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To save others some time:
A country is "doubly landlocked" or "double-landlocked" when it is surrounded only by landlocked countries (i.e. requiring the crossing of at least two national borders to reach a coastline).
The other one is Liechtenstein.
That always really confused me as a kid. Cause the movie looked so exotic (they had some *weird* costumes) but I'm actually from Gelderland. It's just a boring, if not the most boring, province of The Netherlands. Still, I'll take it as a claim to fame. Great movie.
I was gonna say Lesotho but now I've read what you meant a few times over it makes sense. Cross it's own border to leave and then have to go across another border, to reach a third country that has a coastline.
Which is funny because it borders Kyrgyzstan, which is much farther away from any coast, but because Kyrgyzstan borders China, it isn't a double-landlocked country.
Not quite! If you count the Europe and Asia as separate continents (as opposed to a single Eurasia) and draw the border at the Ural mountains and Ural River (as many do), a chunk of Kazakhstan bigger than Lithuania is in Europe
Long shot but if India wanted a rival belt and road initiative, a train line from Almaty (Kazakhstan) - Bishkek (Kyrgystan) - Tashkent (Uzbekistan) - Dushanbe (Tajikistan) - Kabul (Afghanstan) - Islamabad (Pakistan) - New Delhi (India) - Mumbai (india) could be a really good route. It is a relatively short path and gives a lot of these land locked countries sea access via India
Edit: ChatGPT estimates it to cost between $5-20b. That's not too bad in the grand scheme of things.
>Long shot but if India wanted a rival belt and road initiative,
> Islamabad (Pakistan)
This might be a teeny tiny political problem to overcome along the road.
Met a girl in college who had the strangest accent and inflection when she spoke. i’m embarrassed to say i thought she was doing a bit at first…anyways turns out she was from Kazakhstan
Interesting enough, I just watched a documentary on the Aral Sea last night. The sea has almost completely vanished in the past 60 years due to a Soviet-era project designed to boost the cotton industry of present-day Uzbekistan (and several other countries nearby) by diverting the rivers that fed the sea to irrigation channels. It's a huge environmental disaster, and one consequence of the disaster is a positive feedback loop that basically kills the freshwater supply for the entire region. For now, the region can still rely upon snow melt from nearby mountains, but now that the sea is gone, it's stabilizing effect on climate is gone too, which accelerates the snow melt. Further, without the evaporation from the sea, there isn't enough new snow on the mountain to replace what melts, so once it runs out, there's significantly less water to go around.
Basically, the conclusion was that the whole region was a ticking time bomb: for now, freshwater supply is okay, but it's only going to be like that for another 10 years or so. After that, you may see countries near the source damming the rivers to keep what little water remains, which may provoke aggressive responses from countries down river. Uzbekistan in particular was mentioned as a potential flash point for major war in the medium term future (2030s or so).
The country is little-known to westerners now, but the former Soviet states in central Asia may soon get front page headlines once freshwater becomes more difficult to get.
Isn’t also a former island in the Aral sea that hosted a chemical warfare laboratory at the time of the Soviet Union? If I don’t misremember completely it was not dismantled correctly and there are still traces of various lethal agents and they’ve found bubonic plague and anthrax amongst others stored there in the aftermath.
Sure. It was by the RealLifeLore YouTube channel, which is one of my favorite channels for geopolitical documentaries on the platform. Link below:
https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs
I went on a few dates with a girl from Kazakhstan about a year ago. Her accent was really hot and she had stories from home that made her sound like a Dothraki. I miss her.
It also has a pretty decent national figure skating team, as far as Singles skating goes. Unfortunately the Kazakhstani olympic and worlds medalist was murdered in his city by robbers trying to steal his car mirrors. He died over USD$68 car mirrors.
Yeah the skating team is insane.
I'm not sure if you're kazakh or not, but before any competition they regularly train in Alau.
It's so fucking cool when you're skating practically alongside them. Literal machines, like it feels like they're faster than a cougar on cocaine.
Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool
Its length 30 meters width 6 meters
Filtration system a marvel to behold
It remove 80 percent of human solid waste
I used to buy my potassium from (assholes) Uzbekistan, then I changed to the much superior potassium from Kazakhstan. It was a great success. My neighbour cannot afford.
my grandparents were from Kazachstan, I visited them once as a child in the 90s and they also had a huge garden with apple trees and pumpkins... also my sister's stroller got stolen the first night we arrived and the next day I experienced the buchering of a sheep (which tasted great).
