370-летие города Атырау

Congratulations Atyrau with the 370-th Anniversary of the City! And this has been celebrated for days, with different events on the main square, ending with a pop concert with "stars of Kazakhstan", fireworks and disco! As we walked past last night on our way home we arrived in the middle of the pop concert. And to our great surprise and enjoyments, the pop star started singing Aleksander Rybak's "Fairytale", so we sang along and dansed a little! The square was crowded with people off all ages, and there were several big Yurtas, and even stands had been put up, so people could sit and enjoy the show!

Music Night at Hotel KZ

Last night Ken and Clair had arranged a music night at the pub in the Hotel Kazakhstan with a donation to the Children's Charity Fund.
We had live music, Ken played guitar, Clair sang, Gaukhar played the Kazakh national instruments the Dumbra (a two stringed "guitar"). The pub was pretty packed with people from the office, both expats and locals. It was a fun night of entertainment and good friends, and in total over 130 000 Tenge, that is about 6000 nok, was collected for charity.

New pavement!

It is a big day in the life of the hard working expats of Atyrau! We now have a sidewalk to walk on all the way from home to the office and back! It is no longer an endless collection of uneven mud and clay! Over the summer the city have slowly but gracefully been upgraded with sidewalks laid with grey and red pavement stones, and all the curb stones have been repainted white. The last stretch to be finished to complete our path was just outside the office, between our office building and the Ideal Grocery store. And we even got a traffic light up last week! Pretty amazing! So now we can cross the road without being used as human targets by white Ladas driving at high speed!
And to add to this loooong list of amazing infrastructure-news, I must inform that the crazy big round fountain and rose-patch over the bridge in Asia is now a official roundabout. They have dug up the rose-bed and asphalted in stead, but left the fountain. The roundabout rules are still not fully in place, the signs are up, but lot of cars still stop inside the roundabout, giving way to the other cars driving into the roundabout. Pretty chaotic the whole thing, but amazingly it works in its own impossible way!

Beautiful morning in Atyrau

Just had to add this beautiful sunrise!
It is taken at 07:30 out the window on the 16th floor.
I will miss the sunrises and sunsets of Atyrau! The colors are so strong and the sky is on fire!

Going away party!

Many of the great people I work with are on a rotation that overlaps with mine for 3 weeks. So in order to gather most of my super coworkers, we had my going away house party last night! Sturla offered his apartment as the venue, so we had a great pent-house party on the 17th floor!













We had used our lunch break to go to the supermarked, and we ended up with sparking pink wine, watermelon (with vodka..), some more cheese and crachers, and snacks. Kristin baked her great foccacia bread! Perfect! We had a great night and early morning among great friends!

Houses of Atyrau, part 2!

A picture of the office is also needed in this presentation! Our office is pretty new and nice! The Isker Building behind us to the left is our office. The white lower one to the right is a government building.

Our huge lump of an apartment building is next to the hyper modern glass Renaissance Hotel, which is next to the traditional white and blue Mosque.

Houses of Atyrau

We have some nice looking houses, some shabby falling down houses/cottages, some brand new shiny houses, some religious houses and some creative houses! These creative looking houses are on our way to work. So we see these creative looking houses every day! Must say, they look better than the normal USSR concrete lumps, these at least have some colour and decorations!!







The Russian Orthodox church does also makes a good feature in the "sky line", here seen from both our office building and from the square.



The last picture here is the silver and shiny River Palace Hotel, aka Renco building. This is where we eat the great Italian pizza and drink wine at the roof top bar. It has a glass "fence" around the top, so it protects from the wind, but also lets you see the sunset, the low houses of Atyrau and the river right on the other side of the building!

Cake! Again!

We have cake all the time! And all the time is several times a week!
Today it is a leaving-cake. Dinara is going to the UK to take a Master's. Good luck and have fun!
We have leaving cakes, birthday cakes, drivers license cake, baby cake. Any *good* reason, and we have cake! The most popular of the cakes is the one with minced meat! Or even fish! And in addition to the meat/fish cake, is the fluffy very sweet cream cakes. Dinara has good cake-connections, so she had the "Napoleon" cake, which is Asbjørn and my favourite! Mmmmm.... Always nice to take 10 min of the 12 hour workday for a little cake-break!

Boat Trip on the Ural River!

Yesterday evening we went on a boat trip on the Ural River, on a fine vessel named Europa!

It was a 1 hour trip up the river. It was a warm late summer night, the sun was setting and we had a great time! The mosquitoes were off course with us, but with some mosquito repellent and the inevitable bite or two, we did not pay attention to them! More important was the good colleagues and the cold beer!

The city looks quite different from the river. And in the sunset, it actually looks rather nice! The confusing part is always the meandering of the river. One moment the landmark buildings are to the right, next moment they are to the left…. Or is maybe just that the buildings keep moving all the time… you never know in KZ!

Agip End of Summer Concert!

Sunday night was Agip End of Summer Concert at the Riviera Sports Complex! It was only for Agip people, but they could bring a friend!
The concert invitation came with a long list of information including some good recommendations:
-This is an outdoor venue, so please dress accordingly, including comfortable walking shoes
-Celebrate responsibly. You should have fun, but be careful about having too good a time. Follow all tips and you'll be able to return to the office with your head held high
- Come prepared against mosquitoes
- Food and beverages will be available on-site for purchase – don’t forget to bring along cash

- At the concert you can just stand and enjoy the music... and if you know the lyrics, go ahead and sing, no one will mind if you know them completely or not.
Just have fun,
Welfare Helpdesk

Let's just say, we came prepared, in sneakers and with mosquito spray and money, we sang along and had fun, but not too much fun, so we could return with our head high...