Qurban Bayrami

Happy Qurban Bayrami everone!

Today was a religious holiday called Qurban Bayrami which means a 'festival of sacrifice'. Although we didn't have any classes most of the places were open just like on a regular day.
Qurban Bayrami is a Muslim holiday about sharing with the others. It's to honor Ibrahim (Abraham) for sacrificing his young first-born son Ismail (Ishmael) as an act of submission to Allah's command. Istead of sacrificing his son, Ibrahim was allowed to sacrifice a lamb instead. This holiday is then about giving what you ave best to your relatives and close friends. Because of the lamb sacrificed, during this holiday you can see lambs and sheep on the streets. Waiting for their final exectution. People kill them right next to the road, cutting off their heads and then taking out all the prohibited parts to eat. That is what we get to see today:

Regarding we had no class today we dicided to go on a little trip to the best fish house in the city. We had to take a cab over there and even it is still called Baku I would say I was some place else. Even living in Netfcilar for a month now was much better than what we saw today. Dust and dirt on the streets, houses that were barely standing, narrow roads that apparently fit 3 cars if you yell and beep long enough. TIA - what else can I say?

After the feast of freshly caught fish we got to see the Bibi Heybat Mosque. In the past the Muslims were not allowed to paint for example that's why they don't have such artistic heritage we do in Europe. What they did instead was building. Have I seen many things in my life but seeing the mosque was one of the most amazing experiences. It's the most beautiful thing I've seen here so far. It's so magestic, peaceful and astonishing. Of course we went inside. First thing we had to do though was to cover up which means the girls had to wear a hust over their heads. If you ever decide to go into a mosque you don't have to worry to carry the hust around becaue there's always a table with the ones you can borrow only to get in. Next thing was taking our shoes off. There were special shelves for the shoes and only after leaving them we could walk the beautiful carpet to the actual inside. It was really small and we could not take pictures. There was a fenced place for four tombs - one of them dedicated to Ukeyma Khanum, a a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. The mosque itself was built in 13th century but was completely destroyed by the Bolshevick in 1936. It's been reconstructed in 1990s and remains a regional center for the Absheron Muslims.

After seeing the mosque we walked the Bulvar to sit in a nice restaurant for a cup of coffee only later that evening to walk into the coolest (and my first) pub in the city! As we were there for the first time we got samples of the beers they brawe themselves. One thing you need to know about the beer here is that light beer tastes like water. That's the reason we all ordered the dar one which was not bitter at all and in it's taste it was similiar to European light/medium beer. Also the medium beer they served us tasted and smelled like a' la grodzkie (KMWTN)...

It was a long day full of excitement and fun! Hopefully I will see more of them in the next 4 remaining months... ;)

And here's a little something about Qurban Bayrami in Poland: Qurban Bayrami banned in Poland

All or Nothing

To keep this blog running I know I should write what is going on, but the thing is… nothing. It’s very hard to live in this country when you’re used to Western type of living. You know, one day I asked a guy what do they do in their free time and he said ‘meet with friends’. Well, that is not why I wanted to become an Erasmus.
It is very different from regular Erasmus you know. Erasmus is known for its parties and zero responsibility. Here maybe I have no responsibility but definitely no parties either. It is especially hard for me as a geek that I don’t even have many things to do for school. Let me tell you why.

I do admire the western style of classes the instructors want to provide. Most of them studies in Western European countries and they want to share all they’ve seen with the students here. It is a shame they do not appreciate it. Before I came here I got in touch with one guy (author of the blog I recommend you: Życie na Marsie; all in Polish) who spent an EVS in Baku. He told me there’s a way to recognize if you’re passing a college student on the street because the only thing they carry is one 30 pages notebook…

It is true. Education here has no importance for the people. I thought it would be different In a private school but no. Nobody reads, nobody makes copies of the books, nobody’s prepared, nobody wants to speak in class. The way they study is they memorize everything they have in the book (if they have a book). The problem is for each class we only have one book to read. ONE. Please tell me how am I supposed to learn something about i.e. foreign policy of Azerbaijan if the book for this class is written by Minister of Foreign Affairs?!

