Azerbaijan
I already knew the answer would be no when I asked my friend Andreas if he wanted to go to Georgia, because he's not crazy like me. Instead of saying no he asked if we could go to Azerbaijan too, so he could see the Caspian Sea, so I guess he's the crazy one.
We arrived at the Azerbaijan border in a 1st class cabin on the night train going to the capital Baku from Georgias capital Tbilisi. Custom officers were searching the train with dogs and asked questions like "have you been to Armenia?", the neighbouring country that they don't see eye to eye with. It felt like being in old Soviet Union with officers not showing any emotions accompanied by German shepherds and we had to sit up for hours in our beds to show respect. Officers were lurking outside the train in the dark too if anyone would try to escape. We got called into another room and got photographed and answered some questions while we showed our e-Visa and passport to a guy who had some kind of computer in a briefcase. It was such a relief when he finally said "welcome to Azerbaijan" in a cold and unemotional way. I guess some guy on the train wasn't as lucky because later on we heard the German Shepherd bark like crazy and growling. After what felt like forever the train finally started to move again. I almost got no sleep that night until we reached Baku in the morning, because the cabin was hot like a sauna without the AC working.
My first impression was "where the hell are we?", and I hoped to survive the next couple of days. People threw themselves on to us and asked if we wanted this or that and it was just a bad feeling when they said they wanted to help. We went straight to the ticket office to buy a train ticket back to Tbilisi in a couple of days but the sales person told us we could only get 3rd class ticket because there was a national holiday in Azerbaijan right now called Novruz so many people we're gonna travel. It didn't help to change the date so we gave up and agreed to go in the 3rd class.
When we finally got away from the train station we tried to go inside a mall to find an ATM but they had full security there like it was an airport so it would be too much of a hassle to go in with all our luggage. We walked along worn down buildings while people were driving like crazy on the narrow streets with big holes in them when Andreas suddenly said "the hotel should be just around the corner". To my surprise the hotel was alright even though it wasn't the palace that the name suggested. Even though it was located in a horrible street it was also close to the city center, which felt like a totally different world. We would quickly learn that Baku is both some of the most worn down place I've ever seen as well as some of the most modern, and you can tell that oil money pumps through the town, but that it just reaches the richest.
We found out that the national holiday Novruz was some kind of late New Year's celebration in the spring and eating boiled grass seemed to be how they celebrated. We never tried it, instead we went down to the Caspian Sea through the old and cozy parts of Baku. We went inside a carpet museum to get away from the rain and it was as boring as it sounds. Then we continued in the horrible and windy weather down to Crystal Hall, which was built for the 2012 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Sweden's Loreen won with the song Euphoria at the venue so I had to go in to follow in her footsteps, or mostly we just needed to get away from the rain again. We found a restaurant at the venue with no people in it and ordered some food, and to my surprise the pizza was amazing.
We were both soaking wet from the rain when I tried to convince Andreas that we should walk all the way to a mosque at the outskirts of town. He had no interest in it so I told him I would pay for the cab so he wouldn't have to walk back to the hotel in the rain and we went to Bibi-Heybat Mosque. On the way there I realized it would have been impossible to walk there since the only road seemed to be a motorway. Andreas didn't want to stay for long so he asked the taxi driver to drive us back into town in about 30 minutes. I got so stressed out by the short amount of time in which I had to experience the mosque so I missed the gigantic entrance to it. I started to run down an alleyway to find a way in since we had arrived at the back of the building. After 10 minutes of trying to find a way around, we suddenly arrived down a harbour and realized we were way too far down to enter the mosque. We ran up some stairs at the other side of it and after 20 minutes I finally found a way in.
After we had been inside the mosque we left at the other side and I realized there had been a gigantic entrance all the time right before my eyes, before I ran down the alley. Andreas said he had seen it but he thought I had seen it too since it was impossible to miss it, so he had no idea why I had been running down the alleyway. We got to the cab right about time and after he had been driving completely wrong for a while, I had to guide him to the hotel. Strange how I could know the city better than him after being there for a couple of hours while he had been there all his life, and we stayed almost in the city centre.
