From a fantasy book?

The days in Gafur’s house are very pleasant. Gafur is a self-employed civil engineer. He owns several excavators and construction machines with which he has water pipes laid in the city. His nephew Machmut supervises the construction sites. Although business has slumped by two thirds due to a national financial crisis, the two are out and about every day. As a result, we are usually alone in the big house during the day. We enjoy the peace and quiet and use it to recover from the 349 kilometers we have covered in just three days.

Dastan plans to show us around the city, is keen to invite us to dinner, tells those present and his friends that he wants to arrange a press conference for us at the Ministry of Tourism and Sport and much more. When I got his friend Alinberg on the phone a little later and told him that I couldn’t accept Dastan’s offer and that we were more than happy with the current situation, he said: “Denis, Dastan is a good person and won’t miss the opportunity to organize and invite some things for you. Please just allow it.” “Okay,” I give in, but it turns out completely differently. As soon as Dastan leaves Gafur’s house, we don’t see him again for the rest of our stay. There is also complete silence on the phone. Something caused him to vanish into thin air. Instead, Gafur’s nephew Timur and his sister Indira look after us so well. Indira speaks German and goes to great lengths to show us her wonderful Astana. Timur takes the time between his two jobs to take us to the center in his small van. We sit huddled together in the windowless hold, shaken and jolted through the dense rush-hour traffic. As I start to feel sick, we stop, thank God, and begin a hike through what will soon be an incredible world.

The rise of a former fortress to a modern capital

After seeing so many ruined buildings and villages, this metropolis seems like something straight out of a fantasy book. It all began in 1824 with the Russian fortress called Akmolinsk, founded in the middle of the Kazakh steppe during the Tsarist era. People settled and the town grew. The economic boom lasted until the Russian Civil War. When Nikita Khrushchev later launched his mammoth project in the 1950s to transform the North Kazakh steppe into a second breadbasket of the Soviet Union, the provincial town of the so-called New Land region (Zelinny Kraj) was renamed Zelinograd in 1961. On December 16, 1991, Kazakhstan declared its independence from the USSR. From this point on, the city of 250,000 inhabitants was given the name Aqmola. Because Aqmola translates as white grave and the working-class city was declared the new capital in 1997 due to its earthquake-proof location, better control of the Russian-speaking areas in the north-east of the country and for personal reasons of President Nazarbayev, the name was considered inappropriate and it was given the euphonious name “the capital”, i.e. Astana.

We stroll through this city with astonished eyes. In just a few years, it seems that the city has managed to turn a small Soviet monofunctional working-class town into a unique and incomparable metropolis which, if it continues to grow, could become one of the most modern cities in the world. Over 500,000 people already live here today. By 2030, this figure is expected to rise to 800,000.

“The businessmen of the big oil companies Kasakhoil and KasTransoil run this building,” Indira translates her brother’s explanation. “Ah and oh”, we soon exclaim, stunned by the impressive sight of the imposing and colossal building that radiates wealth and power.

On the magnificent promenade, lined with ultra-modern residential and commercial buildings, you walk past fountains that throw their water into the air in time with the music, cafés, tinted glass fronts, well-tended, artistically designed flower arrangements, gardens and parks without being bothered by cars and their exhaust fumes. We visit the 300-ton steel structure, the Bajterek radio tower, and take the elevator to a height of 97 meters. “Bajterek is the tree of life,” explains Indira. “How come?” I ask. “I don’t know the story exactly, but as far as I know, the sacred bird called Samruk flew up into the sky and blocked out the sun with its huge wings. Then he settled in the crown of the tree and laid a golden egg. Life and hope hatched from it. The roots of the tree called the night to replace the day, they called the winter to replace the summer and fetched water from the rivers of the world. The bayterek tree, the earth and its crown hold the sky. The great tree brings harmony to the infinite universe and balances male and female energy. That was the story. This tower is a replica of the bayterek tree and the symbol of our capital Astana.” “Hm, an interesting story and why do visitors put their hand in the imprint there on the pedestal?” I continue to ask. “This is the golden handprint of our President Nazarbayev. If you put your hand in it, you can fill up on mystical energy and make a wish at the same time,” I hear and can now understand why the Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars and other ethnic groups living in Kazakhstan crowd around it.

The view from the gilded sphere is breathtaking and from up here you can see the master plan of the Japanese star architect and urban planner Kurokawa. He and chief planner Vladimir Laptev want to create a Eurasian version of Berlin. Wherever we look, there is a lot of construction going on. There are said to be up to 1700 cranes here, and indeed, their slender yellow steel bodies rise into the sky like asparagus spears at every corner. Our eyes take in a conglomeration of architectural gigantomania. They capture a huge Chinese hotel which is also currently under construction. We look at the diplomatic quarter, the presidential palace at the end of the spacious yet enormous promenade, the high-rise tower of the Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications, the two-winged building of the Ministry of Defense, the National Library, office towers by the extravagant US star architect Frank Gehry next to the spire minarets of a mosque and other postmodern buildings in confectioner’s style, which can also be found in major projects in Moscow, for example. Construction activities are set to continue for a long time to come. At the end of the almost two-kilometer-long boulevard, for example, an oversized tent will be erected with a 150-meter-high roof that will house another future district for 10,000 people. Probably the largest tent in the world, it is intended to commemorate the era of the Mongol leader Genghis Khan.

The guide in the symbolic lookout tower tells us about a plan that exceeds our imagination many times over. “Back there! Can you see the large expanses of water?” “Yes,” we answer. “They were created by human hands. An artificial Venice will be created there. A place where the temperature will be the same all year round under an artificial roof. There will be beaches and everything a tourist can enjoy,” she says with obvious pride, while Tanja and I try to imagine the incredible amount of energy required to heat such a huge area in the wintry Kazakh steppe.

Since the relocation of the former capital Almaty (Alma Ata) to the post-modern Astana, the government has invested billions of dollars here. It is said that an investment of 8 billion US dollars was planned by 2006. I stand up here pensively and look at the supposed wealth of a country with large oil and gas reserves. A country that will achieve an ever higher world ranking in the future due to its oil reserves. I think of all the small villages whose houses are on the verge of collapse, of the mud paths on which their inhabitants have to struggle through the mud in the rain. I think of the great poverty there, of the people who have hardly any chance of ever escaping their miserable lives. I think that this obvious wealth with its splendor and ostentation does not fit in with the real world out there and I hope that the president’s decision to build a world metropolis here is in the interests of all his people and that every current resident will benefit from it in his lifetime.

It takes days to visit the wonderful promenade along the Ishim River, the impressive main mosque, the world’s furthest oceanarium from the sea, the market halls, the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox cathedrals and the Pyramid of Peace and Concord. We haven’t seen everything yet. But our heads are full of impressions and time is running out. It’s still a long way to Lake Baikal. In the meantime, some nights are surprisingly cool. As we are here in the coldest and windiest capital city in the world, where the average winter temperature is minus 15 degrees and occasional night frosts can reach minus 40 degrees, and because it can easily get below minus 40 degrees in Eastern Siberia, we have to hurry. With our current equipment, we might be able to survive minus 15 degrees, but if it gets colder early on, we’ll have to come up with something.

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