Azerbaijan!!

I think if I had to sum up my trip to Azerbaijan in one word it would definitely be: Lucky. There is no other words for the series of events that occured surrounding this amazing weekend getaway. To start it all off, Rob and I were drunkenly talking the week prior to our departure and he happened to mention that he saw an advert for a jazz festival on the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan. He thought that the dates were for the upcoming weekend but couldn't really be sure and there really wasn't any information on the internet. Then we come to find out that visas for Azerbaijan were among the most difficult to get in the region, apart from Russia of course. Fortunately, Rob was heading to Batumi, where 1 of the 2 Azerbaijani consulates are in Georgia, for a wedding during the week so he said he'd look into it. Once he got there the guy was super cool and let us pretty much lie on the visa applications with dates and everything so we could get them in time for the weekend and even let Rob fill out my application, which is usually a big no-no, so all we had to do was pick up the visas in person 2 days later right before we left.


 I kinda just slid it in there with my host fam and my co-teachers that I would be gone for a few extra days and prayed the school wouldn't have a freakout. I also kinda said that Carly, my friend in a nearby village, would be going to because initially my host mom had a mini freakout that it would just be me and Rob going. I ended up mentioning to the school the day that I left that I would leaving a bit early that day and might not be back until the following Tuesday and was hoping there would be enough of a language barrier that they wouldn't ask too many questions. My co-teacher was super cool about it so with all systems go I left Thursday afternoon for a weekend of allegedly jazz and to find out why everyone said not to go to Azerbaijan.

 The guy from the consulate had told Rob that he was needing us to get there around 3pm on Thursday and I can't say that I was halfway shocked to rock-up at 2:50 after booking it to catch three different marshuk'tas only to have the security guard say the guy would be back around 4. So Rob and I lingered around Batumi a bit, which is absolutely gorgeous, and returned at four to have the same security guard say that the guy wouldn't be coming in at all which ruined every plan. Luckily, the guy had given Rob his number so Rob just called him and the guy said he'd meet us at there in a half hour. So we just got a couple beers at an outdoor pub nearby and took them right in with us when the guy finally showed. I can definitely say that I was in disbelief sitting in the Azerbaijan consulate, drinking a beer, lying on an application under the guy's instructions, and sending my passport up through a second story window in a plastic bag attached to a rope to be photocopied. After we got our visas and finished our beers we went to the metro station to buy tickets for the overnight train to T'bilisi where we would catch another night train to Baku and had no problem getting the third class tickets for the 10pm train. That gave us plenty of time to grab a big jug of beer and head to the stoney beach on the Black Sea to chill out until the train left.


  My first experience on the night train turned out to be not as bad as I had expected. We started a drinking game with some Georgians bunking across the way which made sleeping in the cramped conditions that much more manageable but also made the 7am arrival in T'bilisi a bit tough. After Rob and I got our tickets for our next night train to Baku, we had the whole day to hang out in T'bilisi and to further explore with no agenda. We landed 2nd class tickets for the Baku train and that turned out to be sooo much better. We shared a small room with two bunk beds in it with a Georgian girl that was around our age and her Russian grandma who insisted on feeding us the whole time. We got our passports checked about nine million times by the police and were stunned when they went room by room with a device checking for what we guessed to be radioactive materials or nuclear weapons. We filled out the custom forms which were completely in Russian the best we could and never got second guessed on anything and drank and slept with ease.
 After we arrived in Azerbaijan and left the train station, we found an ATM that was 10 steps away, and headed in thegeneral direction to what we believed was Old City. We got to walking and asked some random guy on the road which direction
Old City was just to double check and a guy in a super nice car overheard us asking and told us to hop on in and dropped us off right in front of Maiden's Tower just out of pure kindness. We made finding a hostel our first priority and were stunned to see arrows pointing to what turned out to be the only hostel in the whole city spray painted on the wall in an alleyway. Pure. Sheer. Luck. Turns out we took the last bunks and it was only 15 manot and it even had a shower and mini kitchen. With all that settled we literally just spent the next two days going around the city and exploring endlessly.

 We figured out pretty quickly why our organization didn't want us to go to Azerbaijan.. because the cleanliness and ease with which you can get around the city blows Georgia out of the water. Instead of the underground street crossings being filled with the pungeant odor of piss and poverty, they were literally granite and marble with pictures and monuments to their well known artists and poets with escalators instead of broken stairs. Even the turkishy toilets were porcelain, sheer heaven. We drank beer on the paved ledge along the Caspian Sea, walked through paved streets surrounded by Dior and Gucci, laid down in the grass barefoot in the many parks with monuments and fountains, got coffee on a rooftop bar overlooking the city, drank beer with a bunch of Scottish ex-pats while watching the soccer games at a local bar, ate dinner with a bunch of Azerbajianis in some hole in the wall basement "restaurant" and were able to buy tickets at the door for the jazz "festival". While the jazz festival turned out to be a lot different than what we were expecting (i.e. it was indoors with no alcohol allowed) we did manage to have the most amazing Indian food and try out the authentic local food and we even managed to stumble across the only Mexican restaurant that was in the area and have our first and most likely last tacos while we're here. We climbed Maiden's Tower which overlooks the whole city, walked along the old fortress wall that runs through the city, visited a few art galleries that were free of charge, went to a Theatre History Museum, and saw my personal favourite which was the Azerbaijan Independence Museum. We later learned that it's ridiculously hard to get into Azerbaijan if you have already visited Armenia and the museum and Scottish ex-pats did a great job of explaining why that was the case so it was cool to see and learn the history.

Cute little hole in the wall restaurant

 We had some interesting people staying at the hostel with us as well which made the experience that much more enriching. We had a few aussies that had literally driven all the way from Australia, and after the given 'kangaroos as a viable form of transportation across the water' jokes, we were able to talk to them about how they've been able to literally drive across the world and their future travel plans. We had two guys from Iran that were pretty cool to talk to, a Russian guy that had been to North Korea which was interesting to hear about, and then there was Mark. Mark is a 50 something retiree after being an architecture professor in Minneapolis for the past God knows how many years. We asked him how he ended up in Azerbaijan and all he answered was "I got lost" and left it at that. He's spent the past 6 months traveling and just plans on keeping on until his money runs out in what he thinks will be many years from now. He had already been through Africa, Iran, and most of Europe and had his sights on Kazikstan or Uzebekistan next and had been stuck in Azerbaijan for a month due to visa problems for Turkmenistan. His only immediate goal is to end up in India within the next month and when we asked what he wanted to do there all he could say is "haven't gotten that far yet, I'll find out when I get there". My hero.

Why yes, that would be the
Museum of Carpet Weaving..
riveting. 

 While we were in Baku, everyone just gave us everything for free essentially and we hardly got any of the wierd stares that come from being a blonde and a red head in Georgia. People that we had just met would buy all of our beers, a lot of our meals, berries, chocolate, and just let us into the museums. They geniunely just wanted us to enjoy our time in Baku as it tries to become more of a tourist destiny and get it's name out there. It was beautiful, and once again sheer luck.
 We were able to buy overnight train tickets again with no problem on Monday and spent the whole last day exploring and laying in the grass by the sea just drinking beer and soaking in the sun. We made it back to T'bilisi Tuesday morning and I was able to make it back to my village by dinner after texting my co-teacher to let her know I got "caught up" and wouldn't be able to make it back to school for class. She was super cool about it and my host fam didn't seem to be too ticked off that I had disappeared for almost 6 days. All in all, one of the coolest trips and a place that I would definitely want to to come back to one day!