We moved to a different hotel in Baikonur: older, with in-room air conditioners instead of central air, smaller rooms, smaller beds -- but closer to the center of town and restaurants, and costing about 1/4 as much per day. It also has in-room internet access, so I no longer need to sit in the lobby and rely on a contractor to share a password.
The banner out front marks the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight: the first orbit of the Earth by a human being. On the steps are Norbert Bartel from York University in Canada and Leonid Gurwitz from Delft University and JIVE in the Netherlands (JIVE is Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe -- VLBI stands for Very Long Baseline Interferometry). Leonid trained as a cosmonaut and has a lot of interesting stories and perspectives on Baikonur and the Russian space program.
In front of the hotel is a large square, formerly a parade ground, dominated by a statue of Vladimir Lenin. Baikonur was, of course, originally a military site, devoted to development of ICBMs. Women were forbidden. When a few women arrived to work as nurses and clerks, the social life picked up; famously, all soldiers were ordered to take dancing lessons. Behind the statue of Lenin is an officer's club, often used as a theater, but now empty.
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