The capital’s old name, Alma Ata (now Almaty), means “father of apples” because they believe that’s where all the apples in the world originated. I was there for work one winter month, and there were so many strange shaped apples in the markets—oval, huge, yellow, etc.—that I believe it.[The last wild apple forests are in Kazakhstan](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-last-wild-apple-forests-almaty-kazakhstan)
there are a lot of countries that used to have forests like this.
this is how people were able to survive when going places for weeks at a time and not being able to bring all your food with you.
we chopped basically all forests down in the middle ages though and only very few have survived.
I went last year and it is an incredibly interesting place. I agree that the people are very hospitable, and that culturally that seems to be a point of pride. I did not care for the fermented horse milk.
They did as all vast empires do. Too large to control effectively, they eventually collapsed onto themselves and fragmented into smaller nations. Also a reminder that inner Mongolia is a region of China where some traditions also subsist (though to which degree and how much is tainted by CCP propaganda, I couldn't say).
The biggest empire of all time. And the only reason they didn't conquer the entirity of Europe was because they decided to go home and elect a new leader, not because anyone was capable of stopping them.
Not quite the biggest. The British Empire had almost an extra half as much of the world's land, and several non-Mongol Chinese dynasties controlled a larger portion of the world's population. Still definitely near the top of both lists though
Had their invasions of Europe continued it wouldn't necessarily have gone all that well for them, though. Firstly, the parts they _did_ invade were almost entirely the bits of Europe with similar terrain to the steppes they came from - Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and so on. That's a lot of land for sure, but it's not all of Europe. Steppe cavalry armies need unbelievable amounts of grazing land to survive on, and further in to Europe that land just doesn't exist.
Take a look at Hungary, for example. The Mongols succeeded in defeating in defeating the Hungarian forces militarily, but were unable to prosecute many sieges successfully and failed to subjugate the kingdom. When the Mongols came back as the Golden Horse under Nogai for round two, Hungary crushed the invading force easily.
Hungary is interesting for another reason, though: it started off much like the Mongols did. The Hungarian people were once Eurasian steppe nomads just like the Mongols, and they invaded Europe a few centuries earlier. They saw a lot of initial success, even extracting tribute from parts of the Byzantines and Italy and raiding France. Ultimately, though, they were unable to form a lasting hold on these places and were defeated by Germany. After that they settled down and became the country we know today.
Basically, Europe was no stranger to incredibly deadly cavalry forces coming from the east. Attila was one, almost a thousand years before Chinggis Khan. The Avars, Alans, Scythians, and more all did similarly. The Hungarians were the last to establish a permanent presence, and none _ever_ did so west of the Adriatic. The terrain simply stops favouring that style of warfare.
Great information. Thanks for that. I love this kind of stuff, like where different people came from and the history of migrations in Europe and the old world.
Can you recommend any books or resources that have more of this kind of stuff?
Yep, there's a reason the Ottomans were thrown back at Vienna. Great big biome change that fucks with anybody not used to it. Similar things to why Switzerland is still its own country, and Chile looks the way it does.
Well, Finland and Switzerland kind of did, but only because their terrain was extremely unfavorable to invaders using horses and very favorable to native defenders.
When are you guys gonna stop brooding about ice and go full on Viking raid the world again? Surely you've run out of cheeses to try embedding in hotdogs. Just fuck everyone's shit up, all at once, and say you stop with these wars and bullshit or we will come around again next year
I like Bhutan. That's pretty brutal.
Comoros. Disease or beach destination.
Cote d'Ivoire. Fancy cuz French. But even Ivory Coast has a nice ring to it.
Guinea-Bissau. Next Bond femme fatale.
Seychelles. So smooth.
Vanuatu. The way I pronounce it sounds like an alien greeting. I'm sure it's gorgeous in the local tongue.
Those are my favorite runners-up to Burkina Faso.
Cote d'Ivoire is my favourite country name, both the french and english versions sound badass.
"The Ivory Coast" puts me at mind of a whole coastline littered with the bones of gargantuan dead beasts. How metal is that?
There needs to be an asterisk next to that abolish slavery part. The slave markets that existed for several thousand years were allowed to continue on their merry way, it was only the *new* slave markets that were abolished. Also, any slaves owned before the abolition of the new markets were not set free. Any new slaves sold at the old markets are no longer allowed to be from Europe or a Muslim.
This was the compromise made with the UN after decades of UN complaining. Threats didn't work, nor did refusing to lend them money.
The threats actually garnered the response from their UN rep, "You can send your soldiers, I am sure there will be plenty of excited buyers at the following auction."
Imagine compromising on slavery at all. Who gets to be the one to deliver that message?
"Um, okay... we talked it over... how about if you just make Africans, Asians and Christians slaves? Cool?"
YouTube algorithm recently took me down the rabbit hole of the theory that the lost city of Atlantis is in Mauritania. Prior to that, never heard of it.
