Around Baku

We did some sightseeing in Baku, not too much since it was vacation and we were not in a hurry to do anything and also because it was so hot that it took much effort to walk from one place to another. We had to take rests between sights with local Xirdalan beer. Actually, it was much too hot to drink beer all the time so we also drank lots of tea just like the locals. The temperatures were well above 40 degrees Celsius during the day and they dropped to just below 40 at night. We survived only because they have air conditioning everywhere and that included our hotel room so at least we could sleep normally.


The newer parts of the city look just like any modern European city, everything is clean and well kept, there are flowers and grass that is watered every morning. There are also many restaurants with menus in English and that solved our how-to-order-food-when-we-don’t-know-the-language problem.

We went to a carpet museum and we looked over the palace in the Old city. Near the palace we noticed a sign for the Slovenian consulate and that was a surprise since we had no idea that Slovenia had a consulate in Azerbaijan. Actually when we checked into our hotel the previous day they told us that there is a consulate nearby but we just politely acknowledged the information thinking to ourselves that they probably have us mixed up with Slovakia. It also explains how the nearby miniature book museum where we wandered totally by accident has a miniature book by the most famous Slovenian poet France Prešeren. The lady at the museum told us (in Russian which we were by then beginning to understand slightly better) that it was donated by someone from the consulate.


The next day we planned a day trip to Qobustan. Easier said than done. According to our Lonely Planet guide we needed to go to the bus station and catch some bus to Qobustan and hire a taxi from there. So the first question was where is the bus station in Baku, how do we get there and last but not least, how do you say bus station in Russian? After some discussions with the lady in our hotel reception who tried to be helpful we were unfortunately not able to find where the minibus stops that was supposed to take us to the bus station. We then approached a taxi driver who absolutely did not understand that we wanted to go to the bus station but understood perfectly well that we wanted to go to Qobustan and was willing to drive us there for a nice price. We finally gave up on finding the bus station and negotiated a price for the taxi ride.

At the bus stop in Qobustan there are taxis lined up that wait for those tourists who are better at Russian than we are and who actually make it there by bus. But there are rules for those who arrive by taxi as well. Our Baku city taxi was obviously not allowed to make tourist routes around Qobustan as that is in the jurisdiction of local taxis. There was some very heated discussion between our city taxi driver and a local taxi driver and while I really couldn’t care less how they settled their differences, whatever they were, the final decision was that we are continuing our sightseeing in a local taxi, all of us, including our city taxi driver (the photo below shows Marko flanked by both taxi drivers).


We saw mud volcanoes: they look like mounds of dirt where real mud spurts out. Another tourist family was there at the time and their children were having a party sliding down in the warm oozing mud. We also saw a rock with Roman writing that is supposedly the most eastern place that one of the Roman armies ever reached. And there is a place with prehistoric rock art and a small museum.


On our way to Qobustan we drove along the coast from Baku. The driver pointed out fancy hotels and beaches along the way where the wealthy people come to stay. Since I spent most of my childhood summers on the Croatian seacoast I must say that compared to that the Caspian seacoast is ugly, dull, and smelly, offering only views of oil drilling platforms. I sure am glad we didn’t come to Baku for the sea. Another thing we noticed when driving outside of Baku was remains of Soviet industrialization, there were so many factories of which some seemed operating and some were in various states of decay.


While I loved being in Baku because the city really surprised me with its neatness, it was time we made our way further into Azerbaijan and eventually towards Georgia from where we were flying home. So we checked out of our hotel the next morning but we still had to resolve the matter of how to find the bus station.