Russian homes

Our taste in rooms runs to fairly minimal: plain light coloured walls, lots of light, modern light furniture. But every now and then we come to a hotel whose aesthetics is completely different. In Astana we had one of these: an old-fashioned Russian-style hotel. The Family loved the room, everything from the flowery wall-paper, the golden drapes, the iron-frame bed, the decorated wooden furniture, lace curtains, down to the flowers on the woollen carpet. This was not Kazakh for certain. The employees mostly spoke Russian.

I had to refresh my memory of the history of Astana. It was a small town founded in Tsarist times, but grew big during the war when industries moved to Kazakhstan from Russia. In fact the Kazakh SSR was the core of post-war recovery of the USSR. About a fifth of the population of the city are ethnic Russians. Our hotel was on the right bank of the Ishim river, just outside the core of the new planned city. When we explored the streets around our hotel we found interesting 21st century houses: brick facings on what looked like insulated walls, double glazing, canted roofs, electrically operated large decorative gates. Central Asian communities build walls very high so that you can’t see the houses. These were a different style: Russian.

Beyond this enclave of single-family homes was a block of apartment buildings. They didn’t look modern in style, with their slate-covered wavy roof lines. Nor did they look like Soviet-era apartment blocks. They left me quite puzzled. Astana’s architectural history seems to be complex.