That’s the academic part but wait till you need to get something done, for example immigration. For the immigration card you need to fill in a lot of documents. Luckily (or not…) the school helps us with this. The result is we need to wait for anything to get done for weeks. This is actually the third week I’m asking about student ID cards. ‘So you know when they will be ready?’, ‘No, sorry, I don’t know’

I am either about to kill somebody or become greatly patient while staying here…
About things I do except of school. It’s not gonna take long, believe me. I can’t go alone at night so I can’t go out. I don’t live in the center so there’s nowhere to go actually. I don’t dare to buy any alcohol, except of the crappy beer in KFC so the only thing I can do is ‘meet with friends’. I’m so glad for the other Erasmus girls because if we’re supposed to be bored than we’ll be bored together.

The locals are very friendly but not ‘let’s be friends!’ friendly. They will smile and say hello but they are very closed. The other thing is their English is very bad so even if somebody is nice the communication barrier stays in the way. It’s better if somebody speaks Russian but it’s hard to find such people here. Young people, I mean.
What else can I can, so far there’s hasn’t been much going on, really. I do understand though this post might be a little confusing so please, leave me a comment and I will clarify everything the best I can. Also, I will have something to do for at least 30 minutes so I will really appreciate that ;)

If laughing adds 15 minutes to your life...

Every day here brings me joy. And laughter. And more laughter. ;))

So this morning we woke up to find out we don't have any water. At all. Great, huh? Good we had some bottled water to at least brush our teeth with... I completely did not prepare for any of my todays classes. We got back late yesterday and I thought nobody prepares for the classes here so there should be no problem. There wasn't!

After the first class we went out to get some lunch. I only use cash in here as I was advised to but my friend decided she wants to pay by card. That was a mistake...First of all it is extremely hard to get the waiters attention. When you're eating they are everywhere but when you want to pay they are suddenly busy and won't even look at you!
To begin with we had troubles with ordering. I didn't even think about it but I ordered in English and so did my friend. Strange thing in this place was that the waiter seemed like he's memorizing our order - he didn't write down anything! Just a few minutes later another woman comes up to as with a question mark on her face asking if we ordered pasta. She was shocked when we said no and called the waiter who turned out to speak Russian but still had troubles with getting our order...

So apparently Mado, the place where we were, is a Turkish cafe famous for their ice cream. They are very different. They serve them frozen with fork and knife and when you cut them they're a little chewy.. But good!

Funny part started when we wanted to pay. We wanted to use a card but it seemed to be denied. We got the receipt but it was in Azerbaijani. Even though it didn't look like there was something wrong with it... They asked us to use the card again because they had an error. We didn't want to at first, we asked what if we pay the second time. They made an agreement that if we paid twice they will pay us back. They had to call a bank to clarify the situation and after half an hour I think they finally paid us back. With cash. Can you imagine? You should've seen what was going on in the cafe. They had no idea what to do and everybody was talking about us. Again.

Later that day we had a welcoming party for all the Erasmus Exchange Students which was great because I didn't have time to eat anything and they provided refreshments ;))

When we got back home two things were fixed. First was the house key. We made a second one but it only worked from the inside. We could not use it from the outside so the guy had to do it again. Twice as much work for him, could've done the job the first time. And the second thing was our water. It turned out some mechanic decided he would work on the water pipes after they cut the water in the whole area the night before. The thing is he forgot to turn them on again so nobody could use water the whole day.

What can I say? I just laugh.

Graduation

We (Erasmus students) were invited to the 35th graduation at Khzaar just so we could see how it looks like. Well, had I ever been to a graduation I would have something to compare and the only thing I have are the American movies...
First of all, not only were we late but also didn't know where the place was. Luckily (or not) we had a Khazar employee with us to show us the way but apparently he didn't know. We wanted to give him a map but no.. it was better to ask every taxi driver on the way and make a huge circle to finally get to where we were heading.

First thing you need to know is that the school I study at, Khazar University, is a very small one. The whole student body at the university is approximately 1700 so everybody fitted into a small movie theater audience. Fun part was the dancing performance!

While the girls did a good job being pretty and girly than the boys were amazing. It might be just me but I was absolutely astonished! By the dance of course, I tried not to pay attention to the appearance, just not to spoil the whole thing...