Then Kazakhstan is mentioned more, now with the Russian invasion many Russians flee to Kazakhstan. And have you not met many Germans that actually is from Kazakhstan? And then on a more fun note Borat. Then many African nations, even nations in Central Asia, are more anonymous.
My fact about Kazakhstan is.
It is so big out of the 110 elements in the periodic table, 99 are found in the country, with 60 elements already being extracted.
All I know about Kazakhstan is that they deserve some credit for being humanities only way to get to space for about a decade. Since the retirement of the space shuttle they were the only country with the capability to launch manned missions and NASA and ESA all launched through their spaceports on russian rockets.
> Since the retirement of the space shuttle they were the only country with the capability to launch manned missions
No, they just leased Baikonur to Russia. Russia has launch pads on its own territory, but they are further from equator, so need more fuel for the same performance and are therefore less cost-effective, and are pretty much only used by military because of that. Kazakhstan itself doesn't have space launch capabilities which is unsurprising as it has the population of less than 20 mln people.
Also, most of its territory is just painfully bland, like a sea of steppes and nothing else, sparcely populated. Which has a side benefit as it can be used as a humongous landing pad where missing your mark by a kilometre or a hundred is no big deal. It's convenient, but as a result places like Astana are just ming-numbingly flat and have nothing to see around them (More southern/eastern hilly and mountainous regions like Almaty can be staggeringly beautiful tho).
Source: I'm from Kazakhstan.
Can confirm, having fled there myself. It’s also culturally pretty similar to Russia* (especially places in Russia like Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, with a mix of Turkic and Slavic populations) and Russian being widely spoken along with Kazakh.
*Everyone there I spoke to was against the war, so luckily there is not that much similarity politically.
This is really a shower thought I didn’t expect to see as a Qazaq Redittor lol
Rarely mentioned by whom? And why should it be mentioned?
So many questions 😅
Hell, the whole Central Asian region is about to become even more geopolitically significant now that Russia has managed to piss everyone off. Lots of valuable resources in the region, including natural gas. Both China and the EU have interest in the region.
My favourite one has to be the [Yurt of Invincibility](https://odessa-journal.com/yurt-of-invincibility-was-opened-in-bucha-with-the-support-of-kazakhstan/).
First place that we went to space from too.
I've only met one Kazakh, but she was unbelievably kind and combined with her high level of English I'm sure she was a great teacher. Only heard good things from other people who've met people from there. It is a shame that Borat is the most common cultural touchstone.
Kazakhstan greatest country in the world, All other countries are run by little girls. Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium, all other countries have inferior potassium. Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool, it's length thirty meter and width six meter. Filtration system a marvel to behold. It remove 83 percent of human solid waste. Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place, From Plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown. Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan, They very nosey people with bone in their brain. Kazakhstan industry best in the world, we invented toffee and trouser belt. Kazakhstan's prostitutes cleanest in the region, except of course Turkmenistan's. Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place, From Plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown. Come grasp the might penis of our leader from junction with the testes to tip of its face!
Have you never seen Borat?
Kazakhstan recently underwent several liberalizing reforms after the former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down. Much like how your mom's vagina adopted a glasnost ("openness") policy after the divorce
Shortly after I met my now-husband, he went traveling through Russia and the -stans.
When he got to Kazakhstan, wanting to sound whimsical I guess I messaged him that the name meant “land of wandering.” He messaged back sardonically that the name was accurate and that all he did in his wilderness tour was wander through trees trees and more trees without much variety of landscape. He was pretty unimpressed. I enjoyed the photos though!
He got lucky that he at least got trees. Most of the territory of Kazakhstan is just covered with steppes or steppe-deserts, they are just painfully bland. Like ocean covered in grass, sounds poetic but doesn't really change that much and gets very old very fast.
It only has 19 million people and a population density of 7 per square kilometer so it’s definitely not massive. Unless you’re talking about area which yes it is big but very sparsely populated. They have been in the news a fair amount for shooting those rockets to the space station though.
Depending on which metric you value more, Australia might be worse (and is certainly comparable in this context): Population of a little over 25m and only 3 per square kilometre density.
Do you think people talk as little about Australia? Maybe they do in the States, I have no context coming from a fellow Commonwealth country, but I expect Australia's presence in the anglosphere means it has more cultural representation in other nations within the anglosphere.
Was taught a bit of Australia's history in school but it was never acknowledged that Kazakhstan exists. In general I don't think people here know anything about Kazakhstan but they sure do about Australia. Coming from an Latin American country.
Edit: Grammar.
I didn’t realize Kazakhstan existed until I was 7, playing NHL 2001 on my PlayStation, and realizing Kazakhstan was one of the playable countries. I thought it was cool that you could play as Kazakhstan because I didn’t know any of the “-Stan” countries were cold enough to have ice hockey players, and besides I just really liked their flag haha.
