sofasurfers

Pre-script - sorry, bit of a blog catch-up thing going on.

“Pack warm clothes!” Rather like climbing a mountain, the route northwards to Astana has steadily become more snowy.

Gratuitous sunset'n'snow shot

Astana is the new name for Akmola; it means ‘capital’ in Kazakh, and took over from Almaty as Kazakhstan’s new capital in 1997. Opinions differ as to why, when many still believe that Kazakhstan’s cultural, financial and symbolic heart remains in Almaty. To develop another city! some say. To move away from imminent earthquake danger! say others. To demonstrate Kazakhstan’s newfound financial confidence (found along with all those oil reserves)! Or to start over in a young city, with a clean political slate, where, unlike Almaty, opinions are not so entrenched (and disillusioned)… We’ll see about that. We’ll also be seeing me – finally – in my winter woollies that have been somewhat redundantly weighing me down all this time. Sadly, however, we won’t be seeing Lindsay, my co-pilot for the last eight days. She is staying in Shymkent with the American contingent to wait while her friend replaces her visas in China: it’s Thanksgiving on 29^th November, and I think subzero temperatures, superinflated city prices and superspeciallovely me weren’t enough to entice her over to Astana.

And what of my host? Who is my sartorial instructor? Actually, I don’t know. I’ll be going off-piste couchsurfing (finally!): my host, a British girl from Derbyshire, is not on couchsurfing.com, but is a colleague of our Almaty host. (This is couchsurfing missionary work in action: “Hey, I’ve got these couchsurfers staying with me – they bring stories from afar and for once, I didn’t have to go out to dinner on my own or with some professionally-friendly-yet-dull middle-aged businessman. Check it out!”) So there have been no safety checks, no dodgy references to dodge, and no clue as to what I’ll be getting – and of course, it’s ditto for her. In fact there may be even more for her to lose, seeing as I’m the vagabonding vagrant. But it’s a British girl from Derbyshire! What I can’t see on her non-existent profile, my imagination compensates for: that immediately there’ll be an implicit cultural understanding; that our common ground will bridge our differences, that – starved of alternatives (well, me at least) – we’ll be instant friends because we’ll just get each other. Rather like what Lindsay has stayed for in Shymkent.