Andreas had read that Baku would be one of the best party spots in the world, at the same time as we had heard that no one was drinking since most people there are strict muslims. Don't believe what you hear, because at night the bars were popping up everywhere and we went for a pub crawl. At the first bar called Zenit I stood in line for the toilet when a guy told me to use the women's toilet instead since it was available. As a true rebel I did and later on he came to our table and asked if we wanted to join him and his friends and of course we would.
Kenan, Ilgar, Farhad and Tamerlan invited us with chickpeas with salt and I had my doubts about eating uncooked chickpeas as a bar snack but it was delicious! It turned out we had more in common than you could think. Kenan started to talk about my favorite movie of all times, the Swedish movie Songs From The Second Floor and apparently the director Roy Andersson is quite famous in some crowds in Azerbaijan.
I could never have imagined and we went on to another bar called Road before me and Andreas went on our own to try and find an electro club which Andreas had heard about before the trip. We never found it so we went down a rock bar with the most disgusting toilet I've ever seen, it looked as the birth of a new gross lifeform was taking place inside the toilet. We ended the night by asking them to play Freestyle - Bubblar for us, the song was an inside joke on the trip that we will continue to keep to ourselves.
We had seen the famous Flame Towers from afar but I made Andreas join me in my quest to reach them on top of the city.
(Richard Sorge is most famous for his service in Japan in 1940 and 1941, when he provided information about Adolf Hitler's plan to attack the Soviet Union, although he did not succeed in finding out the exact date of the attack. In mid-September 1941, he informed the Soviets that Japan would not attack the Soviet Union in the near future, which allowed the command to transfer 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East to the Western Front against Nazi Germany during the most critical months of the Battle for Moscow, one of the turning points of World War II. A month later Sorge was arrested in Japan on the counts of espionage. He was tortured, forced to confess, tried, and hanged in November 1944. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964.)
We went to the Heydar Aliyev Center to wait for the train and without knowing, we had saved the best for last.
The surroundings were cultural and vibrant and the sun was shining. It was the perfect ending for Baku who was all over the place for me. I loathed it, thought it was alright and loved it, all at the same time.
The 3rd class of the night train was as horrible as we had thought, people were packed like sardines in a huge corridor and I couldn't even fit in the little hole in the wall that was supposed to be my bed for the night.
Families with newborn babies joined us so they could wake up crying and screaming during the night. Everything was as bad as it could get, and yet I slept much better this time than in 1st class. Life is funny in that way.
* Best things about Azerbaijan – chickpeas with salt is the best pub snack ever, the surroundings of Heydar Aliyev Center is vibrant and cultural and the Upland Park with the Flame Towers was amazing even though I just got a glimpse of it, I also liked the old city and how inviting the people were
* Most mediocre thing about Azerbaijan – I thought I would despise travelling in 3rd class on the night train from Baku but at the same time it was an adventure and I'm glad I got to experience it, maybe I even liked it, yet I would probably never do it again
* Worst things about Azerbaijan – the poverty, the crazy drivers, waiting for hours and hours to get in and out of the country through customs and that they still smoke in bars, the smell of the clothes the next day is horrible
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. USA
2. Croatia
3. Montenegro
4. Andorra
5. Cyprus
6. Turkey
7. Greece
8. Italy
9. Spain
10. Monaco
11. Malta
12. Netherlands
13. Iceland
14. Denmark
15. Sweden
16. Lithuania
17. Macedonia
18. Armenia
19. Portugal
20. Hungary
21. Slovakia
22. Slovenia
23. Austria
24. New Zealand
25. Ireland
26. Germany
27. United Kingdom
28. Belgium
29. Poland
30. Vatican City
31. Estonia
32. Czech Republic
33. Switzerland
34. San Marino
35. Kosovo
36. Romania
37. Finland
38. Latvia
39. Azerbaijan
40. Moldova
41. Norway
42. Ukraine
43. France
44. Bulgaria
45. Luxembourg
46. Liechtenstein
47. China
48. Serbia
49. Bosnia And Herzegovina
50. Albania
We arrived at the Azerbaijan border in a 1st class cabin on the night train going to the capital Baku from Georgias capital Tbilisi. Custom officers were searching the train with dogs and asked questions like "have you been to Armenia?", the neighbouring country that they don't see eye to eye with. It felt like being in old Soviet Union with officers not showing any emotions accompanied by German shepherds and we had to sit up for hours in our beds to show respect. Officers were lurking outside the train in the dark too if anyone would try to escape. We got called into another room and got photographed and answered some questions while we showed our e-Visa and passport to a guy who had some kind of computer in a briefcase. It was such a relief when he finally said "welcome to Azerbaijan" in a cold and unemotional way. I guess some guy on the train wasn't as lucky because later on we heard the German Shepherd bark like crazy and growling. After what felt like forever the train finally started to move again. I almost got no sleep that night until we reached Baku in the morning, because the cabin was hot like a sauna without the AC working.