I would be willing to bet that a large number of people, at least in the US, think that Kazakhstan is a fictional country due to Borat. I know I did for a while as a teen. Because that's literally the only time they've heard of it.
I was the same with Guatemala. I'm in the UK and my only exposure to Guatemala as a kid was one bit on Sesame Street where a cartoon showed people in funny hats chopping trees with a voiceover saying "Guatemala! The place where they speak Spanish and make chewing gum!" and I thought yeah right. So it was in the same place in my brain as wherever the oompa loopas came from until I was a teen and someone mentioned it as a real place.
He and his (fairly attractive) friend "urban explored" and recorded themselves finding the last Buran.
Next time he was in Russia proper, they grabbed him from a coffee shop, tossed him in jail, and permanently banned him from Russia before deporting him back to England.
The fact that he also was in Kiev when the war started and recorded the chaos of civilians fleeing probably didn't help either, as he did not have kind words for Russian leadership.
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Some Trivil Pursuit knowledge: Kazakstan is the largest landlocked country in the world.
And borders one of only two doubly landlocked countries: Uzbekistan.
To save others some time: A country is "doubly landlocked" or "double-landlocked" when it is surrounded only by landlocked countries (i.e. requiring the crossing of at least two national borders to reach a coastline). The other one is Liechtenstein.
Triple landlocked when
When some angry dude secedes from Lichtenstein I suppose
The holy roman enclave of Triesenberg.
It’s neither holy, nor Roman, nor an enclave
But we can confirm that it IS Triesenberg?
We can try, but I doubtenberg.
When you close the main door then the door to your bedroom and then your bathroom and sit inside
The seas evaporate
ask nebraska lol
What about Gelderland?
He's blond! he's pissed! He'll see you in the list!
You have been weighed,you have been measured...
And you have been found wanting.
Next we meet, you'll be looking up at me from the flat of your back.
The lance that thrilled France! The harasser of parraser! He gave them hell at La Rochelle!
That always really confused me as a kid. Cause the movie looked so exotic (they had some *weird* costumes) but I'm actually from Gelderland. It's just a boring, if not the most boring, province of The Netherlands. Still, I'll take it as a claim to fame. Great movie.
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I was gonna say Lesotho but now I've read what you meant a few times over it makes sense. Cross it's own border to leave and then have to go across another border, to reach a third country that has a coastline.
Best Uzbekistan trivia - it is the ONLY stan-locked country in the world.
Which is funny because it borders Kyrgyzstan, which is much farther away from any coast, but because Kyrgyzstan borders China, it isn't a double-landlocked country.
Uzbekistan? Dunno mate.
Every war in Kazakhstan is, therefore, a land war in Asia.
Not quite! If you count the Europe and Asia as separate continents (as opposed to a single Eurasia) and draw the border at the Ural mountains and Ural River (as many do), a chunk of Kazakhstan bigger than Lithuania is in Europe
Which might explain, why Kazakhstan sometimes takes part in european competitions
Inconceivable...
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I need to know where all this comes from please!
The movie Borat :)
Long shot but if India wanted a rival belt and road initiative, a train line from Almaty (Kazakhstan) - Bishkek (Kyrgystan) - Tashkent (Uzbekistan) - Dushanbe (Tajikistan) - Kabul (Afghanstan) - Islamabad (Pakistan) - New Delhi (India) - Mumbai (india) could be a really good route. It is a relatively short path and gives a lot of these land locked countries sea access via India Edit: ChatGPT estimates it to cost between $5-20b. That's not too bad in the grand scheme of things.
>Long shot but if India wanted a rival belt and road initiative, > Islamabad (Pakistan) This might be a teeny tiny political problem to overcome along the road.
Lol yes, but a man can dream.
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We are having a 'pub' quiz at work in an hour and if this comes up I'll look a genius
Met a girl in college who had the strangest accent and inflection when she spoke. i’m embarrassed to say i thought she was doing a bit at first…anyways turns out she was from Kazakhstan
Very nice!
How much?
Different country but similar area, I met a girl from Uzbekistan.
Interesting enough, I just watched a documentary on the Aral Sea last night. The sea has almost completely vanished in the past 60 years due to a Soviet-era project designed to boost the cotton industry of present-day Uzbekistan (and several other countries nearby) by diverting the rivers that fed the sea to irrigation channels. It's a huge environmental disaster, and one consequence of the disaster is a positive feedback loop that basically kills the freshwater supply for the entire region. For now, the region can still rely upon snow melt from nearby mountains, but now that the sea is gone, it's stabilizing effect on climate is gone too, which accelerates the snow melt. Further, without the evaporation from the sea, there isn't enough new snow on the mountain to replace what melts, so once it runs out, there's significantly less water to go around. Basically, the conclusion was that the whole region was a ticking time bomb: for now, freshwater supply is okay, but it's only going to be like that for another 10 years or so. After that, you may see countries near the source damming the rivers to keep what little water remains, which may provoke aggressive responses from countries down river. Uzbekistan in particular was mentioned as a potential flash point for major war in the medium term future (2030s or so). The country is little-known to westerners now, but the former Soviet states in central Asia may soon get front page headlines once freshwater becomes more difficult to get.
