Gustavo's IBM Corporate Service Corps experience: Arriving to Astana, Kazakhstan

The flight to Astana was better than expected. I even got surprised by the attention I received in the flight: an appetizer, hot towel, sleeping kit (ear plugs, tooth brush, toothpaste, etc.) and even ice cream after the dinner that includes dessert. Most airlines already forgot this pampers in economy class.

From the airplane you can see the “Great Steppe” that covers the majority of Kazakhstan. This type of land is usually characterized by a semi-arid and continental climate with very hot summers and cold winters. You don´t see nothing but this type of land to the horizon in every direction:

At the airport, my expectation of Astana got short from what I see. The airport was a nice new building (although it didn't´t have automatic escalators). At passport control I received the immigration paper with only one stamp. They told me that I need to have a 2nd stamp from a police station within 5 days. This is a requirement so government keeps tracks where foreigners are. I´ve got disappointed to know later that this does not apply to every country and Peru was not in the clear list.

I took the taxi together with Tanya, one of the NGO contacts that arrange the projects and logistics for us in behalf of IBM (http://www.cdcdevelopmentsolutions.org/). I got relief to realize that she speaks Russian. Later I knew that some of us got a taxi ride to the hotel for 10,000 Tenge! (US$ 66.6) and another got to another direction because the taxi driver got lost in the steppes.

First view of the city:

My amaze increased while we went on the ride to the hotel. I can see very nice and new buildings while we were in a 3-lines road with new traffic lights:

After checking in the hotel and being travelling for 3 days (including a 24 stop in Frankfurt) I went for a breakfast and met Liza from CDC. Later that day I finally met some other IBMers part of our Kazakhstan 2 team. It is interesting to finally see the faces of the people that were in the weekly conference calls that we have during the last 3 months doing all the preparing work for this assignment. I will talk about our team in another post.

Khan Shatyr – Shopping Mall

Built resembling a Nomad house, this new shopping mall is one of the icons of the new Astana. Besides all the shops, that by the way I could only recognize 3 brands, It have a nice beach on the last floor. This artificial beach have temperature-regulated sand and the environment could be changed independent of the outside temperature. Never expected to find this here!