My first impression was "where the hell are we?", and I hoped to survive the next couple of days. People threw themselves on to us and asked if we wanted this or that and it was just a bad feeling when they said they wanted to help. We went straight to the ticket office to buy a train ticket back to Tbilisi in a couple of days but the sales person told us we could only get 3rd class ticket because there was a national holiday in Azerbaijan right now called Novruz so many people we're gonna travel. It didn't help to change the date so we gave up and agreed to go in the 3rd class.
When we finally got away from the train station we tried to go inside a mall to find an ATM but they had full security there like it was an airport so it would be too much of a hassle to go in with all our luggage. We walked along worn down buildings while people were driving like crazy on the narrow streets with big holes in them when Andreas suddenly said "the hotel should be just around the corner". To my surprise the hotel was alright even though it wasn't the palace that the name suggested. Even though it was located in a horrible street it was also close to the city center, which felt like a totally different world. We would quickly learn that Baku is both some of the most worn down place I've ever seen as well as some of the most modern, and you can tell that oil money pumps through the town, but that it just reaches the richest.
We found out that the national holiday Novruz was some kind of late New Year's celebration in the spring and eating boiled grass seemed to be how they celebrated. We never tried it, instead we went down to the Caspian Sea through the old and cozy parts of Baku. We went inside a carpet museum to get away from the rain and it was as boring as it sounds. Then we continued in the horrible and windy weather down to Crystal Hall, which was built for the 2012 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Sweden's Loreen won with the song Euphoria at the venue so I had to go in to follow in her footsteps, or mostly we just needed to get away from the rain again. We found a restaurant at the venue with no people in it and ordered some food, and to my surprise the pizza was amazing.
We were both soaking wet from the rain when I tried to convince Andreas that we should walk all the way to a mosque at the outskirts of town. He had no interest in it so I told him I would pay for the cab so he wouldn't have to walk back to the hotel in the rain and we went to Bibi-Heybat Mosque. On the way there I realized it would have been impossible to walk there since the only road seemed to be a motorway. Andreas didn't want to stay for long so he asked the taxi driver to drive us back into town in about 30 minutes. I got so stressed out by the short amount of time in which I had to experience the mosque so I missed the gigantic entrance to it. I started to run down an alleyway to find a way in since we had arrived at the back of the building. After 10 minutes of trying to find a way around, we suddenly arrived down a harbour and realized we were way too far down to enter the mosque. We ran up some stairs at the other side of it and after 20 minutes I finally found a way in.
After we had been inside the mosque we left at the other side and I realized there had been a gigantic entrance all the time right before my eyes, before I ran down the alley. Andreas said he had seen it but he thought I had seen it too since it was impossible to miss it, so he had no idea why I had been running down the alleyway. We got to the cab right about time and after he had been driving completely wrong for a while, I had to guide him to the hotel. Strange how I could know the city better than him after being there for a couple of hours while he had been there all his life, and we stayed almost in the city centre.
