HERO: Constantine Agasiev
LOCATION: Kostanay, Kazakhstan
TIME: UTC +6
What should I say about Kostanay? Actually not much. A small town, located almost on the border. Less than two hundred kilometers across the steppes — and you are in Russia, which by the way is closer than to the rest of Kazakhstan, for example to the same Astana, which is now Nursultan.
Such an arrangement can not impose an imprint on the culture — the Kazakh speech, for all my life, I heard only during the lessons of the Kazakh language at school and in buses on stop. So Kostanay is such a mix of the East and the West. Here you have East hospitality when having dropped in on a cup of coffee you leave in the evening, having eaten two rams and a bucket of tea, but also the Western grin of capitalism when from each window of store you are met by angry sellers. The Soviet Union still does not want to leave the city, desperately clinging to the gray panel five-story building, but gradually losing ground, squeezed out of the center to the outskirts. Therefore, walking through the city, you can like an archaeologist, follow the course of evolution.
The rhythm of the city is strange, jerky, unstable. It’s not like a fussy Moscow, and not lazy, depressed as Saint Petersburg. Kostanay seems quite active, but then winter comes, all life in the city freezes. On the thermometer minus forty, people move dashes from house to car, and the whole life seems to be put on pause. Spring time starts slowly and gradually and accelerates to autumn. At this time, the city turns into a bustling anthill, where people are in a hurry to have time to finish all their business on time, because they remember: “winter is near.”
