sofasurfers

Even easier to find a rescue couch when there are two couchsurfers on the case. So Lindsay had got in touch with a new arrival to Almaty, a Kiwi girl who touched down two weeks ago for a year’s contract with Air Astana. “Come in!” she said chirpily, as we panted outside her fifth floor apartment. Clean, modern, empty with a view of the mountains: there was no clutter here with which to cold-read our new host. Actually, we found ourselves without much to go on – we seemed to be on the receiving end of a complicated sequence of mental gymnastics, which neither of us could quite fathom. For example, five minutes after arriving at a local Uzbeki restaurant (which was just 30 minutes after first walking through her door), she insists we all get up and dance.

Given that it’s Friday night, and the local Kazakhs are in full funky-chicken swing, Lindsay and I whisper conspiratorially that we feel like wedding crashers, so out of place are we on this dancefloor.

She drinks green tea throughout dinner and then slopes off into the night, giving us her door key. She asks us with disbelief why we would choose to travel through Kazakhstan, and when we return the question, she simply says enigmatically, “Big skies.” But you’re in Almaty – you can’t see the sky for fog/pollution. Prior to Almaty, she was working in Korea, and before that Albania, and she speaks with a crisp English accent. I can’t hear any Kiwi in you, I comment. “Well, when you’re with particular nationalities, you adapt, don’t you?” she says. “So venn I am tokking to mein Deutsch freunds, I speak viz a German accent, ja?” Couchsurfing is always a guessing game – what are they thinking, what do they want to do, am I behaving in the appropriate manner? But usually, the players of this game aren’t usually such, well, players. “I guess the nth degree of her unpredictability,” speculates Lindsay, “is that we can’t rely on her to be here when we need to collect our bags tomorrow. I mean what if…”

“What if” was a paranoia too far, but the strange behaviour continued. She returns at 2.30am to announce that she’ll rise at 6am. Why?! It’s Saturday. “Oh it’s just when I wake up.” What will you do? “Oh, I’ll probably go shopping.” At 6am?

But she overslept till 8am, would you believe? “What time is it,” she asks (to she who knows not the meaning of oversleeping). 8am, I say. “Oh f***!” Woah – it’s Saturday! Chill! She showers and rushes out. But on her return, she flips into Perfect Host mode. She has bought us breakfast (and notably not for herself – bread intolerance, see?). She gives me a shiatsu neck massage because, after another night on the floor, I am feeling like a scarecrow that’s been mangled in a combine harvester (or something). “My God, woman!” she says, when she feels my knotted neck. And she packs us off to the mountains with a bag of satsumas and nuts… Ach, so what if it’s strange? After Almaty Plan A, I’d happily forsake answers, explanations for a Perfect Host once in a while.