Andreas had read that Baku would be one of the best party spots in the world, at the same time as we had heard that no one was drinking since most people there are strict muslims. Don't believe what you hear, because at night the bars were popping up everywhere and we went for a pub crawl. At the first bar called Zenit I stood in line for the toilet when a guy told me to use the women's toilet instead since it was available. As a true rebel I did and later on he came to our table and asked if we wanted to join him and his friends and of course we would.
Kenan, Ilgar, Farhad and Tamerlan invited us with chickpeas with salt and I had my doubts about eating uncooked chickpeas as a bar snack but it was delicious! It turned out we had more in common than you could think. Kenan started to talk about my favorite movie of all times, the Swedish movie Songs From The Second Floor and apparently the director Roy Andersson is quite famous in some crowds in Azerbaijan.
I could never have imagined and we went on to another bar called Road before me and Andreas went on our own to try and find an electro club which Andreas had heard about before the trip. We never found it so we went down a rock bar with the most disgusting toilet I've ever seen, it looked as the birth of a new gross lifeform was taking place inside the toilet. We ended the night by asking them to play Freestyle - Bubblar for us, the song was an inside joke on the trip that we will continue to keep to ourselves.
We had seen the famous Flame Towers from afar but I made Andreas join me in my quest to reach them on top of the city.
At the exact moment that we reached them the light show went on and the colours of the Azerbaijan flag were displayed on the towers. Unfortunately Andreas felt ill so I just got a sneakpeak of the Upland Park that surrounds the towers before he wanted to take a cab downtown again, but it looked amazing.
The next day we would go back to Tbilisi in Georgia and I realized that they drink vodka as energy drink in Azerbaijan. I thought I could need to get a bit tipsy since we were going to be in the 3rd class cabin at the night train. We went to the Zorge Park with a monument of the spy from Baku.
We went to the Heydar Aliyev Center to wait for the train and without knowing, we had saved the best for last.
The 3rd class of the night train was as horrible as we had thought, people were packed like sardines in a huge corridor and I couldn't even fit in the little hole in the wall that was supposed to be my bed for the night.
Families with newborn babies joined us so they could wake up crying and screaming during the night. Everything was as bad as it could get, and yet I slept much better this time than in 1st class. Life is funny in that way.
* Best things about Azerbaijan – chickpeas with salt is the best pub snack ever, the surroundings of Heydar Aliyev Center is vibrant and cultural and the Upland Park with the Flame Towers was amazing even though I just got a glimpse of it, I also liked the old city and how inviting the people were
* Most mediocre thing about Azerbaijan – I thought I would despise travelling in 3rd class on the night train from Baku but at the same time it was an adventure and I'm glad I got to experience it, maybe I even liked it, yet I would probably never do it again
* Worst things about Azerbaijan – the poverty, the crazy drivers, waiting for hours and hours to get in and out of the country through customs and that they still smoke in bars, the smell of the clothes the next day is horrible
Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):
1. USA
2. Croatia
3. Montenegro
4. Andorra
5. Cyprus
6. Turkey
7. Greece
8. Italy
9. Spain
10. Monaco
11. Malta
12. Netherlands
13. Iceland
14. Denmark
15. Sweden
16. Lithuania
17. Macedonia
18. Armenia
19. Portugal
20. Hungary
21. Slovakia
22. Slovenia
23. Austria
24. New Zealand
25. Ireland
26. Germany
27. United Kingdom
28. Belgium
29. Poland
30. Vatican City
31. Estonia
32. Czech Republic
33. Switzerland
34. San Marino
35. Kosovo
36. Romania
37. Finland
38. Latvia
39. Azerbaijan
40. Moldova
41. Norway
42. Ukraine
43. France
44. Bulgaria
45. Luxembourg
46. Liechtenstein
47. China
48. Serbia
49. Bosnia And Herzegovina
50. Albania
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