Son

This is probably the last post I write as I'm already back in Poland. Many things I still have not covered here; some were not suitable for this blog, some were less important, for some I didn't have time or motivation. I do not call this the end, however. There's still a lot to tell about Baku and Azerbaijan in general. Your feedback will be well appreciated, if you have any questions or would like to know something more about some particular aspects of Azerbaijani life, feel free to comment on those. For now I'm going back to my Polish reality, keeping in mind all the great memories I have from this 5-month stay!

I absolutely love all the people I've met, you guys were a lot of help and support for me, especially Delphine and Andrea ;))
Keep up the great life you're having, don't get too uptight with the mentality and irritation that surrounds you and have fun in Dark Room!!

Love and miss ya!!

Qara Yanvar

There is a reason, although not politically correct, for the Azerbaijani people to call January black, especially o January 2oth, which is a memorial date for when the Soviet troops invaded Baku in 1990.
January 20th is considered a national holiday in Azerbaijan as this date is known as an Azerbaijani tragedy that resolved because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On January 19-20th 1990, because of the state emergency, there were violent pogroms of the Armenian population in Baku. "Black" January is seen as a rebirth of the Azerbaijani Republic.

In December 1989, the Azerbaijani population living close to the Iranian border, demanded closer ties with Azerbaijani population living in Iran (the historical territory of Azerbaijan had been divided in the past constructing Northern and Southern Azerbaijan, the second belonging within the territory of Iran). The administration surrendered to the rioters, giving up the power to the Popular Front of Azerbaijan. This also resulted in a turn over of the administration of Lankaran which at the time was an iranian unit.

On January 9th, 1990 the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR declared the Nagorno-Karabakh should be included in Armenian administration, ergo, it should be considered as a part of the Armenian SSR. This resulted in a strong disagreement with Azerbaijan and 3 days later the Popular Front called to mobilise people for a battle against Armenia. The Armenian pogroms followed the events with non-stoppable rioters and more and more disorganisation in the country.

On January 19th, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved the decree signed by M. Gorbachev, introducing state of emergency in Baku and some other places in the Azerbaijani SSR. Late at night on January 19, 1990, after demolition of the central television station and termination of phone and radio lines by Soviet special forces, 26,000 Soviet troops entered Baku, smashing through the barricades in order to crush the Popular Front. The troops attacked the protesters, firing into the crowds. The shooting continued for three days. They acted pursuant to a state of emergency, which continued for more than four months afterward, declared by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, signed by President Mikhail Gorbachev. The state of emergency was, however, disclosed to the Azerbaijani public only several hours after the beginning of the offensive, when many citizens already lay dead or wounded in the streets, hospitals and morgues of Baku.
Almost the whole population of Baku turned out to bury the dead on the third day, January 22. For another 40 days, the country stayed away from work as a sign of mourning and mass protest.

To commemorate all the victims of the January events, there was built a memorial and cemetery in Baku, called Marty's Lane.

It is dedicated both for those killed by the Soviet Army durning "Black" January and later for those killed in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. Marty's Lane is also home for the Baku Turkish Marty's Memorial.

The large memorial to the 1,130 Turkish troops, which were killed while fighting Bolshevik and Armenian forces in the Battle of Baku in 1918. Next to the memorial there is a Martyrs mosque also built by Turks.

The peace of the victims is guarded by the eternal flame on the top of the mountain, in a perfect spot to teh the whole panorama of Baku.

Chaczapuri trip part 3.

After visiting David Gareja's monastery we took our final turn to get to the best region of Georgia, Kakheti (region of wine)!! We were staying in a small village called Signagi that apparently is famous for having secong longest wall in the world, right after the Chinese Great Wall. I bet you didn't know that! Neither did we :D The village was stunning but also very dangerous! The view of the mountains is better during summer, we were unlucky to have heavy fog but still :)

The dangerous part of the village was not snow, slippery roads, Azeri people... but the small stalls were old women were selling... SOCKS! Everybody went crazy over them! The high score is 10 pairs of big socks, 3 pairs of small ones, 2 pairs of shoes and some part of jewelry...

