Kristin i Langtvekkistan: Sol ute, sol inne...

Going back to Kazakhstan this time, I finally had the chance to travel with Catrin! Unfortunately we didn´t have time to “do Amsterdam” but we hung out at the chic and hip Citizen M hotel and went champagne shopping at Schiphol together (and of course the mandatory cava in the lounge) J

When arriving at the airport in Atyrau, you have to pick one of the lines at immigration. You can choose the line for "Kazakh citizens", "Passport control" or "Other citizens"... After passport control you have to go through customs. There you can choose between "Green corridor", "Red corridor" or "Customs"... At least at customs you don't really have to choose because there's only one place you can actually go. Welcome to KZ...

View from the back of the line at immigration

Not every day is a sunny day unfortunately. The cold winter days have been replaced with chilly weather and rain. And with the rain comes the mud... Our cars get extremely dirty and the sticky mud ends up everywhere. It's a challenge getting in and out of the cars without getting mud stains on your clothes. To top it off, my first day, the fire alarm went off so everyone had to go outside in the cold rain. But as so many other things here, there's usually some light at the end of the tunnel and in the afternoon the sun actually decided to come out through the clouds.

Local work force is swabbing down (svabrer) the large amounts of water that accumulates after the rain

The water sucking truck is handy when lots of water has accumulated. Of course there must be lots of people involved in this operation: one driver, at least one to shovel the water closer to the truck, and one administrator

They've opened a new hotel/restaurant in town called AK Reserve. We decided to be pioneers and check it out together with our lovely guests from Oslo. We did some posing in real kazakh style on the outside also. This place turned out to be really nice. Quite expensive, but good to have an alternative to Joy. We even got a peek at the rooms which must be of the nicest in town.