What I saw in Kazakhstan?

I am in Astana airport waiting for boarding for my Düsseldorf flight.What I saw in Kazakhstan?: unfortunately due to tight schedule of work meetings, didn’t have the chance to go to their museum as I usually try. But in between we tried to walk a lot.

The country is unimaginably different than I thought, rich in resources, people are educated (100%) and their lifestyle is similar to that of developed countries.

Russian language is dominant but they are proud of being independent of Russian influence (I thought it otherwise). Very strong ties with EU, Turkey and China, however maintains balanced relationship with Russia and US.

I can see people do not like Putin, they wish he be not in power any more. Kazakhs are proud of their nomadic past, love horses, meat foods (incl cows, horse, lamb etc) everywhere, muslim influence is growing as 72% are claimed to be muslims. But they are still very secular and most do not pray, some people go to mosque only on Friday.

The city of Astana is very neat and clean, people are polite and do not litter the streets, all toilets incl public are super clean, even cleaner than in Australia. Lots of development programs are underway (one is the project that I came here for) and they will move forward for sure with their resource rich economy.

They are determined to come out of all sorts of deficiencies in good governance. I wish them good luck in maintaining secular character and not moving towards fundamental islam.