Earlier this year, someone contacted me, having read 2006’s posts on the fun and frollocks involved when we sorted out my resident’s permit. Although he (Dan) had been visiting Kazakhstan (Shymkent specifically) since the early 90s, he was actually moving over here with Kazakh wife (sound familiar 🙂 ), and wanted to check if there were anything matters he should get sorted before leaving Britain. Anyway, skip forward a few months, and I heard back from him, that all was well, he had a job, and his wife seemed happy. Earlier this month, he discovered he would be driving his sister-in-law’s car to Astana, as she had moved, and wanted the freedom that a motor vehicle afforded her. We decided to use this opportunity to actually meet in the real world.
After a minutes thinking, Ira and I decided to take him to an Argentinian / Mexican / American / Italian restaurant that we had previously visited with Walton and his lovely wife. When I phoned Dan, we discovered that his journey over had been mostly uneventful, especially the sections of mile after mile of featureless steppe. Having arrived a little later than intended, he had spent the evening and early night at one restaurant, and then they had moved onto a 24hr place (actually Cafe Shymkent, weird coincidence!) and stayed there eating and drinking until 7am!
However, when we met Dan, it turned out that the restaurant he had started the previous night’s celebrations in was the same one we were heading to! It can’t have been a bad steak the night before, as he and his sister-in-law were both happy to return there. I took a long my camera to try and create another visual record of the courses we ordered, but as this was the first time Dan and I had met, I forgot all about it until the end. Anyway, Ira and I can not have made too bad an impression of your average Cheltonian and Astanite, as he repeated his offer of entertaining us should we manage to make it down to Shymkent 🙂
I couldn’t decide which of Dan’s photos to use – the smiling one with a blurry hand in concealing his face, or the clearer, less joyful expression, so have both 🙂
Now we have his wife’s sister (I forgot to write down her name, I’m sure he’ll remind me soon enough ;)), Ira and a plate of free water melon the restaurant supplied 🙂
After that we went for a drive around an area of Astana that his wife’s sister had not yet familiarised herself with yet. We both look forward to meeting up with Dan et al in the future.
