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?
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?
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