Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 1
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 2
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 3
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 4
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 5 – Gellert
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 6
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 7 – Bulgari
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 8 – Cinecitta Studios
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 9 – flight to Almaty

Most of the day was spent doing business. That night I was invited to attend one of business colleague’s niece’s birthday party. We were driven up into the mountains to a beautiful restaurant. The tables were laid out outside.

There was plenty of drinking and plenty of food. A couple of the people there spoke some basic English. The rest of them spoke Russian and Kazakh. I started to ask through the translator what some of the food being passed my way was. There was a lot of horse dishes coming my way. Horse doesn’t really taste that bad. I wonder if horses are categorized like steaks. For example, is a thoroughbred a filet mignon? Is the pony like a hamburger?

At one point, they asked me to give a toast to the 16 year old. Having known her for all of 5 minutes, I wished her the best in her endeavors and complimented on her intellect.

After drinking too much soda, it was time to find the facilities. As I approached the outdoor restroom, I was surprised to find Japanese style squat toilets. A fancy restaurant like this with these kind of toilets? It was not the time to try and experiment so I just gave up.

As we were being driven back to the Holiday Inn we received another call from another business associate who invited us to join them at an Uzbek restaurant. I wanted to be polite and so we accepted though I was completely stuffed.

We arrived at the Uzbek restaurant that was quite ornate on the outside. It looked like a building straight out of the animated film Aladdin. We went inside and sat down at the table.

I had made the wrong choice filling up on horse meat. The Uzbek restaurant had all kinds of meats like lamb shashlik and plov and traditional dumplings called parmuda. It looked and smelled great. I took a couple of bites of the shashlik, it was so tender and seasoned so well. I will definitely return to the Uzbek restaurant if I come back to Almaty.

Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 1
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 2
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 3
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 4
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 5 – Gellert
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 6
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 7 – Bulgari
Hungary Italy and Kazakhstan Day 8 – Cinecitta Studios

Our time in Rome finally had come to a close. While my classmates all headed back to the US – I took off for Kazakhstan. This was my second time to Kazakhstan.

My flight was from Rome to Istanbul and then to Almaty (or Alma-Ata as the local say it) on Turkish Airlines. These miles credited to my United account which I’ve been trying to accumulate a bit more on thanks to the 50,000 United Airlines offer a couple of months back.

I generally find the movies provided by the airlines to be quite subpar. Does anyone really want to watch “Meet Dave” or “Legally Blonde 2″?

I much prefer to bring movies with me to watch like Top Chef or The Amazing Race. Top Chef is pretty entertaining for me though I’ve yet to see one dish that any contestant has done that I could actually replicate at home.

I arrived in Almaty airport at around 3 am. This time I planned to stay at the Holiday Inn which is just around the corner from the Intercontinental. The Intercontinental is certainly a nice property, but I still had a pretty bad taste in my mouth from the last time I stayed there. I stayed there from 7 am – 1 am, less than 24 hours but due to “early checkin” the hotel charged me double my reservation rate.

I arrived at the Holiday Inn and could tell right away this is another fantastic overseas Holiday Inn property. It reminds me of my favorite Moscow property, the Holiday Inn Lesnaya. I was given an upgraded room due to my Platinum status. I quickly crashed after a very long day of traveling.

I was booked on Turkish Arilines from Almaty to Munich, Germany at the ungodly hour of 3 am. It was really a double whammy as Turkish Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance which means I would be crediting the miiles to my United account instead of my Delta account.

KLM (a member of SkyTeam and a Delta partner) flies from Almaty, but only every other day. As luck would have it, it was not on the day I was flying.

I arrived at the Almaty airport at about 1:30 am. I went through passport control and went to the terminal. It was a pretty tiny terminal with pretty much nothing to do. The only entertainment was a Russian movie playing on a TV in there.

The flight was 6 hours from Almaty to Istanbul. I was in the very last row in the aisle seat. A short layover and off to Munich.

That night in Munich I went to a restaurant called Augustiner. My absolute favorite German meal is wienerschnitzel with steaked potatoes. For dessert it was apple strudel.

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We arrived in Almaty at 7 am in the morning. A quick trip through the grumpy customs officials and I was off to the hotel. The taxi driver said that it would cost 5000 tenge to get to the($30) airport. This seemed a fair price.

Once we arrived at the hotel, the taxi driver said it would be 21,500 tenge ($125). Yeah right. Apparently, the taxi driver had said 500 tenge per kilometer at the airport. Perhaps it was the jet lag or perhaps he was trying to take advantage of some poor American soul. Whatever the case, there was no way I was paying $125.

I told him that in Moscow where it takes two hours to get to the hotel, I only pay $50. There was no way he was getting $125. He kept trying to convince me, but saw I was going to budge. He started to come down on price and we finally agreed to 7000 tenge ($40).

I went in and checked in at the Intercontinental Hotel and slept for 5 hours. I was picked up at the hotel and whisked off for some meetings in regards to our proposed operations there. An hour and a half later, we had agreed in principle.

It was time for my hosts to show me Almaty. We went to a traditional Kazakh restaurant. My host ordered at least 5 entrees off the menu (at least as far as I could tell since I don’t speak Russian). The first two dishes came and my plate was piled high by my hosts. The food was very tasty, seasoned well. The next two entrees came and my plate was piled high again. I could tell my hosts were very keen on knowing how I liked Kazakh food. It actually tasted quite good.

Finally there was one more round of entrees, but I couldn’t hardly eat anymore. I made sure and give lots of compliments through the translator to my hosts.

As were were taking the taxi back to the hotel, I asked the translator what exactly we had had for lunch. Her reply was “Pony, pork, and horse”. Lovely.

They picked me up again at 8 pm for another round. They tried to go to a couple of clubs that were full, we ended up at a nice restaurant. The drinking and eating continued until about 11 PM. At this point, I told them I would have to heard back to the hotel as my flight was leaving at 3 AM.

My hosts were very gracious the whole time and Almaty was suprisingly a very good city, that felt a lot like Kiev rather than Moscow.

The second day in Russia was one of lots of meetings. After our meetings, we decided to meet up for lunch in downtown Moscow. 3 hours later, we had made it through the stand still traffic.

When it was time to go the airport, I noticed that there is a new express train to the airport from the Belarusskaya subway station. I’m all about the trains as you get to avoid the gnarly traffic jams.

I left the hotel at 6:45 PM to take the express train. The signs to the train weren’t exactly clear, but I was able to make the 7:20 train. I got off the train, only to realize that I would have to take a bus to terminal C. I navigated my way down to the bus and took it to terminal C. I ended up arriving at 9:30 PM for my 11:30 PM flight. So much for added speed from the express train.

There was absolutely nothing to do in the airport terminal. There was two restaurants and no plugs anywhere to charge my laptop. I ate a “burrito” and got on the plane at 11:30 PM. 8 hours later I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Europe is one of my favorite destinations when it comes to travel. Perhaps it’s because you can get such a different experience because the countries are in such a close proximity.

The trip I will be hitting Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway in the span of about a week and a half.

This will be my first time to Kazakhstan and doing some research I have discovered that I will be there during the annual Oil and Gas Exhibition. This has caused some of the top hotels to be fully booked. I will be staying at a Hyatt which hasn’t received exactly spectacular online reviews.

I’m very excited to be returning to the motherland, Sweden. It’s been almost two years since I was last there. I’ll have to take an extra suitcase to smuggle all the Musli Frukt and cheese back to the USA.