest corners of civilisation! Last time I was here was back in February, when I came to do some seminar presentations for teachers using Oxford University Press course books in their high schools. On the first morning, we awoke early to discover that a blizzard was in progress outside our hotel – and when I say “blizzard”, I’m not exaggerating for effect.
It was -20C, and great flurries of snow were zipping about in all directions, some heading downwards toward the Earth (as you’d normally expect snow to do) while others soared wildly upward and away from it.

I asked if the seminar was going ahead, naïvely thinking that a blizzard might call a halt to plans. But this is Astana, and hence nothing out-of-the-ordinary. These are the kind of atmospheric conditions in which the daily business of life is carried out here as per usual. The seminar went ahead, and it was great … but on at least two occasions, I was amused and bemused to overhear people chatting during coffee breaks about the mercifully ‘Nye kholodnaya pagoda’ (“not-cold weather”) they’d been having so far that winter.

Hmmm. I guess everything really is relative.

That visit was also my first opportunity to see the recently completed, Norman Foster-designed Khan Shatyr. This is basically a shopping centre located about a kilometre beyond the far end of Astana’s main boulevard – so no big deal, you might reasonably think – but I’m betting that most people reading this have never seen a shopping centre of quite this kind.

Modelled after a ‘royal yurt’ typical of those used by the Khans, shatyr’s exterior combines the sterile futurism of post-2001 spaceship design with the somewhat comical form of a partly-erected circus tent, its central supporting pole leaning heavily to one side. It squats on the steppe like a stubborn mirage, determined to make you believe that it's real despite your brain’s insistence that nothing so preposterous could actually be loitering out here in a place like this.

Inside you’ve got three floors of predictably overpriced boutiques, some game arcades and similar amusements … and then you’ve got the upper floors, where thankfully things get a little less run-of-the-mill. The highlight is a beach about 50m long, hermetically sealed and temperature controlled, with real beachfront sand trucked in from Turkey (if I remember correctly) and palm trees from somewhere that has lots of spare palm trees. If you qualify for V.I.P. status, you can buy a membership card which entitles you to do the following:

- hurry indoors out of the frigid cold, in your super jacket
  and your big woolly hat that ties at the chin
- take a lift up four floors
- strip off to your underwear 
- relax among the trees or simply luxuriate on the sand,
  in partial view of shoppers
- take a dip whenever you like
- repeat steps 4-5

The premiere weirdness here: Khan Shatyr’s inward-sloping walls are all glass, so as you sip your tropical cocktail and adjust your speedos, you can survey the ice- and snow-covered expanses of the Central Asian steppe.

Of course, not being vippy* enough, I didn’t go to the indoor beach. I did, however, let two minimum-wagers strap me into a chair, send me up to the roof of Khan Shatyr, then drop me like a stone through five storeys. I’m sure many of you have seen a ride at fairgrounds (if you can even call it a ride) which is basically a tall metal pole with hydraulics inside and chairs attached. The chairs are lifted slowly up to the top of the pole, and then the hydraulics are released and anyone foolish enough to be in one of the chairs comes free-falling back to Earth. It’s pointless and terrifying, and I had to do it.

In fact, I was voluntarily sent into freefall seven times inside a Temple of Retail shaped to resemble a giant tent, in the absolute centre of nowhere … which frankly, looking back, makes me wonder whether I’m really playing with a full set of marbles. Feel free to join me in doubting this if you’d like to )))

With that little adventure over, it was back to the absurdly opulent hotel (previously some kind of theatre, now a virtually deserted fiesta of lavish carpentry, statuary and plasterwork) to enjoy sweet tea and lemon while the weather continued violently arguing with itself outside.

So yeah, that’s Astana: an architectural fun park, largely unknown to the world, where the most whimsical demons of Lord Foster’s imagination are allowed to physically manifest. (Foster has collaborated with President Nursultan Nazarbayev on several architectural behemoths, all of which seemingly bear witness to Pressie N’s wish to be remembered as a kind of ‘New Sun King’ of the East.) It manages to be both fascinating and abhorrent, admirably bold and mildly obscene** at the same time. But still, it’s definitely nowhere as difficult to leave as Almaty is.

