About Azerbaijan 9/12

After spending a week in Azerbaijan, we realized it’s like two countries. The capital city of Baku which is very modern and, with its hotels, office and public buildings, restaurants, plazas, lighted fountains and seaside Malecon, easily competes with other better known European cities.  The other Azerbaijan is the rest of the country, which is quite third world with Soviet style apartment housing, poor roads, old broken down Russian Lata cars and a lack of infrastructure.

If you randomly asked a thousand Americans where Azerbaijan is, I suspect few would know. It’s a small country with a population of nine million, which produces more than a million barrels of oil a day. It’s ranked 20th in worldwide oil production, enough to make this little country quite wealthy. It’s bounded by Russia on the north, the Caspian Sea on the east, Iran on the south and Georgia and Armenia on the west.

Eighty percent of Azerbaijan’s oil comes from the Caspian Sea, landlocked and the largest enclosed body of water in the world.  Because of fears of turmoil in Azerbaijan’s two belligerent neighbors, Iran and Russia, in 1994 it was decided to build a pipeline which traverses the neutral countries of Georgia and Turkey.  The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline completed in 2005 takes oil 1,100 miles from the Caspian oil fields to a Turkish port on the Mediterranean, where it’s taken by tankers to Europe.  This was a big deal when it happened and minimized European fears that this important source of oil could be disrupted by Iran or Russia.

About our trip: We began our Azerbaijan journey by taking an overnight train from Tbilisi, Georgia to Baku.   We felt the train would enable us to see more of the countryside and flying the short distance is expensive.  It’s about sixteen very twisty and bumpy hours to Baku and sleeping is near impossible because the beds are narrow and the cars bounce back and forth like crazy.  The train is a throwback to old Soviet style, and it isn’t exactly the Orient Express.  Because of the constant movement Misti fell in the tiny toilet area and badly bruised her back, resulting in a trip to the hospital in Baku.

If you’re thinking that a hospital experience in a country like Azerbaijan might be a nightmare, you’d be wrong.  After taking a taxi from the hotel to the emergency room at 11 pm without any appointment, we were greeted at the door by an English speaking Azerbaijani doctor (Azerbaijanis are called Azi’s) who examined Misti and gave her various tests including X-rays.  Turns out she was badly bruised, and other than giving her pain medicine there wasn’t much they could do.  Bottom line is the hospital experience was excellent and Misti received good care.

We spent two nights in the old city section of Baku (called Ichan Shahar in Azerbaijani) which dates back to the 7th century and is a World Heritage site.  It’s surrounded by turreted walls and gates and has a medieval feel.  The old city is a ten minute walk to the Caspian Sea harbor and a newly constructed park and walkway along the sea, with ornate benches occupied mostly by young Azerbaijanis courting each other.  Seeing this park one gets the feeling this government has lots of money to spend.

After dinner and cold beers we strolled though Fountain Plaza with multiple fountains playing water against colored lights.  Lots of statues, beautiful uplighting on old buildings; in all a lovely downtown area and a perfect summer evening with temperatures in the mid 70’s.  We were pleasantly surprised with Baku. It’s a very modern and attractive city with a nice feel, not at all what I expected.   There are few western tourists, most are from neighboring Iran.  If Europeans and Americans knew more about Azerbaijan, the more adventurous might come here but, outside of Baku, there isn’t much to attract travelers and tourist infrastructure is minimal.

Baku was the warmest area on our trip with daytime temperatures in the mid to high 90’s, not surprising since this was the end of August. To escape the heat, and because we wanted to see more of the country, we rented an SUV and took off for the Caucasus Mountains. We got a brand new Toyota Landcruiser, which was king of the road as we cruised the Azerbaijani highways.  Driving was easy because there are so few cars once you leave Baku, and the roads are marked in English as well as Azerbaijani and Russian.  The Azi drivers are not nearly as aggressive as Georgian drivers and most drive older Russian cars that aren’t very fast.  Gas is cheap, about two dollars a gallon, and there are brand new gas stations everywhere as is fitting an oil rich country.  No credit cards accepted, only cash.  

