Meet the "Stans"

[mendeleyev]

The term "Stan" literally means "place of" and so Uzbekistan is the place of the Uzbeks, Kazakhstan the place of the Kazakhs, and so forth for each of the Central Asian countries that were formerly a part of the Soviet Union.


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/EtxJN3o5kkY" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/EtxJN3o5kkY</a>


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/RFVcQ7ZxC1o" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/RFVcQ7ZxC1o</a>

[PBRstreetg]

I met several (3) Kazakhs albeit not in their home country but in BY. Good thing I had someone whom I didn't need to tell me not to make any stupid American media inspired jokes about Borat etc. I'm not making this up.
I speak to her on VK and she's doing well, she likes university.
TBH she doesn't say anything about politics. Whatever, most of us didn't either back then. Her current bf at the time (last New Years) was a cool guy and he from what I gather, doesn't know about the situation in Ukraine.
Just another view, these people seemed to be at least middle class or better. All from Astana aka Almaty.
 

[mendeleyev]

We have city features here in this section on both Almaty and Astana that perhaps you will enjoy.

Almaty: http://ruadventures.com/forum/index.php?topic=5638.msg77978#msg77978

Astana: http://ruadventures.com/forum/index.php?topic=5636.msg77977#msg77977

[PBRstreetg]