The great wall that I told you about was being visited during the building by the queen Tamara who imprinted her hand on one of the walls

Well, the wine was definitely great and we found this one restaurant that would give you first glass of wine for free! Of course what is one glass of wine... In another restaurant we got a whole bottle! But they forgot our order... Anyways, everybody was extremely happy to finally be able to eat some pork :) And I was happy that after so much travelling I was able to find the Ajarian chaczapuri!

Going back to Baku was not easy.. Both because we didn't want to leave Georgia and our amazing guest house and because we had to wait 3 hours in the freezzig cold at the border... At least we could dance a little, sing and create plans for creating our own country...

Chaczapuri trip part 2

After visiting Vardzia we wanted to finally head and stay in Tbilisi. Well, staying in a mountain village has some disadvantages like the fact that the earliest marshrutka was leaving in about 2 hours... Remembering the freezing morning we didn't want to wait that long even in the sun, it was just too cold. People working there luckily had somebody that would drive us to Akhalsikhe from where we took a marshrutka to Tbilisi. Here I realized how friendly and open Georgian people are. For solid two hours a man, Zuran, sitting next to me was telling me a story of his life. It was amazingly interesting but after an hour I got tired and was dreaming about a bed... Well, we talked the whole way and you know what? True love does exist. Zuran told me a story of how he met love of his life and how hard it was for them to be together since she moved to Russia. There was no telephones, no internet, they only wrote letters to each other. Imagine how hard it was when they where moving.. But they always found each other again, and saw each other after many, many years still having feelings for each other. It was beautiful what he told me and I will never forget it. Especially that it doesn't have a happy ending. Zuran's married, has two children and the woman lives in Italy right now. They still see each other every now and then but they can't be together. A movie scenario, I swear.

Well, we finally got to Tbilisi, found (not so easily) our hostel and tried something my friend was warning me about: czacza. Czacza is some kind of Georgian vodka made out of grapes. Very strong. The bartender was so nice he gave us lemons to eat while drinking, without them we'd be dead :D But I know people who can drink up to 11 shots of czacza so who knows, maybe one day I will try ;)

Tbilisi is not that different from Azerbaijan. That was my first impression. It's still South Caucasus, that's for sure. The center of the city is not as rich as Baku's but at the same time it seems more friendly and... real. And if you want to go out in Tbilisi you will find plenty of places to go to and what's more, PEOPLE that actually go out! After checking out some places we decided to get some hookah and wine and finish the evening just chilling.

Next morning we started out sight seeing tour of the city. We saw some monasteries, castles, took the funicular, ate chaczapuri for breakfast, lunch and huuuge New Years Eve dinner with our Georgian friend. Maybe it's the New Years but surely Tbilisi knows how to party ;)

Our trip finished with visiting Sighnaghi, a village in Kakheti region - a famous region of Georgian wine. A must on our list! We were lucky to get a private marshrutka that stopped in differenct monasteries on the way to Sighnaghi. Never have I been hiking in winter and I must say that was an interesting experience although I would recommend good schoes that preven you from slipping on ice and snow :) Even though it was definitelly worth to see:

David Gareja monastery

David Gareja aka David the Builder was one of the thirteen Assyrian monks that came to Georgia to spread Christianity in the 6th century. There's still a fresh dispute over the monastery complex between Georgia and Azerbaijan since it's located very close to the border with Azerbaijan.

to be continued

Chaczapuri trip part. 1

After a few Christmas dinners and farewells some of the international students decided to go on a trip to Georgia! It would cover the New Years Eve and more than just Tbilisi. So our excursion began!

Living in the South Caucasus it would be impossible not to have any problems and they all started even before we left Baku. Well, apparentely the Baku-Tbilisi night train was not an option for us since there is a gender segregation and we'd be all spread around the train. That's why we had to take a bus, which was in fact cheaper (12 AZN) but not as convenient. We left slightly after 11PM to get to Tbilisi around 10AM. From there we immediately took a matrioshka (a name we now use for a marshrutka since some people can never learn new words!) to another part of the city from where we took a taxi straight to Kazbegi, a village up in the northern part of Georgia, very close to the Russia border (and South Osethia...). The mountaious view was incredible!

