Day 28 in Baku, Azerbaijan

Surprised that no hookers banged on my door last night after only one proposition, I ended up having a good and uninterrupted sleep after all. I packed my bag and got ready to leave the key on the desk and rush out. I was asked two times by different people yesterday whether I paid, which I did as soon as I checked in. The same thing has happened in Turkey too and it really pisses me off. Nobody seems to know what is going on in most hotels. I wish I could tell them they are idiots in Azerbaijani. No wonder the only things that work here are foreign owned.

Marius meets me a little before 11 near my hotel but I remind him I need to change which he hasn’t forgotten. We hop the metro, which uses cool magnetic cards held against the turnstile. In Tbilisi it was cheap plastic tokens. My new hotel, Velotrek, is a bit outside the city but apparently brand new. After a bit of looking around the metro stop, we find it and indeed, it is new. The price? An unbelievable 15 manats or 12,80 EUR. In Baku that’s dirt cheap. Elsewhere it’d be a bit much. I ask to see the room which is new complete with tv and bathroom. Walls aren’t cracked and the wallpaper is still on the wall, not the floor as usual. Wow. I’m taken aback. And for that price!

I drop my stuff and we head back out after mere minutes. Next stop is food. Marius tells me his ferry is supposed to go today (like every other day) but it really should today. I’m waiting for an sms from him to see what happened. We head back to the restaurant from yesterday which was near and order Iskender Kebabs, made slightly differently than in Turkey without tomato sauce and with the bread fried. Our Belarussian waitress smiles, happy to see us. Today I use the Russian words I’m slowly remembering from past trips.

He needs to be at the port around 2ish as at some point in the afternoon tickets could go on sale. I head towards Martyrs lane strolling down the boardwalk and notice people with cameras boarding a small boat. The price is 60 kopeks which is around 45 cents. They all seem to be Azerbaijan. I approach a group and ask. It’s a 30 minute tour of the harbour. Why not? I jump aboard and the boat leaves. The tour was really just going out and coming back, fairly boring except for the panorama views of Baku worthwhile mostly to see the vast construction going on. Dozens and dozens of skyscrapers are going up. It’s, well, insane.

After the half hour I continue up towards Maryrs Lane, a long monument slash graveyard for people killed by the Soviets as Azerbaijan became independent. After the war in Karabagh, it’s become almost solely Karabagh-related from what I see. Despite the many graves, it was difficult to take too seriously as they were all adorned with plastic roses, carnations and strings of other plastic flowers. Tasteless to the extreme. I did manage to find a relatively recent memorial to the British soldiers who died in Azerbaijan in WWI. It has apparently been defaced several times and a policeman was posted about 10 feet from it. I walked up and read it, then took a picture. He approached and came up next to me saying something in Azerbaijani. I assumed he wanted to know what I was doing based on the way he looked at me. “Tourist”Â? I said, “From America”Â?

“Passport!”Â? he demanded.

“What, why?”Â? I responded, having done nothing other than look at a memorial and obviously being a foreigner, not a nationalist who wanted to deface it.

“Document! Passport!”Â? he said again getting angry.

I reached for my passport and showed him the first page, still holding on to it. He began looking for my visa which I pointed at, including the entry stamp. Satisfied but unhappy, he said something and began walking away but motioning I couldn’t stay. Seems looking at memorials isn’t allowed. I stopped to put my passport back in my pocket and he waited waving his hand for me to come. I hold up a finger saying “one minute”Â?

“Problem?”Â? I ask.

“Da, da”Â? he responds in Russian. I walk away.

After enjoying the great views of the city and thankful I wasn’t asked for a bribe, I headed back down the hill whose funicular wasn’t running unfortunately. It seemed to be being renovated along with the surrounding area. Walked through a few new areas and took a cafe break happy to get Turkish coffee and think about the rest of my trip. Tomorrow I’ll go to Sumgait, most likely alone and depart the next day for a mountain village named Lahic.

Despite porsches and mercedes everywhere, flatscreen tvs in public, massive skyscrapers and more, the public phones look like this.

Heydar Aliyev square with a statue that looks much younger and thinner than it should!

Even the skyscrapers are kitschy

Amazing the things people do to try and make money. I saw a number of people offering to take photos of couples in these love seats. The only thing worse has to be the people who think its romantic!

Martyr’s Lane

Tastelessly decorated graves to those fallen in Karabagh.

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