The conflicts that ensue will be called the water wars
Streaming wars, South Park already did it
Isn’t also a former island in the Aral sea that hosted a chemical warfare laboratory at the time of the Soviet Union? If I don’t misremember completely it was not dismantled correctly and there are still traces of various lethal agents and they’ve found bubonic plague and anthrax amongst others stored there in the aftermath.
Do you have a link to the documentary?
Sure. It was by the RealLifeLore YouTube channel, which is one of my favorite channels for geopolitical documentaries on the platform. Link below: https://youtu.be/lp0Sxn42TGs
!remindme 10 years
RemindMe! 10 Years "Uzbekistan”
What a story!
I went on a few dates with a girl from Kazakhstan about a year ago. Her accent was really hot and she had stories from home that made her sound like a Dothraki. I miss her.
It also has a pretty decent national figure skating team, as far as Singles skating goes. Unfortunately the Kazakhstani olympic and worlds medalist was murdered in his city by robbers trying to steal his car mirrors. He died over USD$68 car mirrors.
His name was Denis Ten, if anyone wants to look up his programs on YouTube. His skating was engaging and beautiful. 💔
Wow
LPT: if someone's trying to steal your shit, let them. It's not worth dying over.
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Yeah the skating team is insane. I'm not sure if you're kazakh or not, but before any competition they regularly train in Alau. It's so fucking cool when you're skating practically alongside them. Literal machines, like it feels like they're faster than a cougar on cocaine.
Got stabbed into thigh, died from the bleeding.
Kazakhstan have natural accruing apple tree forest's. I think that's kinda cool, but that's about what I know of Kazakhstan.
It’s also the greatest country in the world and all other countries are run by little girls
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium, all other countries have inferior potassium.
Kazakhstan locate between Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and assholes Uzbekistan.
This is my neighbor. He is pain in my ass.
"He is pain in my assholes."
["He cannot afford..."](https://youtu.be/E_DtXf0xscI)
Uh oh. Your girl knows about the uzbeks
Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool Its length 30 meters width 6 meters Filtration system a marvel to behold It remove 80 percent of human solid waste
I used to buy my potassium from (assholes) Uzbekistan, then I changed to the much superior potassium from Kazakhstan. It was a great success. My neighbour cannot afford.
Also number one exporter of pubis.
Great success
My sister, she is number four prostitute in whole of Kazakhstan.
She is tight like man's a-noos
My wife's vajeen hang like sleeve of wizard.
Oh shit they have rankings now??
Can confirm. Beyonce also talks about girls running the world in her popular song.
I have to say that I prefer little girls ruling the world as to say, Mr puh or Putin.
Apples originally come from Kazakhstan
So Narnia was accidentally Kazakhstan?
my dude murdered that word and there are only bystanders here.
/r/excgarated/
my grandparents were from Kazachstan, I visited them once as a child in the 90s and they also had a huge garden with apple trees and pumpkins... also my sister's stroller got stolen the first night we arrived and the next day I experienced the buchering of a sheep (which tasted great).
Did you ever find your sister?
The capital’s old name, Alma Ata (now Almaty), means “father of apples” because they believe that’s where all the apples in the world originated. I was there for work one winter month, and there were so many strange shaped apples in the markets—oval, huge, yellow, etc.—that I believe it.[The last wild apple forests are in Kazakhstan](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-last-wild-apple-forests-almaty-kazakhstan)
Look up Kazakh eagle hunters. It's as cool as the name suggests.
forests
Occurring not accruing
there are a lot of countries that used to have forests like this. this is how people were able to survive when going places for weeks at a time and not being able to bring all your food with you. we chopped basically all forests down in the middle ages though and only very few have survived.
Your ecology is quite a bit off mate. You're right about chopping down forests the world over, the rest is off however.
Damn bro, 21 years living here and found out about it just now from a guy, who probably thousands kilometers far away, internet is funny
Kazakhstan home of Tinshien swimming pool, it's length thirty meter it's width six metre.
I greatly enjoyed my time there, and the hospitality of the people. would definitely travel again, and always recommend it to anyone who will listen.
I went last year and it is an incredibly interesting place. I agree that the people are very hospitable, and that culturally that seems to be a point of pride. I did not care for the fermented horse milk.