It was also our first opportunity to try chaczapuri and chinkali - two most popular Georgian dishes and as we soon found out, our daily meals! It was also a beginning of our obsession with the socks they were selling over there. Sock and 3kg of tangerines - what else a tourist might need?

Our trip was quite intense, we wanted to see as much as we could during the week of our stay in Georgia and for that reason next morning we took a marshrutka back to Tbilisi to change to another one that would take us to Akhaltsikhe, the town 20km away from, this time, Turkish border. From there we needed to get to Sabara's monastery and here we realized how popular Georgia is for Polish people. They were everywhere! As soon as we got out of a marshrutka a taxi driver came up to us offering his ride. How excited he got when he found out there're 2 Polish girls in our group! Nodari had a lot of stories to tell on the way to the monastery: mostly about tourists from Poland. As many stories as our stron fear of falling from the snow caped montanious road! Luckily we had to push the car only once, and we fell on ice only to land on our feet :)

Later Nodari showed us a good place to eat, and again we stuffed ourselves with chaczapuri, chinkali, kebab and his homemade wine that he gave us as a present! If you heard about Azerbaijani hispitality, forget about it! Georgians really know how to do it!! After an amazing meal we visited a castle in the center of Akhaltsikhe from which we had an incredible view on the whole town.

We finished our trip with Nodari at his house where he wanted to share with us some more wine - of course in a Georgian style!

From Akhaltsikhe we took a taxi to see Vardzia. On the way we stopped to visit some more castles and monasteries only to get to our final destination when it was already getting dark. We decided it's best to find our guest house and start sight seeing the next morning. What happened was, it turned out the guest house we read about in our travel book was working only during the season, in the summer. They wouldn't even host us because there was no hot water in the place. That's when we had some troubles with the taxi driver who turned out to be a great philosopher saying we shoul've have listened to him before and trow our book away since a book from 2012 (!) is apparently too old and wrong. Well, eventually he helped us find another place to sleep for which we were very thankful because it was freezing cold outside!!

In the morning we wanted to get a marshrutka to Vardzia, the place we wanted to see before. Well, we should've known that if a bus is scheduled for 10AM it will be there no sooner than 1030AM... For a solid half an hour we were trying to warm ourselves by dancing on the street. At least the sheep had fun - we were freezing! It was worth it though, Vardzia - a city in the mountain, was incredible!

to be continued

Azerbaijani cuisine

The moment comes that I need to talk about the most important thing for me - food. Following all the Christmas decorations everywhere, a little snow that maked everybody freak out and the fact that I can't find basic ingrediences for making some Polish dishes for Christmas dinner, at least a little must be said about what people eat in Azerbaijan.

The definite no. 1
BREAD. If not for bread, I don't know what people would eat. Bread is a must to every meal you eat in Azerbaijan. Considering low wages in the country, it's a best and cheapest way to kill your hunger. The most popular bread, çörək, is an addition to your breakfast, lunch and dinner. It doesn't matter what you eat: soup, salad, plov, chicken - the bread is always there. The other type of bread, my personal favourite, is təndir çörəyi, which is a type of bread baked in a clay oven called tandoor. It is delicious! Can't buy it very often though because once I get a taste of the freshly baked bread I eat the whole thing at once...
One other type of bread is lavash which is similar to what we know as a Mexican tortilla.

