Waiting for ... - couchsurfing in Aktau

Aktau's beach

 Similar to Vladimir and Estragon we were waiting for somebody or something in Aktau. We planned to stay for two nights but a ship to Baku and our Azerbaijan visas seemed to never arrive. First we had some problems with the visas, then the ship didn't take any passenger, the next ship needed reparation and the one after was stucked in Turkmenistan because of bad weather. So we continued waiting ... 

But also we met three interesting and nice people: Sergey, Kate and Nikita - our couchsurfer and his two kids. Sergey works as a production manager for a Russian oil company. Originally he is from Belarus but because of his work they have been moving around in Russia, Dubai and now Kazakhstan. Kate is living with her mother in Belarus. Sergey's wife is a professional boxing and kickboxing champion and is training right now for the European and World championship. Nikita just moved to Kazakhstan to live with his dad and to visit an English speaking school.

Julie, Nikita, Sergey, Hannah and Kate

They were really welcoming and gave us our own apartment to stay. We were engaged in their family life and activities, we had good conversations about pretty much every topic we could think of, we learned a lot about project managing and planning from Sergey, we cooked nice vegetarian meals together - which was amazing after all the meat based food in Stans, we had our first tennis lesson in our life and went rock jumping and swimming in the Caspian sea every evening. One evening we went out with Sergey to a colleague's birthday at a bar and danced till late into the night. Another evening we bought some beer and popcorn and watched two episodes of the new season of Games of Thrones - Sergey was so kind to find it in English and Julie was super happy! And on our last evening we went to a karaoke bar and sung and danced together. They are quite popular in Russia and Kazakhstan but for us it was the first time. 

Rock jumping at the Caspian sea

Sergey was so kind to call every day at least once the ticket office to ask if there was a ship coming. Every day we expected to leave but the days past by. Vladimir and Estragon waited unsuccessfully for Godot but not for us on Friday - six days after we arrived to Aktau - we finally got a message from Sergey: “A ship is coming tomorrow morning to go to Baku and it is taking passengers! You can go and buy the tickets now!” We were so overwhelmed that we didn't think it was real even when we were already on the boat.

Thank you Sergey, Kate and Nikita for hosting us and making our time in Aktau productive and valuable!