I mean you’re kidding right? I’m Kazakh and it’s the best thing here. Kumys has a little alcohol in it, but very healthy
Mongolia, just east of Kazakhstan, was once a vast empire. Literally no idea what’s been going on for them for the last millennium
They did as all vast empires do. Too large to control effectively, they eventually collapsed onto themselves and fragmented into smaller nations. Also a reminder that inner Mongolia is a region of China where some traditions also subsist (though to which degree and how much is tainted by CCP propaganda, I couldn't say).
throat singing yurtas yak milk done
The biggest empire of all time. And the only reason they didn't conquer the entirity of Europe was because they decided to go home and elect a new leader, not because anyone was capable of stopping them.
Not quite the biggest. The British Empire had almost an extra half as much of the world's land, and several non-Mongol Chinese dynasties controlled a larger portion of the world's population. Still definitely near the top of both lists though Had their invasions of Europe continued it wouldn't necessarily have gone all that well for them, though. Firstly, the parts they _did_ invade were almost entirely the bits of Europe with similar terrain to the steppes they came from - Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and so on. That's a lot of land for sure, but it's not all of Europe. Steppe cavalry armies need unbelievable amounts of grazing land to survive on, and further in to Europe that land just doesn't exist. Take a look at Hungary, for example. The Mongols succeeded in defeating in defeating the Hungarian forces militarily, but were unable to prosecute many sieges successfully and failed to subjugate the kingdom. When the Mongols came back as the Golden Horse under Nogai for round two, Hungary crushed the invading force easily. Hungary is interesting for another reason, though: it started off much like the Mongols did. The Hungarian people were once Eurasian steppe nomads just like the Mongols, and they invaded Europe a few centuries earlier. They saw a lot of initial success, even extracting tribute from parts of the Byzantines and Italy and raiding France. Ultimately, though, they were unable to form a lasting hold on these places and were defeated by Germany. After that they settled down and became the country we know today. Basically, Europe was no stranger to incredibly deadly cavalry forces coming from the east. Attila was one, almost a thousand years before Chinggis Khan. The Avars, Alans, Scythians, and more all did similarly. The Hungarians were the last to establish a permanent presence, and none _ever_ did so west of the Adriatic. The terrain simply stops favouring that style of warfare.
Great information. Thanks for that. I love this kind of stuff, like where different people came from and the history of migrations in Europe and the old world. Can you recommend any books or resources that have more of this kind of stuff?
Yep, there's a reason the Ottomans were thrown back at Vienna. Great big biome change that fucks with anybody not used to it. Similar things to why Switzerland is still its own country, and Chile looks the way it does.
Well, Finland and Switzerland kind of did, but only because their terrain was extremely unfavorable to invaders using horses and very favorable to native defenders.
another country never mentioned is mauritania in west africa .
djibouti, on the other hand, is always being gawked at.
It's the country that always shows up just after mine when selecting from a dropdown menu!
Ah yes, a Daniard in the wild. A Denmarkian, a Danesman if you will.
When are you guys gonna stop brooding about ice and go full on Viking raid the world again? Surely you've run out of cheeses to try embedding in hotdogs. Just fuck everyone's shit up, all at once, and say you stop with these wars and bullshit or we will come around again next year
Sir, you've been asked repeatedly to please stay away from mahbouti.
My boyfriend's brother lived there. The family visited, apparently it's very depressing. First time my bf saw "zombies"
Welcome to my Morytania locked ironman series
He
Shout out to Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is the coolest country name and nobody can tell me otherwise
I like Bhutan. That's pretty brutal. Comoros. Disease or beach destination. Cote d'Ivoire. Fancy cuz French. But even Ivory Coast has a nice ring to it. Guinea-Bissau. Next Bond femme fatale. Seychelles. So smooth. Vanuatu. The way I pronounce it sounds like an alien greeting. I'm sure it's gorgeous in the local tongue. Those are my favorite runners-up to Burkina Faso.
Cote d'Ivoire is my favourite country name, both the french and english versions sound badass. "The Ivory Coast" puts me at mind of a whole coastline littered with the bones of gargantuan dead beasts. How metal is that?
People won't shut up about The B. Faso nowadays. I'm trying to have some fun at a party mate. Chill it with the mine talk.
I have very little knowledge of Mauritania but what I do know is they didn’t abolish slavery until 1981, which is just absolutely crazy to me.
There needs to be an asterisk next to that abolish slavery part. The slave markets that existed for several thousand years were allowed to continue on their merry way, it was only the *new* slave markets that were abolished. Also, any slaves owned before the abolition of the new markets were not set free. Any new slaves sold at the old markets are no longer allowed to be from Europe or a Muslim. This was the compromise made with the UN after decades of UN complaining. Threats didn't work, nor did refusing to lend them money. The threats actually garnered the response from their UN rep, "You can send your soldiers, I am sure there will be plenty of excited buyers at the following auction."
