How did Marko and I decide to spend our vacation in the Caucasus? Last year we were in the eastern part of Turkey and were wondering what it might be like across the border, further east. And one thing led to another and before I knew it we had airplane tickets on Turkish airlines through Istanbul to Baku, Azerbaijan and return from Tbilisi, Georgia.
It started when we checked in at the airport in Slovenia. The lady at the counter read and re-read our destination and finally had to ask, where is this Baku anyway? Are you really going there? What will you do there? Do you have a visa? Is it safe? I have to say it is slightly creepy when the people at the airport have never heard of the destination where you are going. But I guess not many people travel from Slovenia to Azerbaijan.
We spent the first night in Istanbul at the same place we stayed last year and it felt nice that the staff actually remembered us. The next morning we continued our journey to Baku. We need a visa for Azerbaijan that is issued at the airport. It all went smoothly without any complications. We did not have a hotel reservation in Baku because it is not possible to book budget hotels online so we just picked something out of the Lonely Planet guide and asked a taxi driver to take us there. He obviously knew that we did not have a reservation so he offered to take us somewhere else, in the same area and within the same price range. It was all the same to us and I guess he made a nice commission for bringing us there.
The Maiden tower is the most famous attraction in Baku and it was very close to our hotel so it was the first place where we wandered. We climbed to the top for the views of the whole area, the port on the Caspian sea, the Old city and beyond it the newer parts of the city. We noticed that the new buildings that are being built are not all glass and modern but rather built in a way that blends in with the existing architecture and the yellowish stone of the Old city buildings. Thus it is hard to tell where the old part of the city ends and the new begins and the magic of the old city seems to be more preserved.
The language in Azerbaijan is Azeri, but most everyone also speaks Russian. No English. We speak English but no Russian. So communication was interesting, at least at the beginning.
Our hotel did not serve breakfast so we had to find something to eat the first morning. We asked the lady at the reception who spoke a few words of English mixed with Russian and hand signs for a suggestion and she pointed down the street where we should turn left and there we will see a Cafe sign. We followed her directions and found the place with stairs that led to the basement and we went in. There was no one there but the owner happily came over from across the street.
We managed to convey that we were there to eat and he produced some menus. In Azeri. OK, forget the menus. We tried to explain that we wanted breakfast which I am not sure whether he understood but he excitedly offered us chicken. This we understood because the Russian word for chicken is the same as the Slovenian word for chicken and because he also demonstrated a chicken cackling so this part was now clear. I told him that we want breakfast, not chicken. And he again offered us the chicken with rice. We got the rice part because the word he used was pilaf and that made sense. So once again I shook my head no, I really do not want chicken for breakfast. He seemed a bit distressed but then came up with an offer of kartof. What? We were clueless. He started thinking, probably how to demonstrate, but then he had an idea and went into the kitchen and brought out a pot and showed us the contents: mashed potatoes. That made sense, I know the German word for potatoes is Kartoffel. But I had no intention of eating reheated mashed potatoes so I shook my head no. Now the guy was getting frustrated and he finally offered us grecka, somehow letting us know that that was his final offer and we either take it or go hungry. Once again he brought a pot from the kitchen and we deciphered that grecka is buckwheat, we have it in Slovenia and were surprised that they eat it there as well. So the guy took our expression of recognition of grecka as a yes and was off to the kitchen to prepare our meal for us, the chicken with the buckwheat and some fresh vegetables. All in all the meal was not bad, it is just that I would never have ordered something like that for breakfast. So we seriously needed to learn more Russian. Or find a restaurant with a menu in a language that we could understand.
