Visit to Azerbaijan

It was a fairly arduous journey to Baku, mainly due to a long and uncomfortable layover in Dubai Airport Terminal 1 (see photo), which was largely populated by migrant workers--various nationalities in waves over the wee hours of the night: lines of workers bound for Bangladesh, Kabul, Lucknow, Baghdad. Fascinating, really. What a strange world we live in where people venture to what might as well be another planet to make enough money to feed their children, whom they rarely get to see.

The plane from Dubai to Baku was surprisingly full. Dubai is THE hot shopping mecca, apparently. We were delayed taking off because it took a long time to load up all the TVs--this was announced over the PA. Such interesting looking people, Azeris. Strong cheekbones, long noses, brown eyes mostly but also green, and blue. The flight path crossed Iran, some large hills, some flat plains, more brown than I would have imagined. We have our first glimpse of the Caspian as we descend in to Baku, water as far as you can see. Landing in a strong wind and there is applause. There are lot of stone houses that look Ottoman style, with red or green roofs.

General chaos in the airport arrival line made it feel like home :-). The luggage carousel does indeed hold a conspicuous number of large TVs. We miss an opportunity to take a photo of a suitcase handle with attached baggage tag, unattached to anything else--a classic. Stepping outside the airport door the first car we see is a white Bentley, the second an old (?) black Lada. We travel a modern highway, with painted lines. Traffic is civil. There is even a sign in the BP-provided car advising us to use our seatbelts. Lots of construction. Old bullding next to dramatic large new ones. How can there be two million people in this city? A large footprint, far less dense than Beirut.

Later, walking, and at times, being blown down, the street, T points out that we have seen almost no headscarves in this 95% Shia country. Fascinating. I may end up going scarved myself as I find the wind blowing my hair in my face to the point where I really can't see. I find myself evaluating the few hats I see for their staying power in wind. The wind will take some getting used to, but they say it isn't constant, thank God. "Baku" means windy city.

People do smile here, contrary to what the guidebook says.

The school is in a large, gated, upscale residential community that looks a lot like the US. The teachers don't live here, thankfully, but in or near downtown in various apartments. If we are really lucky we will have a place with a view of the Caspian Sea. The school is in a pleasant prefab building with lots of light and ample space. 500 students. I met the ESL staff and said I would be happy to sub and tey seemed interested. And private tutoring opportunities look good.

The learning curve is steep. At a restaurant with a set lunch menu drink choices included Pepsi and water. We chose water, and they opened a liter bottle with bubbles for us, poured one small glass, and set it aside. During the meal we poured more. On the bill appeared a 5 manat ($6.50) charge for water. We complained, and were told that only the one small glass was included in the set menu.

Water is dearer than oil, I think, but later we learn that oil is expensive here too. They are major producers and exporters, but there are no refineries here. I suspect that may be true in many resource rich countries.

What can oil wealth do for your country? Public parks, loads of them, nearly every one with a working and clean fountain, plenty of imaginatively designed benches (good because it is strictly forbidden to walk on or sit on the grass), and lots of public art. Massive new construction, sandblast-clean old buildings, a modern shopping center along wide seaside walkway. Cheap and efficient public transport (drool, America).

Prices are significantly higher than in Beirut, for most food including fruits and vegetables, the choice of which seems more limited than Lebanon :-(. And we have already gained five pounds here, on a diet heavy in meat (oddly, lots of pork!), cheese, cream, pastries, and beer, which is everywhere, along with vodka. There is worse to be had by drinking bottled water, though. Our Baku hosts reported they had suffered from blood in the urine, which a physician attributed to bottled water. They now filter the bottled water through a Britta pitcher. The water from the tap smells of sulphur...

There is fabulous bread, white and brown. Cheap.

We took the overnight train to Seki, a picturesque town at the foot of the Caucasus, on the Silk Road. The train was comfortable enough, ancient but with a spacious compartment for two (1st class--2nd has 4 berths), with clean linens and foam pads laid over old seats, and even a carpet on the floor. No food service. At Seki we stayed in the Karavanseray--old resting place for caravans passing through. Marvelous old stone place, with a room thankfully well heated--it is chilly here and I bundle in my winter jacket, scarf and gloves, two pairs of socks. We bus and walk to the village of Kish, and a restored Albanian Caucasus church, whose site was first used for worship in the 1st century. The Norwegian government sponsored restoration of the church, as there is some belief that Norwegians originally came from this area. There are photos of Thor Heyerdal visiting. He is the chief theorist on the Azeri-Norwegian connection.