Çay
If you know Russian you already know what it is :) Çay is tea. Tea is drunk everyday, many, many, many times a day. The tradition and culture of drinking tea in Azerbaijan is long and strong. What's interesting is that tea is always served in pear shaped glasses, just like this one:

The thing is, if you're invited for some tea you should expect more than just one glass of tea. 'Tea meetings' as I like to call them last for hours. I don't think I have ever in my life drunk more tea than here. Those glasses are smaller than regular cups that's why people drink 4 or more glasses at a time. Tea is also served with nuts, raisins, fruit preserves, cookies, sweets, sugar and candy (many times Polish). Believe me, a lot of times one 'tea meeting' made well for a lunch for me :)

Ayran
Ayran is a type of drink which I got to try not knowing what it was. I mixed it up with natural yogurt which might be the reason I don't want to taste it again. Ayran is the most popular drink in Azerbaijan, right after tea. You can drink it to every meal you want but its mostly drank with kebab on the street :) Ayran is a salty drink and from my investigation it seems like it's a mixture of natural yogurt and water with some addition of salt. I would say it's one of the things you have to try when you're here although I can't guarantee you will like it :))

Mercimek Çorbası
Even though soups are quite popular in Poland too I don't make them very often. That's the reason here I want to try as many as I can. Most of the soups are very easy, vegetable soups that make for a nice appetizer (for the whole lunch you would need to add some bread ;p). The first one I ever tried here is mercimek çorbası and it still remains my favourite! It's a red lentil soup and it's the easiest thing in the world! The only thing you need is red lentils, a carrot, a potato, an onion and a little of tomato paste. Ta-dum! And this one exceptionally is very filling thanks to red lentils which from now on are a must in my kitchen!

Dolma
Dolma is a very interesting side dish that I can't help but to compare with Polish gołąbki ;) It's basically a minced lamb mixed with rice stuffed in vine leaves. They're much smaller than gołąbki and I bet they require a lot of work but try them if you have a chance.

Qutab
Qutab is a very thin pancake made out of flour and water with a very, very, very little of minced lamb, pumpkin, spinach or cheese. I don't recommend. They're good but they don't have much taste and you will not feel like you ate anything. Or maybe I was just unlucky?

Plov
Plov is the greatest dish I have tried here, it's definitely my favourite!! It requires a lot of work, a special type of rice, many grams of butter, raisins, apricots and walnuts. But it's worth it!! Plov is a rice dish with some chunks of either meat or chicken, dried fruits and saffron! There are many types of plov depending on the ingrediences you use but I assure you every one of them is great!

Paxlava
Baklava is the greatest of the desserts! There's nothing better: it's sweet, contains nuts and honey, always with some more nuts on the top! In March 2009, Azerbaijani bakers achieved an entry in the CIS book of records for baking the biggest and heaviest pakhlava in the CIS, weighing about 3 tons. More than 7 thousand eggs, 350 kg of nuts, 20 kg of almonds, 350 kg of sugar, and the same amount of flour was used in the preparation of the pastry*.

Halva and Shakerbura
What halva is everybody knows and I know especially. I can eat it all day long (and then hate myself)! Shakerbura is a funny thing. It looks like Polish pierogi with some ornaments on top and it's filled with a mixture of sweetened nuts. Yummy!

F.A.Q. part 1

I have been asked many basic questions about living in Azerbaijan and decided to put them all here to inform a bigger group of people at once. I'm assuming this is a first part of the questions so if you have some more don't hesitate to email me or leave a comment :)

1. How to communicate in Azerbaijan?

Unfortunately, the best way to communicate in Azerbaijan is to speak Azerbaijani language. If you know Turkish you're home but if not you might have some problems. The situation is a little easier in the capital, Baku. You will find many people who speak Russian and most of the products in the stores are labeled in Russian. I must say without any knowledge of Russian I would face a lot of difficulties here. The second foreign language you might use is English although take into account people here speak Azerbaijani English so you really need to focus to understand what people mean. Even the poor level of English language among the people of Azerbaijan many foreigners communicate only in this language. They live in the center of course which makes their lives a little easier.

2. Do I like Baku?

The most common question asked by everybody I meet :) I do like Baku, I like it very much. Not because I fell in love with the city but because it's so different from what I'm used to. The reason I chose Azerbaijan was to experience something new and exciting and I have to tell you I certainly got what I expected! I like the culture shock, I like how people don't understand us, Europeans and how we don't understand them. I like how we learn how different things are important for us and for them. I like the small differences that make me appreciate everything I have back at home. I like seeing those differences yet I'm so happy I don't have to live here. Take note that I'm writing this from a girl's perspective and as a guy you might have a different impression.

