Gentlemen and walnut jam

I awoke ubruptly from my short slumber aboard Belavia flight B2 1739 from Minsk to Baku. The stewardess asked me to open my window's curtain in preparation for landing.
With plenty of sleep still lingering in and around my tired eyes I peered outside to catch a first glance of Azerbaijan country of oil, oil and oil oh and Iliah Aliyev, son of modern day Azerbaijan's "father" Heydar Aliyev.
What I saw was desert as far as the eye could see shimmering in the rising sun.
It was still early mind you 6:20 maybe? Who knows what this place really looked like in daylight.

After landing I proceeded to first! get my passport stamped and then to request my visa from a sleepy customs guy who was playing games on his mobile when I approached. After 10 minutes I was 60 Euros poorer but had successfully managed to gain access to this bizarre country that most people probably couldn't place on a map.


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Well there you are. North of Iran, South of Russia and East of the eternal enemy Armenia (more about that later... I haven't been there yet, ok? Christ).

I collected my bag and ventured outside the customs area to be received by a dear crowd of eager taxidrivers all wanting to win my business. I waved them off in search of an exchange booth and a decent coffee but one managed to shadow me for the entire journey around the airport building, lovingly whispering "taxi mister?" in my ear about every 20 seconds or so.
After getting my Manats (local currency) I tried to shake him off and walked outside to the parking lot in desperate need of a cigarette and a less annoying driver. I forgot to check the LP for how much taxis should cost to the center so eventually I agreed to 20 Manats with another driver who was less annoying but still annoying.

As we sped down Heydar Aliyev Boulevard and towards the trainstation where I had asked him to take me to he turned around and reconfirmed my destination. "To the trainstation, ok?" I told him and he looked at me in the mirror with an expression that told me: "I am going to rip you off, you just wait you silly white boy".
As we entered the city's core he suddenly turned around and drove back towards where we just came from. Just before I was about to scream: "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?" he stopped by a little hotel and jumped out. Soon after he came back with a dude who double checked with me in good English where it was I wanted to go and where my hotel was. "I am going to the trainstation and I don't need a hotel thanks very much." "Oh, trainstation is very far that will be another 20 Manat", he said. "Are you out of your fucking mind? The trainstation is not even 5 minutes from here. Tell him to drive me there as agreed. End of discussion", I responded. In writing it looks much nicer than it actually sounded but I was in absolutely no mood to get ripped off at 7am so I lied I knew where the station was and ahhhhhh who would have thought? After the driver grudgingly got back in the car we drove for another 5 minutes before the station appeared in my sight. Before we parked he turned around and asked me again: "Ok trainstation. 10 Manat extra?" "Fuck off you cunt", I hissed at him as I stormed out of the cab and slammed the door in his face.

God or should I say Allah? I wasn't even awake yet and then I have to deal with this shit. Not cool!

I walked into the station to leave my luggage in the left luggage room, which I thankfully found quite quickly and to purchase my onward ticket for the nighttrain to Sheki the next day. Despite a significant language barrier my mission was a success and the price (4 Manat) seemed almost ridiculous compared to what the taxi ride had just cost me or could have cost me if I hadn't used my traveller's wit to get out of this annoying situation.

I wasn't sure if I would have a place to stay here since my local CS host had not responded to my last emails but luckily I had his number and decided to give him a call and see what the deal was avec mon lit.

I walked away from the station towards the "Samad Vurgun" gardens, which looked like a perfectly manicured beauty in this early morning sun and really took me by surprise. It was a Sunday morning yet there was plenty of activity already going on in the streets of Baku. I walked along in search of an internet cafe (which turned out to be closed) and stumbled across Hayat bakery that did some of the most amazing "Pendirli Xacapuri" I have ever tasted. All the girls inside giggled while I tried to order but luckily a friendly local came to my rescue and told me what was inside each one of those appetising pastries. I sat down on a step opposite and waited for 9 o'clock to come so I could call Kyle and find out what the plan was.

I turned on my dormant phone and waited for the signal and the message onslaught to arrive after almost 2 weeks of being offline. Kyle responded quite quickly sounding sleepy and immediately agreed to come get me from the station. Thank fuck for that! I was worried I might have to stay in the aweful dive that the Lonely Planet described as: "an ugly, roach infested concrete tower above the trainstation"...

After Kyle arrived he took me to his house via a little bakery that made oven fresh bread that smelled as good as it tasted. We walked along 28th of May street and arrived at his place, which was located in an old apartment block but the flat was surprisingly modern and spacious for one person.
I dropped my bag on the floor and went for a very necessary shower. Kyle went back to bed and as I tried to figure out how the shower worked I started hearing him talk. "Is he talking to himself?", I wondered. I wasn't sure. I peeped out of the shower to see a girl in bed with him and felt kinda embarrassed that I didn't see her. "Erm, how do you turn on the shower?", I asked meekly. "Just pull the big button up.", he said.
"Boys and technology from the Middle East", I thought disappointed with myself for not having figured it out.