Back in Beirut, I am finding a change of this magnitude exhilarating. It colors, favorably, my remaining time in Lebanon. I feel more attuned to what each place has to offer. I will certainly be stuffing myself with the incomparable Lebanese mezze meals every chance I get here, and am already planning to return for a visit next Spring to see friends (and stuff with mezze anew J ). Just two months left.

Hardly anyone speaks English in Azerbaijan. It is going to be a real challenge, and I will need to get in to a language school ASAP. The only English-speaking people we ran into outside of school were waiters at a pub catering to foreigners and some Indian shopkeepers. Learning Russian would be very practical, as everyone over 20 speaks it speaks it and it is useful regionally. But I will study Azeri, the PC choice that makes people delighted and may have some use in Turkey, at least.

Similarities to Beirut

• Fashion channel on TV




• Lots of street cats




• High heels




• Security presence, though not as much, and no visible guns

Differences

• Smooth sidewalks




• 
  
  Parks!




• 
  
  Few motor bikes




• No honking taxis

Baku scene

T on metro escalator

One of the Baku parks

And another

Billboard In Sheki, featuring the president

Tom exiting the Karavansaray Hotel in Sheki

Akkar hike

Short hike in northern Lebanon, starting at a dam, with an unfortunate layer of trash strewn about. Lovely views otherwise.

Then a classic, yummy mezze lunch at the foot of a waterfall. Here is T making his way across a very rickety bridge in front of the falls.

And the restaurant

And we had the remarkable treat of seeing brand new baby goats

Birthday weekend in Istanbul

Wonderful time in Istanbul!
Tim and Cathy flew a bazillion hours from Johannesburg and we a mere two, to meet in Istanbul for their 60th birthday. It was the first birthday they'd spent together since they were 27.

Here we are having lunch along the Bosphorus.

And above, strolling by the magnificent Aya Sophia



And inside Aya Sophia

And Topkapi Palace



















Bye! Hate to leave--can we come back next weekend??

Spring in Beirut

Trees seemed to have burst into full bloom overnight. The main concentration of trees is at the American University of Beirut, which thankfully we walk through almost every day. A row of orange trees there covered with blossoms about knocks you over, maybe because you are in full swoon over a large jasmine just before it. As you reel to take it in you look out over the Mediterranean below. Ah. Further along, exotic (to me) trees sport hundreds of vaguely lily-like orange numbers, on the very ends of branches with no leaves. Wild.

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Kurban Travel’s Easter specials include 3 nights at the Dead Sea, Istanbul or Budapest ($555). But you could also choose The Benediction of Jean Paul II package, all inclusive at $1230.

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My birthday was lovely, with greetings from people of at least 6 nationalities, from here and a few other spots around the globe. Nice! Broumana friends celebrated two of us with birthdays the same week, with two cakes.

Broumana F/friends

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Mother’s Day is March 21, the equinox. Festive atmosphere around the country. Flowers for sale everywhere. Gifts are given. At the local supermarket, a manager presents me with a “cadeau”—a box with the words Happy Mother’s Day and pictures of flowers on it. Not every female is a recipient; I am considered a “regular” here J I thank him and open my gift at home, to find: four cleaning products, two for floors and one for toilets, the fourth a kind of Clorox. What every mother needs, apparently. Hmm, but they all have [migrant worker] maids!

Kandahar to Kyoto, and note on Khartoum

We are stunned and sickened by the horrific events in Japan. So many souls lost, so many more affected on the ground. And we thought we could control nature—ha. Two nuclear meltdowns to date.

The only bright spot: somehow the tragedy has served to bring together the global community. Aid is pouring in from many nations—70 nations, I heard. Predictable perhaps that the UK and US would help, but rescue teams were also sent by Taiwan, Korea and past and recent foe China. Blankets from India. More touching yet, Sri Lanka, itself devastated by tsunami, civil war and just this year by flooding; impoverished Bangladesh; explosive Pakistan. But Kandahar! The city of Kandahar, Afghanistan, witness to too much horror for too long itself, sent $50,000 to Japan for relief.

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K tutored a Japanese young man on the day of the quake/tsunami, just hours after, during the school day. He had heard of the event but did not know the location; she was at least able to reassure him that it was not in the area where his relatives live. Hard to concentrate on vocab and grammr with images of 10 meter waves in mind.