Girls' performance at the graduationBoys' performance at the graduation
We were also expecting something to eat afterwards but we were disappointed... I mean the girls were because I was still stuffed with all the food my neighbours brought us yesterday... We went out for a walk and a coffee though with one of our professors, so still it was nice. Funny thing happened when we were at this coffee place. It was called Mado and it's supposed to be really popular around here. It must be because it was really hard to find a seat but we managed. Before we could even order the waiter came up to as and asked us if he could take a picture of us.... Well, we agreed, why not? He said that if the picture turns out to be good, they will hang it on the wall. I felt like I'm popular (well, it was not the first time, I mean, I've already been on tv ;))!

A for the Absurd

What could better explain the life in Azerbaijan than real life stories? People often ask me what surprised me the most, if I had a culture shock or how is it different here. Well, let the stories speak for themselves:

Yesterday was a boring day for me but not for my friends. I decided I didn't want to take a class about European integration; well now I regret.
The girls came to the class like every other day. The difference was that they already new the teacher personally. The articles he asked the class to read were indeed very hard even for the international students. Well, what we should have expect was that the Azerbaijani students would not read anything. Half of the class did not read a single word and the rest who actually did, didn't understand anything. Well, English is not their native language so let's say they did have an excuse...

At the beginning of the class teacher states the rules that they had to obey: only English language as a language of the course, attendance - not only physical but also active and so on and so forth.
What happened next I would never even think of.

They stood from their desks and started arguing with the teacher about English being hard for them as a second language. They screamed they had their rights to speak Azerbaijani in their own country and that they won't speak English. The fact that the teacher was replying only in English made them even more furious... One guy actually left the classroom and came back with the dean. Tell me something like this could happen in Europe...
The teacher actually told one girl who did not prepare anything for the class that she should be ashamed of herself and tell it to her mother.

Absurd.

Today was full of surprised. I was very busy because I got in contact with a Center of Polish Culture in Baku and we had a meeting. We're preparing an Independence Day concert in November and I'm taking part in it.


After drinking 4 glasses of tea with them I could finally get home. Or at least I thought so...

Me and my flatmate have only one house key just because we don't know how to make a second one. Well, so when I came back home today and nobody answered the door I was sure she's at a store and will be back in a few minutes. After 20 min of sitting in the wind I got cold and decided I would just stand in front of the door - it would not take her long, right?
It was a little embarrassing when some people were walking the stairs... Two of them actually were my neighbours and I was hoping my flatmate would come soon because I didn't want to be invited in... Guess what happened...

In the next hour I met the whole family: mother who speaks only Azerbaijani and has a sister who lives in France, 4 children: 2 of the boys already study and the other two don't speak either Russian or English but they're still at school. Especially the small one ;)
They would make me tea, served of course with sweet cherries, show me the whole and only photo album of the family. I tried to call my flatmate several times but she only has a Polish number which doesn't work here, I tried calling the house number but nobody would pick up... I was already getting worried. Then the meal came, more family stories, father came back home from work. Eventually we tried knocking on the door which took us some time... only to find out my flatmate was home the whole time :O
Can't be mad at her - today I finally met the Azerbaijani hospitality ;)
But not being able to get into your own house with your flatmate already in...

Absurd.

Azerbaijan - country where everything is made up and the rules don't matter

Azerbaijan is a country in the Southern Caucasus on the border between Europe and Asia. It has over 9 million inhabitants from which slightly over 2 million live in its capital, Baku.
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.

Erasmus? Isn't that in Europe?

11 days without the Internet has passed finally. To get this blog going let me start with clarifying what I am actually doing here, in Baku.

The program I'm here with is called WEBB - Whole Europe Beyond Borders. It's one of the three European Commission's programs I am familiar with; the other two are SIGMA and the 'regular' Erasmus.
Ok, so what Erasmus really is, you would ask? Here's the thing:

Erasmus is an exchange opportunity for European college students. It doesn't have many requirements; the main thing is that you need to be a student and need to maintain the status through your whole exchange. It's a way of showing no borders in Europe and outside of it with a little of financial aid. What's the difference between the three programs I mentioned before? Regular Erasmus is what everyone is familiar with - it's an exchange among EU universities. SIGMA and WEBB are Erasmus Mundus projects which give you a better financial backup and cover regions of Balkans and Caucasus.

For more information about the projects please find the websites:

LPP Erasmus
SIGMA
WEBB

The stories are starting to cover up so much more about the amazing trip very, very soon. Stay tuned and feel free to add comments!