The currency is the Manat, which trades at .79 Manat to one US dollar (or 1 AZN equals $1.27 US).  Azerbaijan is one of the few countries in the world whose currency trades at a premium to the dollar, and we were told that’s a strain on the Azi economy.  But, regardless of the exchange rate, things are generally quite inexpensive here, at least at the time we visited.

A note about the roads in Azerbaijan: one phrase best describes them – “under construction.” At one point we were on what our map showed as a major highway, and it was nothing but torn up dirt and asphalt being laid for about 100 miles.  Makes for very slow going, especially when it’s the only road available.

We had hoped to get a GPS navigation system with the rental car but, although these do exist in Caucasus countries, none was available.  This wasn’t a problem since there aren’t that many highways and they’re reasonably well marked.  Getting into and out of cities, we did a lot of what I call “Taxi Navigation,” where I stop a taxi, show the driver a paper that says in Russian “Please take us to (I point to the place on a map or show them the name) and we will follow and pay you.”  I show them another paper that says in Russian “How much will this cost, please write it down.”  This works very well especially since taxis are so cheap and the cost is usually two or three dollars.  

We had a wonderful experience as we were traveling from Baku to the Caucasus mountains.  It was time for lunch and we began our usual routine of trying to locate a place to eat, not easy because most signage is in Azi and Russian and it’s difficult to recognize a restaurant.  We finally saw a sign in English saying “restaurant.”  We were greeted by the usual non-English speaker who gave us a menu in Russian.  As we were trying to decipher the dishes, using our Russian phrase book, the young owner came to our table and in excellent English helped us order lunch.  When we finished eating he took us through the spotless kitchen as we took photos of him and the workers.  When I asked for the bill, he waved his hand and said “nyet” - no, the meal was on the house.  I kept insisting it was proper that we pay, it must have been about $30 which is a great deal of money in Azerbaijan, and he said it was his gift to America and to us.  He said they almost never meet people from America. We drove away with a warm glowing feeling for the Azerbaijani people.

We found that when we told people we were from America they treated us especially nice and were genuine in their praise of America and its people.  This was also true in Armenia and Georgia.  We have to remember that these people were held more or less in captivity (Iron Curtain) by the Soviets, for seventy years, and it was the United States who eventually caused the Soviet Union to crumble - and these people remember this.  There were virtually no Americans traveling as we were driving, on our own, without a tour or guide.  People would ask us: “why did you come to Azerbaijan, do you have relatives here?” or “how do you find your way around if you can’t speak the language?”

Many of our friends feel that Americans aren’t safe in countries like Azerbaijan, Armenia or Georgia, perhaps because of the Muslim populations.  Based on lots of travel to so-called “unsafe countries,” like Iran, we came to realize that no one recognizes us as being American, unless we wave our passports in their face.  It’s a myth that Americans dress differently; the whole world wears jeans these days.  Most people can’t speak English and have no idea what our language is when I jabber away in my “American English.”   When I ask the few English speakers where they think we’re from, they usually say Canada, Australia, England, and maybe their fourth or fifth response is America.   Probably because they encounter so few Americans.

LONELY PLANET, our main reference source, gave several possible Azerbaijani mountain destinations, and we chose Lahic first, about a five hour journey into the Caucasus Mountains.  Lahic is a tiny village that dates back a thousand or so years, with narrow cobblestone streets and donkeys everywhere carrying firewood.  It’s a tortuous hour long drive, on a rutted and almost impossible to drive dirt road, but worth the effort.  The little village was settled by Iranians seeking refuge from persecution and is populated by various craftsmen working with copper, leather, etc.  

We watched a blacksmith making horseshoe nails from pieces of iron, in a tiny cave-like space, and he invited us to share his chai (tea) and bread which we did.  When I had passed his shop early in the morning I said “dobra otra” which is “good morning” in Russian, and that began our little “conversation” which was mostly sign language on my part.  I get a lot of miles from my very limited Russian vocabulary.

LONELY PLANET suggested Rustam’s Guest House, hidden on a back road in Lahic.  Rustam is an older, retired Azi who speaks Russian and reasonably good English.  He’s the perfect host and gave us a great room overlooking the snow-capped mountains.  His family cooked us great meals and it was a memorable experience at a ridiculously low price.  A guy who works for the US Embassy in Baku, and his family, were the other guests and he was a great source of information about Azi politics.

