Saturday, 5 September 2026

 

Start: Hotel Astana (KZ) 16:00

Arrival: Hotel Astana (KZ) 21:15

 

Total: ca 4 km walking

 

 

Today, it was hot. 26 degrees in the non-existent shade. So we spent the day at the hotel bar, doing crossword puzzles and making plans for the next day. At four in the afternoon, it was cool enough for two Northern gals to venture out.

 

 

Quests for the day: Visit the Nur Alem, take a ride on the light metro and walk around the Baiterek. In Astana, distances are quite huge, so we wanted to take the bus. Which required downloading an app, giving them my phone number, receiving a code on my Telegram account (so far so good) and adding my Kazakh bank card. Which I obviously did not have. The Kazakh government claims that their app makes it easy for foreigners to use public transport in their country. How many tourists, I wonder, agree. What foreign visitor has a Kazakh bank card? The receptionist at our hotel suggested asking other passengers to pay on their app for us, but I'd had enough of these makeshift solutions. I downloaded YandexGo, registered my Luxembourgish credit card and clicked on an available car. Five minutes later, we were on our way to the Nur Alem, the largest glass sphere in the world, built for the International Expo 2017.

 

 

Both the expo area and the glass sphere were of impressive proportions, which neither the pictures nor the 360s managed to really capture. As so often, nothing beats experiencing it firsthand.

 

 

The sphere houses the Museum of Singularity, about AI and robotics. Sonia thought that was singularly boring, but I wanted to see it, so in we went. First: buy a ticket at the ticket machine. Which only accepted Kazakh bank cards. Technology failing at the first hurdle: national borders. So we bought our tickets the old-fashioned way at the counter. Talk about frontline technology.

 

 

The first station was rather cool: bubbles imitating your movements. I don't think I would have even noticed, if Sonia had not pointed it out. From there on, it was a bit underwhelming though. Some stations outright didn't work (like the Turing test), the robotics area was only open at certain hours, the AI-generated video clip took a long time to load and didn't really show anything new, the large displays were nice to look at but didn't really convey concrete information. Maybe I don't have the right spirit for this, but I would have preferred a more linear exhibition where you leave with the feeling: wow, I actually learnt something new here. Contemporary exhibitions don't seem to aim for that. It's all "immersion". Drown them in multi media, hoping no one will ask: what's actually the point?

 

 

By now it was after five and I was getting hungry. A huge shopping mall with indoor ice-skating rink beckoned the hungry traveller. So first dinner at a comfy Ocean Basket restaurant (seems to be a Kazakh chain), then on to the second quest for the day: a ride with the light metro. "Light" as opposed to underground. Astana's one metro line runs entirely above ground. We entered at the station "University".

 

 

The name was programmatic. Hundreds of youngsters squeezed into the train carriages. Luckily, I was offered a seat and so we enjoyed a prime view over Astana, large beautiful new apartment blocks, government buildings, arenas and malls, all looking like Oriental palaces or other stately pleasure domes, to say it with Coleridge.

 

We fought our way out of the train at the station "Baiterek". Here, it was much more quiet. The station had almost a plane-boarding-area feeling. The square next to it was called Abu Dhabi Plaza. All of Astana actually has that certain rich-oil-state vibe that I first felt in Qatar. I quite like it.

 

 

Outside the station, more highrises, banks, ministries and chic hotels like the cool Beijing Palace and the ultra-tall Ritz-Carlton. By comparison, the Baiterek itself was of more average size. I had imagined a Central Asian mega Eiffel Tower or Space Needle, but it's actually only two-thirds as high as Seattle's Space Needle. Although it was only just after seven, the sun had set and the city-by-night feeling reinstated itself.

 

How to reach the Baiterek? Leaving the main sidewalk, we took a shortcut along an intimate path next to a stately grand building. "Do you think this is the presidental palace?" I asked, eyeing the CCTV cameras above us. "Are we even allowed to walk here?" "I don't think it's the president's residence", Sonia said, "and there are people in front of us, so why shouldn't we be allowed." Right she was. We later checked, it was actually the Ministry of Defense. So a CCTV camera or two made sense.

 

 

The Baiterek represents an old Kazakh legend: the Bird of Happiness lays its golden egg on top of the tall Tree of Life. A dragon tries to reach it, snapping at the tree from its roots, but it can never get to it. A simile for light and darkness, Heaven, Earth and Hell, the cycle of rebirth. Poetic.

 

 

There are elevators taking you up to a viewing platform, if you are so inclined. We preferred to enjoy the view from down here. The parks, terraces and promenades around the Baiterek were full of people, street musicians added to the noise. So cool to mingle among the locals on a Saturday night out in the capital of Kazakhstan.

 

 

"I want a coffee", I declared, when yet another fashionable mall appeared in front of us. We found a Coffee Boom, a Kazakh restaurant chain that was as ubiquitous as McDo in the West, with infinitely nicer decor, big comfy couches and a menu as large as a Bader Versandkatalog. Although the food looked delicious, we weren't really hungry anymore, but who can say no to a tiramisu and a smoothie as thick and juicy as this?

 

To top off a great evening, YandexGo provided a stressfree ride back to our hotel. Only 2200 tenge (ca 5 euros) for a 20-minute ride! The cabbie loved to chat and we discussed the Luxembourgish language and Central Asian literature, as far as my limited Russian allowed. So, not very far. LOL

 

Tomorrow, we will be heading south again. Although we only spent two days in Astana, I can confidently say that, yes, I could imagine living for a while in this grand bustling modern city. The Museum of Singularity might have left me unimpressed, but the shining world of Astana, its infrastructure and businesses, have utterly convinced me that this is indeed a city of the future.