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K was invited to an event at the Sudanese Cultural Club, which has somehow been in operation for 30 years and occupies an impressive bit of real estate in Beirut’s Hamra neighborhood. The invite came purely as a result of having smiled and said hello to a friendly Sudanese shopkeeper over the past couple of years. J It was a singing contest, American Idol style, with several male Sudanese workers showing their talents, backed by a three piece band. They had invited several assorted western foreigners to enjoy the festivities. I had told the man who invited me that there was a new effort in place to offer English instruction to migrant workers, for free, and that there was hope of getting computer literacy classes up and running as well. Subsequently, he introduced me to the wife of the Sudanese ambassador, resplendent in swathes of diaphanous fabric and assorted jewels. She said I must come to her house one day and we could talk about the classes. She said some of the ladies have nothing to do during the day and it would be good for them, then floated away. Um, er—I didn’t get a chance to tell her that the classes were offered for migrant domestic workers—not for bored embassy staff wives! Interesting dynamics now that the country has split. The ambassador and most of those present at the Club are Moslems from the north, whereas most of the migrant workers are Christians from the south, less entitled, poorer.

It's Beirut to Baku

Can you spell Azerbaijan? We can, now :-)


After four years, we will be leaving Lebanon in June for new adventures on a new continent, at the foot of the Caucasus mountains, on the Caspian Sea: Baku, Azerbaijan.


Tom followed the trail of his contract with the International School of Azerbaijan online. Traveling by UPS it left Baku for Moscow, then Koln (Cologne), and Abu Dhabi, before reaching Beirut.


We plunged into the planning phase: scouring the web for details from Azeri language to weather, Caspian to tourism, contacting the shipping company, and ordering the Lonely Planet for Azerbaijan. Moving on to phase two has me making a brown paper cover for said Lonely Planet, as it covers not only AZ but two other Transcaucus nations: Georgia and Armenia, the latter the arch enemy of Azerbaijan. There are stories of travelers having the book confiscated. Sigh. It is so bad that even US citizens who have Armenian sounding names are not granted visas.


Exciting to go, and hard to leave. There are so many things we will miss here. The friends we have made. The crazy, delightful (well, mostly) chaos. The PEOPLE. The FOOD. The beauty of the mountains and sea. Being able to walk everywhere. Reasonable internet access. Being able to communicate--in English, massacred Arabic, stumbling French. The weather, mostly.

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No doubt there will be fascinating cultural events like the one witnessed by Tom last week from our balcony. A wedding party gathered on the wide stairs outside our building. A traditional band, in costume, played the drum-heavy music that has become familiar to us, and a beautiful white-gowned bride emerged from a building across from ours. The group made its way down the stiarway and on down the street. Tom caught this photo from our 7th floor balcony.

Remote ecolodge....Delicious quiet

We took advantage of a four day weekend (the Prophet's Birthday), rented a car and headed to the far northeast corner of Lebanon, near Hermel. We had hope to go north to Tripoli and over the mountains from there, but as that pass was still snow covered we took the much less scenic, "E ticket ride" Damascus highway to the Bekaa and then turned north through Zahle and Baalbek into Hermel.

On the way we had an important errand: reconnecting with the lovely family that had been so kind to us on a previous visit to the area when we stopped at their store. We had gifts for their children--books for the two girls and a Boeing T-shirt (thanks to friend Greg) for their son, an aspiring engineer. As welcoming as before, they lit the wood stove in the sitting room and made us tea. We had an animated discussion, mostly in Arabic and English but with the occasional German word thrown in, Samir having lived in Germany for six years. He says they would return there in a minute, or go anywhere--France, the US, if they could. For the children. Business is not good here and the political situation stinks. People are for Nasrallah or Hariri or Aoun, he said, they are Shia or Sunni--I am just a HUMAN, he said. "We can go to the moon, but we still look at each other and say, 'you're Sunni, you're Christian'". They are fed up, he says, this sweet and smart Shia man from Nasrallah country. They are tender with each other, he and Ghada. She speaks almost no English. It is Saturday and the kids are in school. Samir wants to go get them out of school to see us. We plead for him not to, promise to come back again before we leave for Azerbaijan.

A representative from their distribution company comes into the store and Ghada gets up to go speak with him. After he leaves she and Samir discuss his visit and laugh. Samir explains that the guy kept saying, "I swear by Hussein this... I swear by Allah that..." Samir says, "I swear by this tea!", with rolled eyes.

They wouldn't let us leave empty-handed, giving us a huge jar of homemade makdous, a spicy walnut-stuffed eggplant pickle that we love. It is the best we've ever had.

On to the lodge. In the foothills of the Lebanon mountains on the Bekaa side, with the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the distance, separating Lebanon and Syria to the east, nestled quite near the Syrian border to the north. Great scenery, good company with some ACS colleagues, great stars at night, C O L D, quiet, fresh trout from the Assi River, grilled for us each night. Mmmmm

We are told we can hike in any direction except that one there: there is a Hezbollah training camp over the ridge there. While hiking, we pass by a couple of traditional houses, fascinating structures with stone walls and living plant roofs. The plants are spiky and look to me like hedgehogs.

The area features ancient juniper trees, up to 1000 years old. Here is Tom with a fine specimen.