Because the Caucasus countries were part of the USSR for so long, they are all suffering from what I call a “Soviet hangover.”  Like it or not, the big country of Russia, with a population of about 150 million, was and is the major influence on these countries and I suspect will continue to be for years to come.  While kids are supposedly learning English in school, it’s difficult to find any that can speak or understand English, yet everyone speaks Russian, and all signs are in Russian as well as the native language of the country.  Very little English signage can be found.  Most of the people’s housing, other than new construction, is the ugly, poorly designed and poorly built Soviet architecture, a real eyesore - and much of it is slowly deteriorating.  Most of the vehicles are either old Russian cars or Russian military trucks and jeeps.

A word about ethnicity and race.  As we all know, in the US, forms which ask for “race” classify “white” people as “Caucasians.'“  We’ve been in the Caucasus area for more than a month and I have yet to see one Black, Asian or Hispanic person, same as in Belarus, Georgia and Armenia.  These countries seem to be racially isolated; so different than the racially diverse California.  They have their own source of cheap labor and don’t attract minorities, other than perhaps people from other Caucasus countries.  It’s really weird to go more than a month without seeing even one Chinese or other Asian restaurant.

About restaurants and food in Azerbaijan:  The restaurant situation here is quite different than what we’re accustomed to in the US, and this is true not only for Azerbaijan but for Georgia and Armenia as well.  Most restaurants do not have menus, and the few that do are almost never in English.  We sometimes did what I call “etta eating”- etta being the Russian word for “that one.”  We’d look at what was in their refrigerator, or what someone else was eating, and say “ahdeen etta” or “one of those.” It always worked and we’d usually get a smile.  Or we’d point to a LONELY PLANET food list in both English and Russian. This was often hit or miss and there were many surprises.  We would tend to over order because we wanted to try new things and everything was inexpensive..  

I’d roughly estimate that food and wine/beer cost about a third of US prices.  Since there usually was no menu, we wouldn’t know what prices were until we finished the meal and they wrote down the cost; no itemized bill and all payment in cash.  But the food was usually quite good with fresh salads, tasty grilled lamb, fish and chicken and fantastic grapes and watermelon.  Wine is mostly Georgian, pretty good and very inexpensive.

Getting a visa to enter Azerbaijan is difficult.  We didn’t have enough time before leaving the US to send our passports to the Azerbaijani embassy in Washington, so chose instead to get our visas in Tbilisi, Georgia.  To get a visa you must first get a Letter of Invitation or LOI, from a travel agent in Tbilisi, for a cost of forty dollars each.  The visa cost is $160 each – or a total cost of $400 for the two of us.  Because Azerbaijan is mostly a Muslim country, the embassy was closed on Monday, so we had to wait four days to get our visas.  This was OK because Tbilisi is a great city and we were planning to spend lots of time there.

Crossing the border on the train from Georgia to Azerbaijan is a bit of a spy thriller experience.  I’m not sure why the Azerbaijani government maintains such harsh procedures, but it’s like a page out of the Gestapo handbook.  The train stops at the border for two hours, passports are collected, police come on with cameras to see if anything is hidden in upper compartments, they call each person by name to photograph you and ask you some questions.  We of course were the only Americans (the only westerners).  I didn’t find the experience at all threatening but rather somewhat entertaining.  The customs people were friendly and amused to find Americans on the train.  When the customs officer went to take my picture, I jokingly gestured that I’d like to wear his cap which was on the seat. I guess he wasn’t accustomed to American humor and he laughed and politely told me “nyet.”

As I’m finishing writing this we’re now into the fifth week of our journey and are driving down the Black Sea coast from Batumi, Georgia to Istanbul and will fly home on September 19th.   After a week in Azerbaijan we returned to Tbilisi on the overnight train from Baku, rented a car in Tbilisi and drove to Armenia.  After exploring Armenia for a week we drove to Batumi, in Georgia on the Black Sea, spent three days there, and then had a car and driver take us across the border to Trabzon in Turkey where we had a rented car waiting for us at the airport.  This has been a very exciting trip with so many wonderful experiences- we’re fortunate to have had the opportunity to explore the world this way.

Art Faibisch