Astana: City of Babies

If you are not what they call a "child person," Kazakhstan is not the place for you.  

In Astana, especially now that it's humanly possible to be outdoors for large periods of time without dying of hypothermia, it suddenly feels as if the city is crawling with children -- all under the age of ten.  On any given day, public spaces, cafes, and parks are overrun by gaggles of school-age children, wobbly toddlers, and sleeping infants -- sometimes belonging to same family.  

Now, don't get me wrong. I like children. I want to -- and plan to -- have a couple of my own in the near future.  In fact, what I like about this public display of fertility is that it gives this city a bit more of a "homey" feel, which is often difficult to find in this largely sterile landscape of steppe and glass.  But it makes for a strange urban environment to be constantly surrounded by what feels like armies of young children. 

Statistics back up this stray observation.  Since independence, Kazakhstan has experienced a tremendous growth in its birth rate, an effort to populate this sparsely populated country and stave off a potential demographic crisis that was compounded by ex-migration in the 1990s.  Despite being the 9th largest country in the world, Kazakhstan has a population of about 16 million, which is somewhere between the individual populations of Florida and Illinois.  

The government encourages its citizens to have babies -- lots of them -- and clearly the incentives appear to be working. A generous maternity leave policy (at least by American standards), coupled with social pressures to have kids young, make it both common and possible for a woman in her mid 20s to have at least two children -- with plans for more, of course.  I often ride a bus to the university that stops by the maternity hospital in town, and I am always amazed at the number of expectant mothers who get off and on the bus at that stop (to be fair, this is a skewed sample).

The ubiquitous presence of children makes Astana feel even more like Disneyland, than a "real" city at times, but I find myself reluctantly appreciating this aspect of public life.  In a way, this, more than anything, makes Astana live up to its promise of embodying the "city of the future."  

Part III: Running on the Steppe

First, a confession: I am not a runner.  

In fact, I can't say I enjoy running all that much -- I'm slow, impatient, and easy to give up.  Over the years, I've picked up and put down running the way one does a long classic novel that you know you should read but can never quite finish (do you hear that, War and Peace? It's not just you).  But I also can't deny that running is an effective form of exercise -- and cheap -- which is why I find myself returning to it in times of need. 

In March, I realized that a long winter of little exercise and too many potatoes had made me cranky and out-of-shape in a way I disliked.  With a gym membership more than cost prohibitive in style-conscious, overpriced Astana, it was time to pick up my old friend running again.  Like many of my experiences here, running in Kazakhstan became more than just about lacing up a pair of shoes and hitting the pavement: it was yet another way both to see this city through a new lens and test the boundaries of cultural norms.  

Because it's hard to wax prosaic about running without sounding like one of those weirdos who enjoys minimalist shoes (shoes with toes are weird!), I've decided to write the rest of this blog post in the form of a "cheers and jeers" list. 

1. Cheers to the incomparable view.  Whether you're in the city -- surrounded by futuristic looking buildings -- or out on the outskirts swallowed up by the expansive steppe/marshlands, the surroundings are never boring. 

One of the many cityscapes you can see running along the river embankment. 

Running into the outskirts, the glossy skyscrapers fade into the open steppe/marshland. 

2. Jeers to stares, wolf whistles and the occasional attempt to run me over with a car. Running in the city requires a steely resolve to avoid engaging passersby who find it both hilarious -- and perhaps implausible -- to see anyone, let alone a woman, running through the streets in shorts.  As someone who sticks out as a foreigner, the stares I'm used to, but the wolf whistles from construction workers and unwanted commentary from groups of aimless young men is beyond annoying.  On the plus side, the anger I feel generally motivates me to run faster and further.  

3. Cheers to running with others. I finally figured out that running with other people is better than running solo.  I get bored easily -- not to mention impatient -- but scheduling runs with colleagues and friends has motivated me on days I would much rather just sit at home and watch Netflix. (Now I run, then go home and watch Netflix). 

4. Jeers to running after greasy Chinese food.  On one particular run, poorly scheduled after a deliciously heavy meal of Chinese food, I spent half the time regurgitating spicy tofu onto the side of the steppe.  Still, I rallied through it, and now can proudly -- or perhaps not-so-proudly -- claim that I've made my "mark" on Kazakhstan. However, I don't recommend the experience. 