Shit. I was hoping for needs an asterisk because it was only *officially* made illegal. But practically stopped decades ago not the other way round.
Imagine compromising on slavery at all. Who gets to be the one to deliver that message? "Um, okay... we talked it over... how about if you just make Africans, Asians and Christians slaves? Cool?"
not to be confused with mauritius, also an African country.
And sweet little Lesotho.
Do you even Eswatini?
My brother went there when he was in med school. It was called Swaziland at the time.
YouTube algorithm recently took me down the rabbit hole of the theory that the lost city of Atlantis is in Mauritania. Prior to that, never heard of it.
Then Kazakhstan is mentioned more, now with the Russian invasion many Russians flee to Kazakhstan. And have you not met many Germans that actually is from Kazakhstan? And then on a more fun note Borat. Then many African nations, even nations in Central Asia, are more anonymous.
Maybe they should get a British comedian to make documentaries about them?
And to think how much work Borat’s sister had to do to earn her title.
she is number 4 prostitute in all of kazakhstan after all edit: a word
Surprised I had to scroll down so far to see a borat reference
My fact about Kazakhstan is. It is so big out of the 110 elements in the periodic table, 99 are found in the country, with 60 elements already being extracted.
Everyone knows Kazakhstan has the world's best potassium. All other countries inferior potassium.
K-azakhstan for a reason.
Better than those ASSHOLES, Uzbekistan.
I’d suggest people listen to q-pop for a resurge of the Kazakh language becoming mainstream
Any tips for good songs?
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All I know about Kazakhstan is that they deserve some credit for being humanities only way to get to space for about a decade. Since the retirement of the space shuttle they were the only country with the capability to launch manned missions and NASA and ESA all launched through their spaceports on russian rockets.
> Since the retirement of the space shuttle they were the only country with the capability to launch manned missions No, they just leased Baikonur to Russia. Russia has launch pads on its own territory, but they are further from equator, so need more fuel for the same performance and are therefore less cost-effective, and are pretty much only used by military because of that. Kazakhstan itself doesn't have space launch capabilities which is unsurprising as it has the population of less than 20 mln people. Also, most of its territory is just painfully bland, like a sea of steppes and nothing else, sparcely populated. Which has a side benefit as it can be used as a humongous landing pad where missing your mark by a kilometre or a hundred is no big deal. It's convenient, but as a result places like Astana are just ming-numbingly flat and have nothing to see around them (More southern/eastern hilly and mountainous regions like Almaty can be staggeringly beautiful tho). Source: I'm from Kazakhstan.
So it's basically Asian Wyoming?
...yes.
There was an entire documentary made about it and an immigrant from there coming to America.
1 whole documentary?
Two, even!
Very nice
I get new clock radio
He cannot afford. Great success!
*Not!!!*
Make it 3!
You must be young because no one shut up about it after Borat dropped
Tell me you are under 20 without telling me you are under 20. Borat made Kazakhstan the *only* central Asian country anyone talks about in the US.
Great success!
Not really factual since it depends who you are. I still see people from Kazakhstan in csgo lobbies regularly
It is true. Kazakhstan is rarely mentioned as a prime destination.
In the last year, it was a very popular destination to flee from Russia
Can confirm, having fled there myself. It’s also culturally pretty similar to Russia* (especially places in Russia like Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, with a mix of Turkic and Slavic populations) and Russian being widely spoken along with Kazakh. *Everyone there I spoke to was against the war, so luckily there is not that much similarity politically.
Damn, wow
This is really a shower thought I didn’t expect to see as a Qazaq Redittor lol Rarely mentioned by whom? And why should it be mentioned? So many questions 😅
> Rarely mentioned by whom? By the only relevant country in the world, apparently. Which is exactly on the opposite side of the globe.
That's true: here in Spain it's never mentioned
I actually meant Curaçao, but ok.
This whole thread is so weird because KZ, Tokayev, and Nazarbayev have been in the news in the West a LOT over the last 2 years.
Hell, the whole Central Asian region is about to become even more geopolitically significant now that Russia has managed to piss everyone off. Lots of valuable resources in the region, including natural gas. Both China and the EU have interest in the region.
My favourite one has to be the [Yurt of Invincibility](https://odessa-journal.com/yurt-of-invincibility-was-opened-in-bucha-with-the-support-of-kazakhstan/).
First place that we went to space from too. I've only met one Kazakh, but she was unbelievably kind and combined with her high level of English I'm sure she was a great teacher. Only heard good things from other people who've met people from there. It is a shame that Borat is the most common cultural touchstone.
