Central Asia 2008: Kazakhstan
The city I am visiting is impressively big for just celebrating its 10th anniversary. Or at least this is what the Kazakh government wants you to believe. In fact, the place was founded 178 years ago under the name of Akmolinsk. Later it was known as Zelinograd and then renamed to Aqmola, a kazakhified version of Akmolinsk. As it was made the new capital city of Kazakhstan and the name changed to Astana it already had about 350,000 inhabitants. Since then, a new government quarter has been built and the population has nearly doubled […]