See, in addition to being home to quite a few of my favourite humans, Almaty has the undeniably impressive Zailiskiy Alatau mountain range towering over it like a chain of huge mountains over a medium-sized city.*** They’re unbelievably tall, wild-looking, fearsome rock massifs that are terrifying to walk on at night, and require a serious commitment to climb at any time of day, in any weather, at any time of year. Or, if you prefer your descriptive prose short and sharp, they’re freakin’ big, freakin’ tough and freakin’ goddam cool.

My personal favourite thing about the Zailiskiy Alatau is their noticeable mood swings. A little over three years ago, I moved into a top-floor flat on Zharokova street, from which I had a frankly stunning panoramic mountain view, and this is when I got acquainted with the many moods of the Zailiskiy. They could be bright, cheery and cogent one morning, sketchy and vague the next, and then turn positively dark and Mordory the morning after that.

What all of this means, in relation to the present entry, is twofold: first, the Zailiskiy Alatau have always contributed to my feeling that Almaty is “a great city to come back to”. (I stuck that in quote marks because I’ve said it so often.) Every time I return there, whether from another country or another part of KZ, the mountains give me a fresh thrill on my way into town. And secondly, they make leaving Almaty a somewhat fretful experience. As you look over your shoulder at the receding peaks, you think “What the heck am I doing, travelling away from those ridiculously cool things, instead of towards them?” And then “If only I'd spent more of my weekends up there in the Zailiskiy”. And so on.

On this particular morning – my last in Almaty – the mountains were in stunning form. There was a low cover of cloud blanketing the city, so they were invisible at street level, but in the air you could see them soaring majestically  skyward, their sunny sides a brilliant white and their shaded sides a deep, mystic blue. From where I was looking, they actually seemed to be sitting on top of the cloud bank, slowly floating across the sky in a way that somehow reminded me of a Terry Gilliam animation. And I thought what I usually think: "Well, bye guys. Prob'ly see you before too long."

And then we were over the horizon, and I was heading in the general direction of a funny, lop-sided circus tent with a thermally heated beach inside.

Funny old thing, life.

* A word I made up specially for this occasion – it’s an adjective, and it means “possessing the qualities of a V.I.P.”.

** (Because these building projects have cost SO many billions of dollars, which could have been used to improve conditions in other parts of the country.)

*** This is a new literary device I’ve invented called “zero simile”. It’s easy to master: just describe something performing an action, and say that it performs the action “like xxxxx”, where “xxxx” is the thing itself. (Example; “The Desert Sun, which had been punishing us so mercilessly since early morning, finally disappeared in the West like a fierce red celestial orb dipping below the horizon of a vast sandy plain”.) I think this is definitely gonna catch on … don’t you?

first and final moments #1

V Aeroporte, Almaty Kazakhstan, circa 9am (GMT +6)

So, this is it. One chapter ends, another begins. One door slams shut, another yawns open. One discoloured, exhausted-looking lemon slice gets a lift back to the bar at the bottom of an empty martini glass, another arrives floating gaily atop the next round of delicious vermouthy fun*.

Or, y’know, something like that.

In case you’re wondering what has motivated this sudden outburst of “best of times, worst of times, times when really opposite things were happening”** metaphors, they've been occasioned by my arrival at Almaty International Airport this morning. And as always, it’s an incalculable pleasure to be here.

*a-khe a-khem!*

(That's the official transliteration for "sarcastic clearing of the throat", recognised by international treaty.)

Ahhh, the airport … where so many great journeys begin, so many plans reach fruition, and so many life decisions transform from abstract thought into concrete action – and all this against an aesthetic backdrop that makes the average hospital waiting room appear thoughtfully decorated and charmingly rustic by comparison. A huge, over-lit building filled with parting loved ones ready to cry, taxi drivers ready to mercilessly rip you off, and dreadful, pre-wrapped food ready to unfairly diminish your roll of recently-exchanged currency, and leave you with a vague feeling of disappointment. What a place.

Sorry. Enough of the endless, aimless blah – it’s getting-to-the-point time. I’m here today because I’m leaving Kazakhstan to go and live elsewhere … and for the third time, no less! This time, though, it seems pretty final. And as with the previous two departures, if I could sum up the feeling of the event in one word, the word would be “conflicted”.