Later I left his apartment and took his advise to grab bus 14 going towards the center and jumped out near the waterfront. One thing I immediately noticed here was the extreme amount of police everywhere on the streets. On motorbikes, in cars and on feet they were omnipresent and shouted their orders at people using loudspeakers whenever possible. I supposed this was one of the by-products of a dictatorship.

My stroll took me towards the striking "Maiden's tower", a bizarre part of the old town, which dates back to around the 12th century but nobody is exactly sure what it was used for or why it was built in this particular style.
I waited around a little while until it opened and then climbed to the top to get a better view. The guard who had opened the gate for me offer to take some photos of me in all 4 directions of the compass. Sadly all of them turned out shite haha.
Later I walked through the Eastern part of the old town and tried to find a couple of cafes that the Lonely Planet recommended, which were sadly non-existent.

Eventually I came to rest in a local cafe headed by 2 lovely toothless women who offered me a hot cup of chai, kind of exactly the opposite of what I needed now in this scorching heat.
It was after 12 when I continued down along the outside of the old city when I stopped at Divan's for 1 lovely kebab, which quickly turned into 2.
The buildings, just like the rest of the old town were lovingly restored and told of a glorious past that due to oil seems to be shimmering again for modern day Baku.

Everywhere there were parks, which were utterly well kept but what I noticed immediately was that nobody ever sat on the grass. With so much police present, I was not surprised why...

I re-ntered the old city and got lost in it's winding alleys for a while before I came out just outside the famous Shirvanshah's Palace, one of the main landmarks of old Baku and a place that tells of the city's former rulers and visitors. Now just a museum it offers nice views of the "new" city consisting mainly of tell glass towers and other modern structures as well as a couple of remaining structures inside the palace grounds like the hammam and the mosque.
Wanting to hide from the blazing sun for a while I looked for Aroma cafe, which was outside the old town in the buzzing commercial center of Baku. It took me quite a while since I relied on the very unreliable Lonely Planet maps that were often not only completely inaccurate but often were split in the middle of where you were walking... I finally found the right door and stumbled inside. I don't care where I am in the world if I can at least enjoy a latte for a couple of minutes.

Previously, Kyle had mentioned that he was taking part in a walk/run at around 5pm that quite a few foreigners were meant to attend and he asked me if I wanted to join. Honestly, this heat and the long trip from Minsk had drained me but I figured it would be a good opportunity to meet some new people and to "get involved" as they say.
I jumped on the Baku metro, which like all other ex Soviet metro networks was built deep underground (and had the exact same trains as Minsk) and headed off to Nazimi somewhere in the North West. As I walked out of the station I was greeted by a very strange sight.
Something you should know at this stage is that locals frown upon foreigners wearing shorts in public, especially if women do it, hence you might be able to understand when I saw 40 foreigners as wildly mixed as a small child's pick and mix bag all wearing shorts and walking gear. It was just too weird.
This group was the Baku HASH, a concept of which I had previously never ever heard and apparently this is something they did every Sunday, always in a different place somewhere in Baku.
As I stood there waiting for someone to tell me what the hell I was meant to do a bald Croatian man called "Boris" shouted at everyone. "MAKE A FUCKING CIRCLE YOU FUCKING LAZY FUCKERS" - Erm WTF?
After quite a bit of rude bla bla from Boris the angry bald man we split into 2 groups and began our Hash walk (the other group did the HASH run in 28 degrees heat - yea good luck with that).
The walk took us through some outer suburbs of Baku that first housed quite a nice collection of massive mansions and then quickly turned into very poor slums. Every time we turned a corner the fat Yank at the front called "teletubby" would should "ON ON" or "CHECK" or something else. After a while I just trailed the group because it also turned out that I had nothing to talk about with anyone. It seemed very cliquie...
The locals sometimes stuck their head out the windows like ostriches and most of the time everyone was really friendly, probably dumbstruck at the sight of 20 sweating foreigners in their hood. At one point I was trying to take a picture of an old lady sitting outside her house when I didn't see a pole and walked straight into it with my private bits. Very ouchy.
I was just wearing flip flops, completely unprepared for what I was doing now and sometimes had to tread through mounts of garbage that probably housed large roach families just waiting to pounce on some white meat.

