Life with Andrea

A few more interesting things happened in Azerbaijan before I left.

First, I finally got to see inside the main part of a mosque.  I did not GO in, because that's verboten, but I stood outside, and took a picture of the inside of the dome.  All the insides are beautiful - I wish I could go in one and spend time there.  Even Marc couldn't take a picture when he was inside, though.  Still, I have this picture.


And, as I was walking around at night, I took a few pictures of things. Everything is lit up in Baku.  Fountains, streets, even the outsides of buildings.

 Anne said that, while you may own the INSIDE of your building, the outsides all belong to the President.  And if he says it's time for a light show, it's time for a light show.  The lights go on at night, and they get turned off about midnight.  So, in their area, there are street chandeliers, and exterior lights, the clock tower lights.  This picture is right outside Anne and Marc's apartment.


You can read by the lights of the city.  I guess that's what it means to live in an oil rich state - the president can burn electricity and not care.

And the last exciting thing I did was go to the modern art museum.  I"m not a big fan of modern art, but some of it was very interesting.  I even have a favorite Azeri artist now!  Mikail Abdurakminov.  And, there were some funny pictures, (the watermelon lady) and some great sculptures (the not really a fish).  I have more on facebook than here.

On the last day, I decided I would read some of the comments other people had made about Azerbaijan, because Anne told me there's an online ex-pat community, and I thought I'd check it out.  It does not seem that people who live there are as kind to the country as they might be.  People complain about how expensive it it - one post said, if you want to have even a passable apartment, it will set you back 1500 euros a month.  His version of "passable" was the apartment Anne and Marc had - in the "Times Square" area.  They've got marble floors, or parquet wood.  They've got air conditioning.  They have electricity and wi-fi and all the things you'd expect in the states.  This is NOT a first world country - and yet their apartment is so posh it has everything.  And the posting person was complaining that it would cost such a lot of money.  Well, it should!  It's an elegant place and an elegant apartment.

Another complaint was about the stores.  I meant to take a picture of the food store, and I just didn't.  The ex-pat referred to them as "convenience stores".  Well, the stores are markets.  They seem to have EVERYTHING.  It's all jammed into a tiny space.  The shelves go up to the ceiling, and you don't have lots of choices, but if you want it, it's there.  They only have one kind of coffee, but they have 30 kinds of tea.  They have fresh vegetables every day.  The have a real butcher counter - where the butcher cuts it up and serves you directly.  And the meat is fresh.  I found batteries and dish soap and crackers and candy and dairy stuff and meat and rice and noodles and everything one would expect in an American store - it was all stuffed in there.  Not as much choice, but all the things.  And constant service.  Everyone happy to help you.

Anyway, this is the end of Baku for me.  I had a wonderful visit.  I think it would be a great place to live - if only I could learn the language and find a job there!

But it’s interesting, and old, and a landmark of the city.   I got this picture from an Azeri travel site. Traveler.AZ

This post is out of order, but that's life.  ?Life with Andrea?  Anyway, Saturday we went to the Hedyar Aliyev Center.  The people I work with had said I NEEDED to go there.  The architect is famous, Zaha Hadid,  it represents sand dunes,  it's beautiful, and I'd better go.  So, I made Anne and Marc take me there.  (Raphael drove, again, but this time he just dropped us off and picked us up).

Don't you hate it when someone else is right?  But, it was gorgeous.  We walked around outside for about 40 minutes, taking pictures of the beautiful building and the artwork outside.  They've got these candy wrapper-shaped things, which were each in the design of a country's flag.  They've got Gazelles by many artists.  And it does sort of look like sand dunes on the outside.

We walked all around, I'll put a picture of it on the bottom.  And then we went inside and it had a GREAT exhibit about history of the country.  I especially liked the musical instruments, Anne especially liked the jewelry and the carpets.  Marc likes everything (just like Mikey).
But the most fantastic thing was the shape of the building.  Even on the inside, it's like being IN a sand dune.  The sides curve up.  The stairs slide into the sides of the building. The stairs are of differing widths, so you feel like you're moving through a natural environment -- but it's all out of white marble.  The walls are rounded.  The glass windows stretch up about 8 stories, maybe further, in loose folds.  Marc initially thought it was like fabric - because that is something they're known for in this area.

The Center is a museum and a performing arts hall.  The central area is for concerts, ballet, stuff like that.  They have LOTS of theaters in Baku.  But around the edges - in the external hallways - they have museum exhibits.  As the building is huge, these external hallways are each as big as the exhibit space Portland Art Museum might allot to the Egypt exhibit or the Venice exhibit.  We spent an hour on ONE of the exhibits - they had four.  I expect the acoustics in the building to be fantastic - as far as I could tell, everything else was.


It's so cool you should go and look it up and look at some professional pictures on line.  It really is a fantastic building.

Then, there was a museum of old stuff, old metal stuff, daggers and swords and trays and samovars and belts and braziers.  I liked the trays the best, because they were beaten copper or metal and etched beautifully.  And there was one beautiful Arabic book.

Baku Day 2.
And don't think I'm going to write something every day, either, you guys.  (Except, 'm afraid if I don't do it, I may forget...)
Anyway, I walked around the old city by myself.  It is very embarrassing and frustrating to be unable to speak the language, and to have to rely on OTHER PEOPLE to have learned MY language.
But, I did go to the old city.  It's pretty old.  I thought it would be a park, monument, like Fort Vancouver, where it's not still being lived in.  But people do live there, and drive there, have houses and stores and businesses there.  It's beautiful, in spots, looks like an architectural dig, in spots.  It's dirty and broken, in spots.  It has parks and museums, in spots.  It's under construction.  In fact, some of the architectural digs have signs saying - when we were digging to make some new house or building, we uncovered these remains of buildings from the 12th century, and we could tell because of the pottery and firings, so we walled them off and you can look into this pit and see what we saw.  And then they go on to build the park or building right next to where they started, but they don't dig down so far, so that they don't have to disable another building spot.

 Now, this was one of the coolest things.  I was walking along the outer wall (I was on the inside), and they have these little round places, like at towers, inside of which you'd undoubtedly have had soldiers with bows and arrows or other repelling equipment.  And they actually have some of the repelling equipment!  I had never seen a catapult before.  They had cannons in other places, too, but this was the greatest!  The bowl at the back, where you'd put the weight or whatever, was hewn.  Not like we'd done it with modern chainsaws that can even make carvings, but as if it were done with an axe.

I really liked this garden.  I have no idea where it was, but I was hot, and tired, and it was shaded and cool.  I sat in a few as I walked around, in one garden I saw a grandfather with 3-year-old.  Quiet, green spaces.  Restful.