Firstly, I flew on Azerbaijan Airlines. And it was fabulous. Into Baku, one of the nicest, most efficient airports in the world. (So now I’ve done both ends of that spectrum, with Beirut at the very bottom of worst).

Azerbaijan is one of the six Turkic countries – Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Which means they speak a Turkic language and all have strong cultural similarities. 

Flying over the country its very mountainous and deserty, on the edge of the Caspian sea – which is vast. There’s a LOT of oil and gas in Azerbaijan which makes it a very wealthy country – especially compared to the other Caucus countries. Its very hot in the summer and so humid (seaside!) which I’ve not been use to. I’m used to hot, dry and high altitude. And then very windy and cold in winter. The Siberian winds blowing down.

Baku, the capital, where I am is a very modern, pristinely clean city. Like a cross between Dubai and Istanbul maybe? At least in the public bits. If you step back a few streets its very skody and rough and normal.

It has all the Western wanna-be prerequisites like a Hard Rock Café, KFC and McDonalds, and ten different places to eat a burger. But one street away from the fancy part of town it’s dolmas and cucumber salad.

There’s always been oil here. It’s famous for its ‘burning mountains’ – like the Chimera mountains in Turkey. But it became wealthy and important and fought over once oil became important in the 19th/20th centuries.

There’s lots of very impressive 19^thC buildings. A lot that were mansions of the oil elite that the Russians made into public buildings.

The event center which is amazing. Designed by Zaha Hadid – my favorite architect.

And the Flame Towers are pretty awesome.

Society seems very refined and orderly and gentile. (There must be a crappy part but I never saw it anywhere). A reasonably strong police presence. And I think its probably very rural once you get out of town. The greatest danger is being walked into by a teenager in a Ramones t-shirt looking at their phone.

I just stayed in the city. Which has 3 parts. Medieval walled ancient fortified, gorgeous city. 19^th century European city of mansions and plazas. And ultra modern, shiny new city.

My hotel is ‘mansion and plaza adjacent.’ A couple of streets back from the lovely tea gardens and avenues. Where there are no footpaths or streetlights – always a small chance of walking into an open man hole in the dark or touching a live hanging wire. Much more like Beirut. The hotel had no water sometimes, no wifi intermittently, no air con most of the time, screaming, shouting, police … but it had power continuously unlike Beirut. 🙂

One weirdness here is that its almost impossible to cross the road. There are 6 lane avenues all in one direction. You have to walk to find an underpass. (Which are shiny and marble and would be inconceivable to piss in or tag). And no one j-walks or runs through traffic like they would anywhere else.

Another weirdness is it’s 92ft below sea level. The lowest capital in the world. So the Caspian Sea must have been much bigger and deeper once? And its shrinking like the Dead Sea – I’m guessing. The Caspian is also a mixture of salt and fresh water in different places – weird. There’s lots of carp-types fish, like the fancy sturgeon I tried – tastes of mud like, fresh water fish.

So now I’ve now seen all of the South Caucus but its impossible (for me) to go the North Caucus. Those are all the autonomous Russian regions like Chechnya – and a bunch of other countries I’ve never even heard of – the Republic of Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria … all around the Sea of Azov. ?? I always thought I was good at geography. A lot of this trip has been learning about places I’ve never heard of  – its like visiting Narnia.

Azerbaijan is very interesting – to a point. But once you’ve been to the Art Gallery, looked at the old city, and wandered down the sea side promenade and sat in 10 different tea gardens there’s fuck all to do really. All the ‘attractions’ are events like the Grand Prix or Eurovison. Its nice. But meh.