After 1 1/2 hours we finally came to the end near a big Mc Donnalds and met the runners in the middle of a small park. They offered beer and water and soon after we were surrounded by curious locals who wanted to know what the hell we were all doing there.
Boris began shouting again in such a vulgar way that I literally expected a sniper to shoot him in his fucking face from one of the surrounding towers. Some old hag who was German and called herself "Tracy" distributed some newsletter and then we assembled in a circle again and Boris began barking orders at people and teletubby got individuals to stand inside the circle to down shots as punishment for various things. I was eventually called into the circle and had to down 2 shots for a) being a "hashvirgin" and b) for smoking on trail... DRINK IT DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN ... etc
Not long after an angry local started shouting at us from the side and told us we were not welcome in Azerbaijan and warned Kyle in Azeri that he could summon 50 gunmen at anytime to come shoot us down. Clearly he was not impressed with this whole shouting and drinking thing. Meanwhile I got chatted up by this horrible guy who had heard somewhere that I had a "really really cool wallet" and who reminded me so much of David Williams in this clip that I almost ran for my life...



To take off the pressure we headed to town after all the rituals were completed and the old hag Tracy was already pretty wasted. We ended up in Finnigans drinking more beer and singing more songs, well they did, I kinda kept aside. I met this young Brit called Martin who had just arrived and after chatting with him for a good while, Kyle took him and me to this small Azeri joint to have some dinner. We all had this soup with tiny raviolis inside followed by kebabs of lamb and chicken.
When we returned to Kyle's apartment I was broken and ready for bed.

The next day I woke up around 10 and went to my new favourite bakery to get some more pastries filled with this and that. Kyle told me to come to his office to get instructions on how to get to Qombustan to see the petroglyphs and the mud volcanoes but after I wandered back into town to drink my latte for the day I lost my appetite for a complicated day trip that would involved going to some metro station, negotiating with a taxi driver to take me there and then relying on his potentially non existent knowledge of where those sites were.
When I got the bill for my latte at the suitably named "Travelers Cafe" I almost fell off my chair. 7 EUROS!!!!!! ???????? !!!!!!!!!!!

Shocked and poorer than I had expected I went for a wander around the rest of town that I had not seen yet and noticed all the building works they were conducting in the pedestrian streets surrounding me. Some parts were completely ripped open with no marked passage for pedestrians others had people cutting metal in the middle of the sidewalk and massive holes in the floor that were of course not covered. It was like an army training trail... FIND YOUR WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE!

Again the LP recommended a couple of restaurants that were nowhere to be found but the 4th attempt was fruitful. I lunched in a basement Georgian restaurant (kind of getting a taste for what was in store for me in the next country) on spicy meat soup and fried Sulumi cheese that reminded me a lot of salty Queso de Oaxaca from Mexico.

The rest of the day I spent meandering around town strolling down the main boulevard down by the water, drinking beer and being stopped by police (like all other traffic) to make room for a massive car train that according to the little flag on the main limousine probably carried a very high member of the Turkish government.
All the local policemen were in their element shouting orders and telling people to do as they're told.

Kyle was back at his around 8 and we ate a roasted chicken filled with walnut paste and onions that he had brought and that was honestly one of the nicest things I had eaten on this trip. Definitely need to get the recipe!

After a very nice chat on his balcony I left towards the train station pulling strange glances at me from bemused locals who are clearly no yet accustomed to seeing backpackers walk around their streets. At the station I almost got a panic attack because there were 5 trains but not a single board that showed which train left from which platform. There was a hectic to and fro going on and me in the middle.
I tried to find a ticket inspector or some other Azeri train employee who could help me with finding my train but to no avail. To calm my nerves I entered the station store and bought a bottle of vodka, some smokes and a bottle of Sprite and blatantly got ripped off. At this point I was not in the mood to enter a discussion about the rest of my change so I ran back out and finally found someone who pointed me in the right direction. When I arrived at my carriage there were 2 inspector ladies who asked for my ticket and passport and then laughed at something that to this day remained a mystery to me. In my exasperation I yanked the passport and ticket out of her hands and told her to show me my fucking compartment if she pleased.
As it turned out I was booked into a 4 berth compartment with no windows that could be opened and 3 sweaty Azeris who crammed the compartment with bags of stuff so that it was almost impossible to get in or out. God, these are the days when I hate night trains...
No matter, I opened my bottle of vodka and drank at least half of it and it sent me off into a relatively nice slumber.

The next morning my alarm went off and I awoke to a breathtaking scenery outside my window. The desert like landscape around Baku had transformed into the most beautiful and lush green hills I had seen for a while. In this early morning sun their colour glimmered softly and every now and again they would open up to reveal a view of the Caucasus mountain range that lay behind. All the horrors from yesterday were easily forgotten.

