Azerbaijan – the country of fire
Posted by Þóra Elísabet - 14/10/09 at 07:10:13 am
Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan and apart for its crazy traffic it´s a very tranquil, nice city. It is quite safe also which surprised me a lot, but walking alone at night and even carrying valuable stuff around didn´t worry me the least (if I had diamonds I would wear them all day long in Baku!).
There are many nice things to see in and around Baku; the temple of fire, maiden tower, some mosques and the old city for example. And you should not forget to visit their metro – because the metro is so nice that you might even feel temted to take some pictures. But be careful because taking pictures there is prohibited. I found out the hard way – having three guards jumping at me for making some snaps. And walks around the center in the nighttime are highly recommended because they light their buildings up so beautifully. But to be quite honest, the sights of Baku you can see in about two days or so – but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t stay there longer, because you should!
For me the main attraction in Azerbaijan is the people – with their mentality situated somewhere between Russia and the Middle East but still streching towards and wanting to be more European. Two days just isn´t enough to enjoy that unique cultural mixture. And their hospitality is overwhelming, so many people offered to show me around and wherever I went they insisted on paying – “it´s an Azeri thing” they always said and two of my friends from the hospital always added, “don´t worry, you´ll just pay for us when we go to Iceland”. When these friends of mine were about to pay for me for the fifth time or so and I insisted that it was time for me to pay for us one of them looked at me and said smiling; “you´re really worried that we might actually go to Iceland aren´t you?”. Another thing I love about the Azeri people is that even though they may have some strict traditions as far as relationships and many other things goes they are still very open to talk about almost anything and no matter how stupid or invasive my questions were (religion, marrige, sex, toilet paper issues) I always got an answer coupled with a smile.
Marrige is a huge thing in Azerbaijan and at some point at my stay I felt that everything revolved around marrige there. Which is maybe not surprising when you bear in mind that people aren´t really allowed to have their independent life untill they´re married, before marrige you live with your parents (maybe with relatives if you have to move because of your school or your job, but never by yourself), need to seek your parents approval on most things – and sex is not socially accepted before marrige, so who can blame people there for yearning for marrige?
Azeri is the official language of Azerbaijan (similar to Turkish) but most people speak fluent Russian and a lot of people use these languages interchangeably. It confused me to begin with and I couldn´t decide weather to learn some Azeri or Russian so I tried to learn both – but it is impossible to learn two totally different languages at the same time so if you have a similar situation I recommend that you choose one over the other and if you are going to stay in Azerbaijan for a while I recommend that you choose Azeri. It doesn´t really impress people if you learn some Russian, it´s just for being understood, but if you make the effort to learn some Azeri you just may blow people away. For example I was at a visit where I didn´t really know the people and as I was leaving I said “think you very much” in Azeri and the host was so impressed that I was trying to learn Azari that she gave me a box of chocolates, as a “reward” I guess. Wished that I would have found out earlier in my stay that people would find it so amazing that foreigners try to learn Azeri 
I don´t want to sound naive and make it sound as I don´t realize that Azerbaijan has some problems, corruption is a big problem for example, but it is unlikely for a traveller to encounter problems like that and it seems that Azerbaijan is heading in the right direction as far as it goes as to solve their problems – at least I have great hopes for my country of fire :-) After staying in Azerbaijan for three weeks I can honestly say that Azerbaijan will be always on my mind, always in my heart..
P.s. if you are to go there tell all the Borats that the moustache is out!
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