5. Jeers to uneven pavement and trails to nowhere. Sidewalks in Astana are either composed of bricks or stone, both of which warp in the heat and crack in the extreme cold.  This makes for a hard, uneven surface that is a killer on the joints, not to mention a hazard while running.  Trails along the river are nice, but occasionally end abruptly or lead to nowhere.  Dry paths on the steppe, which are my favorite surface, often get washed out in the rain or overgrown by grass.  In short, this is not a running-friendly city!

6. Cheers to not being a total schlub.  I can't say I've become a faster runner, but I feel slightly better about my overall exercise to food ratio.  

No doubt I will be happy to return to a place where runners are a norm, rather than an oddity, and where urban environments are designed with runners in mind, but what I've liked about running in Astana -- despite all the frustrations and unwanted attention -- has been the opportunity to see this city from a new perspective. 

Next up: I'm on vacation starting Saturday, when I head to Europe for two weeks, but rest assured there will be more blog posts in the near future. 

The 'Long Winter' Ahead

The view from the dormitory kitchen. 

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that one of my favorite books as a child was Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter," one of the lesser known volumes of her Little House series.  Though it's famous for its portrayal of the 1881 blizzards that wreaked havoc across the Great Plains, it's probably not the book most children would pick as their "favorite" in the series since it’s a grim chronicle of near-starvation and near-death.

Unless you're me, of course.

Perhaps it was the obvious contrast to my own childhood in the sweltering tropical zone that drew me to this particular book and its description of something I could hardly being to imagine.  (If not that, I would be worried, right?).  What did it feel like, I wondered, to have the snow jabbing needles at your face, or the wind howling overhead for days like wailing banshee?

In the years since, I've been able to answer my curiosity with surprising precision.  Since college, I've been moving to places where winter weather defines more than half the year: Chicagoland, Russia, Michigan, and northern Wisconsin.  I used to joke that my life has been a series of upward moves, from the equator to the Arctic Circle, that one day, I may end up in the Yukon territory.  Astana -- and Kazakhstan -- certainly counts toward that goal.

Although it's located somewhere between the Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle, Astana has the special designation of being the second-coldest capital in the world after Ulaan-Bataar in Mongolia.  The decision to move the new nation’s capital in the late 1990s to the wind-swept steppes from Almaty in the warmer, often hotter, southern part of the country, contains surprising logic in the geopolitical and economic sense.  It makes zero sense when you consider the cold, snow, and wind that assaults this city for seven to eight months a year.  Capital cities across the world embrace their peculiar, oftentimes negative, distinctions -- Nairobi, Bangkok, Brasilia, Canberra among them -- but trying to sell your “city of the future” with a straight face as the air temperature hovers around -40C is downright ballsy.  

Winter arrives in Astana early.  The ground has been covered in snow for at least a month, if not more, and it already feels like northern Wisconsin in late January/early February.  Last weekend, we had one of the coldest days yet, when the mercury barely touched -20 degrees F during the daytime, and continued to dip lower into the night.  On average, temperatures remain below zero, oscillating between a reasonable 20-25 degrees F and the slightly less-reasonable sub-zero temperatures where numbers and reality lose all scale.  Of course, even the “warmest” day is a misnomer in Astana. Here, bone-chilling winds of between 20 and 40 mph on average course through the canyons between buildings and toss you across ice-covered pavement with unrelenting tenacity.   I find the wind the most egalitarian feature of his city, assaulting both businessman and pauper with no regard for age, dignity, or position in life, and I take a modicum of comfort in that thought as I find myself pushing against the wind in all directions just to get home from the bus stop.  

After more than a decade in the Midwestern United States, I’m no stranger to the cold or winter weather, though friends of mine may recall my occasional inability to cope (the joys of being introduced to the ice-scraper sticks out as one such amusing anecdote of my general Texan cluelessness about winter weather).  Having lived in Astana -- and ostensibly surviving the next few winter months -- I hope I find that I have both the ability to survive even the coldest weather, and perhaps acquire an appreciation for it.  The former is seeming easier than the latter.  Already, I find myself considering 25-degrees (F) warm enough to wear a skirt or dress, something I never did even when I lived in the upper Midwest. While I suspect I will always prefer warmer weather -- even the hot, tropical, sweat-inducing weather of southern Texas in August -- I am occasionally startled by the beauty of cold weather.  On the coldest of nights, when temperatures plummet with no regard for human frailty, the air begins to sparkle as the moisture in it instantly turns to ice.  If you can stop for a minute and endure the pain of exposed skin to that cold, you find yourself in a brief moment of pure calm before your body goes completely numb.

If nothing else, I hope this changing attitude toward the cold means I’m ready for the long winter ahead.