After the train pulled into Sheki station, which funnily enough was still 17km out of town I got a taxi with 3 other guys and climbed the mountain to one of Azerbaijan's allegedly most scenic towns. I got dropped off at the bus station (after again paying too much) and made my way to my local Couchsurfing hosts Danielle and Lucy who were both in the Peace Corps, which to this day was a completely unknown concept to me. Maybe because they usually end up in developing countries and The Netherlands, well isn't exactly that.

They lived in a big old house together with Telly the dog that loved biting people in play but who I could have punched right on the nose for leaving plenty of bite marks on my toes and arms.
The house was quite run down but at least if offered a roof above my head for the night. Danielle offered to take me for a walk around town and to spend the day with me showing me the local sights.
It was a beautiful sunny day as we set off towards the bazaar where I bought a ridiculously massive amount of Saffron for like 2,50 and munched on some local chicken dish in this tiny local joint. Luckily Danielle, like Kyle spoke the language, which greatly helped.
Later we boarded a local bus (or something that looked like one) to head to the "Albanian Church" in Kis just north of Sheki.
Apparently a Norwegian organisation claims this church is in fact Albanian and not Armenian although it seems extremely far fetched that Albanians (just East of Greece for your info) came here and just decided to build a church a couple of centuries ago. The Norwegians even go as far to believe that Azerbaijan is home to the ancestors of all Scandinavian peoples bar Finland. I find this story pretty fictional and will just come to this conclusion: They made up this story to protect everything Armenian that is still left in modern day Azerbaijan to avoid churches and other monuments being destroyed by angry Azeris who still hate Armenia for winning the war in 1994.

The bus took forever to leave and what I noticed in all the locals' mouths was a huge number of gold teeth. I asked Danielle about that and she said that it was local custom to get rotten teeth replaced with golden teeth. I swear any bad boy rapper from America would feel right at home here. At some point when the bus began filling up I gave up my seat for an old lady who told everyone on board what a gentleman I was leading to every woman on board sending me loving smiles and looks all the way to Kis. I was quite touched since to this moment I didn't have the best impression of Azeris.

When we returned to the city we went to the Xanvaserai, an old palace located at the Northern end of Sheki where the famous Wolfman was already waiting for his picture to be taken. This guy is one of the funniest people I have seen on this trip. He keeps a stuffed wolf under a blanket and whenever spectators come over he slowly lifts the blanket bit by bit only revealing the stuffed wolf and his blinking eyes when the audience has reached an ecstatic climax and simply cannot take any more.
He deserved every penny I gave him. God bless!

In the palace I got a tour that was supposed to be English speaking but the guy who showed me the 4/5 rooms only said FINISH at the end. So much for the tour.

Later we wanted to drink some tea at the famous Karavanaserai but staff were most unhelpful and wanted to charge us 10 Euros for a pot of tea in the open. "Screw that", we said and headed back into town to a more local cafe. I had read that one of the specialties of Sheki was its walnut jam. I was desperate to get some because I loved walnuts and couldn't possibly imagine how delicious it would taste.
Danielle called Lucy on her phone and asked her to buy me a jar if the lady who sold it near her office had any and then to try she ordered some walnut jam during tea.

Oh dear.................

ALWAYS TRY BEFORE YOU BUY! What I got was this cup with little black balls in a type of syrup that a) looked nothing like walnuts and b) was nothing like what I had expected. Apparently how they do it is they pick walnuts before they're ripe and cook them in plenty of sugar until they are soft. Then they put those weird black and smooth walnuts in their tea. BAHHHHHHH It was horrible! :(
I did end up buying a box of "halva", which is essentially a local version of Balclava and is a total sugar overload but fucking delicious.

The afternoon finished with a dinner at the Shekivaran restaurant where we brought our own beer (apparently the girls come here so often that the owner doesn't care) and then hung around at the girl's house for the rest of the evening talking about piercings and other nasty stuff until it was time for bed. Funny thing was, they spend so long in the middle of nowhere that the only foreigners they meet are couchsurfers and somehow I had the feeling Danielle was ready for some action. DENIED!

The next morning I rose early and wandered to the bus station after being bitten in the nose by Telly the monster and being more than ready to head off to Georgia. They girls had told me that in comparison with Sheki or even Baku, Tbilisi was like heaven on earth and that Georgians were by far the friendliest people in the region.
It could only get better!
The bus drove me up to Balacan near the border from where I took a tattered Lada taxi to the border. I think they checked my passport 6 times between the entrance gate and the actual border continuously asking where I was going after Georgia. I almost felt like saying: TO YOUR ARCHENEMY ARMENIA YOU FAT CUNT NOW PISS OFF but instead I said: Oh you know, just home.