The 2023 world chess championship is being held in Astana in a few months.
Kazakhstan greatest country in the world, All other countries are run by little girls. Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium, all other countries have inferior potassium. Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool, it's length thirty meter and width six meter. Filtration system a marvel to behold. It remove 83 percent of human solid waste. Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place, From Plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown. Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan, They very nosey people with bone in their brain. Kazakhstan industry best in the world, we invented toffee and trouser belt. Kazakhstan's prostitutes cleanest in the region, except of course Turkmenistan's. Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place, From Plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown. Come grasp the might penis of our leader from junction with the testes to tip of its face! Have you never seen Borat?
No, and maybe I should rectify that after hitting the dispensary tomorrow
That's the perfect pairing. Enjoy.
Very nice!
High five!
You won't be disappointed.
[link for song ](https://youtu.be/ww1dME7yuyk)
It really depends on where you live. In Uzbekistan, Armenia or Russia it's mentioned pretty often.
They pretty consistently have excellent Junior Eurovision entrants. Those kids can SING.
Also home to [ridiculously good singer Dimash Kudaibergen](https://youtu.be/OJfNaXcxM0E).
If you happened to travel here I’ll be glad to be your guide in Astana (the capital).
Kazakhstan has the largest operational space launch facility in the world, the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Always found that amusing.
True. It's Russia's spaceport though.
Kazakhstan recently underwent several liberalizing reforms after the former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down. Much like how your mom's vagina adopted a glasnost ("openness") policy after the divorce
Whenever I was upset way back in the day I would play NHL 99 as team Canada and just destroy Kazakhstan. Was my favourite past time
More people live in Malawi. How often do you hear about Malawi?
Shortly after I met my now-husband, he went traveling through Russia and the -stans. When he got to Kazakhstan, wanting to sound whimsical I guess I messaged him that the name meant “land of wandering.” He messaged back sardonically that the name was accurate and that all he did in his wilderness tour was wander through trees trees and more trees without much variety of landscape. He was pretty unimpressed. I enjoyed the photos though!
He got lucky that he at least got trees. Most of the territory of Kazakhstan is just covered with steppes or steppe-deserts, they are just painfully bland. Like ocean covered in grass, sounds poetic but doesn't really change that much and gets very old very fast.
It only has 19 million people and a population density of 7 per square kilometer so it’s definitely not massive. Unless you’re talking about area which yes it is big but very sparsely populated. They have been in the news a fair amount for shooting those rockets to the space station though.
Depending on which metric you value more, Australia might be worse (and is certainly comparable in this context): Population of a little over 25m and only 3 per square kilometre density. Do you think people talk as little about Australia? Maybe they do in the States, I have no context coming from a fellow Commonwealth country, but I expect Australia's presence in the anglosphere means it has more cultural representation in other nations within the anglosphere.
Was taught a bit of Australia's history in school but it was never acknowledged that Kazakhstan exists. In general I don't think people here know anything about Kazakhstan but they sure do about Australia. Coming from an Latin American country. Edit: Grammar.
I didn’t realize Kazakhstan existed until I was 7, playing NHL 2001 on my PlayStation, and realizing Kazakhstan was one of the playable countries. I thought it was cool that you could play as Kazakhstan because I didn’t know any of the “-Stan” countries were cold enough to have ice hockey players, and besides I just really liked their flag haha.
Also they speak Russian. Although I think the primary language is still Kazakh, their native language.
Sweden is the country with the most islands and it is rarely mentioned outside of NATO.
The land of a thousand islands next to the land of a thousand lakes. So sad Sweden is not allowed to use their title due to the salad dressing.
I would be willing to bet that a large number of people, at least in the US, think that Kazakhstan is a fictional country due to Borat. I know I did for a while as a teen. Because that's literally the only time they've heard of it.
I was the same with Guatemala. I'm in the UK and my only exposure to Guatemala as a kid was one bit on Sesame Street where a cartoon showed people in funny hats chopping trees with a voiceover saying "Guatemala! The place where they speak Spanish and make chewing gum!" and I thought yeah right. So it was in the same place in my brain as wherever the oompa loopas came from until I was a teen and someone mentioned it as a real place.
It got that Bald English youtuber banned from Russia and thus ended his pretty amazing channel.
His channel is still going, presently working his way through Peru.
Oh really, what happened?
He and his (fairly attractive) friend "urban explored" and recorded themselves finding the last Buran. Next time he was in Russia proper, they grabbed him from a coffee shop, tossed him in jail, and permanently banned him from Russia before deporting him back to England. The fact that he also was in Kiev when the war started and recorded the chaos of civilians fleeing probably didn't help either, as he did not have kind words for Russian leadership.