On the one hand, my wife left KZ some time ago, and is waiting for me with ‘Timurchik’ (our yet-to-be-born son, coming soon to an operating theatre near you) in a warm cosy flat in Ukraine. So obviously that’s a sizeable incentive to get on my figurative bike and leave this great ‘stan in the metaphorical dust. Also, between now and the point in time when I see them both, I’ll be taking the ‘long road home’ – visiting some unvisited bits of Eastern Europe, calling on a couple of old friends, and generally indulging my appetite for being on the road, which has been eating away at me all year. So while this morning brings the final moments of one adventure, it also ushers in the first moments of another. Which is both fun for me, and a nice link to my hastily-thought-up title for this series of entries ;-)

Moving now to the contents of the other hand: on that hand, there’s Almaty. It's the only city in this hemisphere where I have more than one or two good friends, and it has effectively become my ‘home’. For all their faults (mostly driving-related), I love the local people here, and they’ve graciously returned the sentiment over the last few years. And I also love quite a few of the foreigners who end up on Kazakhstan’s south-eastern border. For some reason, Almaty attracts a rather interesting crowd, and I regularly meet ‘new’ people who I like / get along with / have stuff in common with.

(I mean, I guess you have to be somewhat interesting and/or unusual to think “I know what I’ll do: I’ll leave my safe, comfortable life in Britain, Europe, the US, Canada or wherever, and go to Kazakhstan. Yeah, that seems like a logical step.”)

So this week has been a ‘typical last week’: a million things to do in an impossibly short time-frame, from visiting consulates to get visas for the next place to posting things you can’t carry with you, through to farewells and work handovers and a hundred taxi rides to fulfil a hundred errands.

This, btw, is exactly when I'm most susceptible to the odd charms of Almaty: when I move around the city, enjoying the fabulously mismatched clutter of its architecture, and being chauffeured by outgoing, friendly, quirky and occasionally insane folks who drive as though they were just one in a vast herd of wildebeest, thrusting boldly forward and trusting their horns to prevent them from being crushed in the general melee.

I realise it’s perverse, but I just can’t help being tickled when I climb into the passenger seat of a rusty old Mercedes, and an elderly moustachioed gentleman bellows at me “Tebye ne kholodno?” (“Aren’t you cold?”), then pulls a traditional Kazakh hat out of his glovebox and rams it onto my head before I have time to answer.

He adds to the general amusement by laughing raucously at how ridiculous I look in his little round hat, throwing his head back as he does so – and all without taking his foot off the accelerator! I mean, whatever else happens on that day, you’ll never be able to mark it down in the diary as “Dyen kak dyen” (“a day like a day” – meaning one like any other, without anything special to distinguish it).

... right?

The unusual character of the last week can be largely attributed to what I'll call the ‘ryhthm of leaving'. I've experienced it before, and it goes sth like this: you run to the street carrying odd collections of things, you ride in taxis, you leave stuff and collect stuff and sign stuff, you run madly back, teach a lesson, run somewhere else, sign another thing, run back … then stop to drink champagne and listen to moving farewell toasts from people you’ve grown quite close to … then run again, jump in another taxi … and so the cycle repeats.

The thing is, this leaving rhythm is quite exciting in its own way, but it can also be rather sad and depressing. Obviously there's the "saying goodbye to good, valued people" issue, but there's also this: I know from experience that the level of acceptance I have among people in KZ isn't available just anywhere. You need to find a culture that’s a reasonable fit for you, so that you give out the “Hey, I dig this place” vibe and so that, as a result, people fully accept and embrace you. It’s an uncertain process, and it takes time, and it doesn’t happen that often. Hence the sad.

Meanwhile, the city has unexpectedly pulled out its first fresh and glistening snow-coat for the year, seeing me off in style but also cruelly implying that I’m missing another opportunity to plunge into a hardcore Kazakh winter, which I would love to do.

Evil little city!

Anyhow, the second boarding call has just sounded (the first always being my signal to run to the smoking room and breathe in a final dose of precious, sanity-enhancing nicotine before entrusting my life to a complete stranger who wears a silly hat to work every day). So I’ll continue these ramblings in a few hours, when I land in Astana.

Right now, it’s time to say another farewell – this time to some mountains …

Bye )))



* Unfeasible though it may sound, I only recently discovered martinis. Had my first one maybe three or four months ago … and gosh, was it great or what?


** A quote from an entry in the Edward Bulwer-Lytton Awards for "writing the introduction to the worst of all possible novels". It’s a contest that happens every year somewhere in San Jose, California. Cool idea, no?