Steve travels #35: Astray in Astana
It’s hard to arrive in Astana unwarned. Even with no plans to visit the city myself, I had heard opinions from many travellers, and none of them were good. Weird. Artificial. Opulent. Mostly, weird.
Astana (stress on the first syllable, so it’s like “Arse to nah”) is a made-to-order capital city created by massively expanding a small city in the late 90s to suit the whims of the then president who had some kind of beef with Almaty, the then capital. It was actually first known as Akmoly, then Akmolinsk, Tselinograd in 1961, and then Akmola in 1991. Then Astana (Kazakh for “Capital City”, there’s creativity for you) in 1997, Nur-Sultan (after the president at the time) in 2019, and back to Astana in 2022. The Kazakh Railways website can’t keep up, so when you book a ticket there it’s actually to Nur-Sultan, which is more than a little bit disconcerting.
I had no expectations that I would like it. Which is just as well, because I don’t. From the moment I leave the train station, the city’s overall design scheme is clear: Wide, straight roads, forming an excessively spread out grid, populated primarily by high rise buildings well spaced apart.
It’s the sort of city that photographs well. From almost any angle, you see order and elegant straight lines. Every block or two an oversized monument has been dropped from the sky into the grid. Here, a gigantic mosque, there the vast dome of a stadium, and over there the gargantuan rectangle block of a government building.
Straight lines, and right angles, everywhere. Clusters of identical apartment buildings cut from the same cookie cutter, and then another different cluster, then another.
This is a city desperate to impress. Gone are the cluttered bazaars and roadside stalls I’ve gotten used to. This is not a city where the nearest place to buy nan (bread) or manti (dumplings) or samsa (meat pies) is never more than a few minutes away. You’ll more easily find a BMW dealership, an upmarket restaurant or an appliance store.
My initial impressions probably weren’t helped by breakfastlessness, soon fixed by a very Melbourne-like cafe. Shakshuka and a flat white? Great, but jarring.
There’s a beautiful, very large white mosque nearby, but I don’t take the opportunity to investigate. In the distance, I can see a large pyramid. All of Astana is like this.
My morning takes a rough turn when my hostel vanishes. I taxi to the correct location, and I can see the building corresponding to the photo on the internet. But all the hostel signage is gone, and everyone I ask and show the photo to gives me a stern “fucked if I know, you weirdo” frown and keeps moving. I miss small-town Kyrgyz helpfulness.
I find another place to stay without mishap, and soon head out to my first event of the Nomad Games: “Mas Wrestling”. Strolling down the boringly wide and straight road, I soon arrive at a vast stadium. Nope, that’s not the Alau Ice Palace, it’s the Martial Arts Palace.
10 minutes later, another, even bigger stadium. Nope, this one is Astana Stadium. So it’s the next stadium. Oh, nope, that’s a velodrome. “Fourth stadium on the right” was apparently the instruction I needed.
Not many people outside - what will it be like within?