The center of the city is beautiful and very European-like. All the governmental institutions, parks, etc. are stunning and extremely impressive. But this is the touristic Baku, not the real one. Not the real Azerbaijan.

3. What do I do except of studying?

Good question. There's not that much to do in Baku. If you don't travel outside of the city and don't live in the center you most likely will be bored. The locals often spend their free time in çai evis playing games, smoking water pipes and of course drinking tea. When I say locals I mean men - the only entertainment the women get here is.. shopping? Hard to say since you don't see women here that often. The center has much more to offer. Around Fountain Square, a main meeting point in the city, you will find a bunch of places you can go to in the evening. One that I'd recommend is the only, if I'm not mistaken, wine house in Baku, called Room. It offers a variety of wines from Spain, Italy and Azerbaijan and every Wednesday they organize Aperitivo Italiano with a free boufet. Needless to say THIS is a place you will find me most :)

4. How are the Azerbaijani people?

Well.. I cannot deny they are the most hospitable, sharing and curious people. For most of them that I've met I'm the first and only foreigner they see. Often it happens that we get invited to smebody's house for tea which here mean a few hor stay with talking, drinking tea, trying some local sweets and sometimes also food. Very often they want to help us if we have a problem, they reassure us that we can always call if anything happens. In general they are very, very nice.
But there's always another side of the coin:
The curiosity has no boundaries here which is best explained in this picture I found in the Internet:

Most of the people we meet at school are also very immature and a lot of times I feel like I'm in middle school again.
One other thing is something I have been predicting before I arrive here and that is the lack of indifference for their actions. Everything they do has a second meaning. Since we're European they see some advantages they can get from us and some of the people would never even talk to us unless they wanted something. That kind of attitute I can feel more and more the longer I stay here.
Girls should also be careful with Azerbaijani boys. It's better not to smile or even look at some of them because they might immediately think you're interested in them. And if they do they will not let you live. So one advice: don't ever give out your phone numbers!

5. How is your university's teaching level?

When it comes to my university I have really mixed feelings because the way the classes are supposed to be conducted and the tasks we're supposed to have are quite ambicious. Some of the teachers really try to differentiate the classes and make them more interesting. Every classroom has a projector and each time we follow everything on a multimedia presentation. The thing is, the presentatons are later sent to the students so nobody pays attention to what is going on in the class. The classes themselves look exactly like in high school with one difference: nobody ever takes notes. What's more, nobody even has a notebook. Or a pen. I relaly doubt they're trying to type everythign in their iPhones but what else whould they be doing? ;)
One advantage I have here is that for each class we have to write a paper - a thing that's so unlikely to happen at my university back home. I concider it as a nice feature for myself but the fact is, I don't learn much here.

6. Life expenses in Baku

Baku is a very expensive city. Long time ago I learnt not to calculate the currency change because multiplying everything by 4 each time would give me a headache :) Even though some prices are so high I always laugh when I go to the store. The most expensive thing here is the housing. The prizes are so high and even though we have to face all the problems with the apartment and the landlords it's ridiculous. But be prepared because even in the city center you will not escape the typical Azerbaijani issues; mostly connected to the heating (in the winter) and air conditioning (in the summer). One cheap thing you will find here is of course gas for about 0,4 AZN per liter (1 AZN ~ 1,075). That unfortunately doesn't mean you can get a really cheap cab here.. :( But the public transportation is quite ok and cheap, too. For a subway ride you have to pay 0,2 AZN each time you enter the metro (after purchaising a metro card for 2 AZN which is refoundable) with no difference if you change the trains. The cost of the bus is the same but beware of the huge traffic, especially in the rush hour which is hard to predict here. If you decide to drive a car yourself than you need to have some driving experience already and be very brave. There's no such thing as sticking to the right side of the road and believe me, no extra space will be left on the road. If there are any traffic rules, I have no idea. You will find some of the traffic signs but not many people pay attention to them. What matters here is the horn. If you're loud enough on the street and look at the ther drivers you might not get killed. But I cannot guarantee this.