Azerbaijan is a fairly young and new country which gained it's independence in 1991 (before that time we can also talk about the first democratic republic in the Muslim world: Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan 1918-1920). When talking about the whole country is hard for me at the moment since the further from the capital the different the country is. When it comes to Baku itself it also is hard to describe. Azerbaijan is a country when absolutely everything can happen. It's a completely different world where the most common word (that I hear so far) is sabah (az. tomorrow).
Since I live in Baku most of what will be written here will be about this city. While trying to explain how everything works (or rather how everything doesn't work) I will always try to mention if I'm talking about the city center or... everything else. It's really important because it seems like we're talking about two different cities: the modern, kind of European city center with all the petrodollars building it's enormous skyscrapers and glass houses (tak, szklane domy ;).
On the other hand you have the poorer districts of Baku where people lead a different life, dress up differently and the prices are much lower, too. That's the part of the city I see everyday, so I'm far from the touristic guide lines and the pride of Ilham Aliyev.
There are also two sayings we learned so far. The international students often say: TIA, which stands for 'This Is Azerbaijan' - whenever you can't explain something, you don't understand something or something doesn't work the way it should, that's what you would say. The head of our department also taught us an Azerbaijani saying 'We do it our own way' which is also a part of their foreign policy. And it's true, they do everything their own way and there's no way they could change it. Not in the near future at least.
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