Baku New Year 2008

Reflections on Baku New Year 2008....



The President threw an enormous New Year 2008 party for us (and for the four million other residents of Baku) down on the waterfront, near the magnificent “Dom Soviet” palace (house of the people). The press of humanity was so great (with folks even climbing trees to get views of the concert, and of a six-storey inflatable golf ball with laser beams and images of our benign, smiling, president projected onto it) that we snuck away to our favourite spot; an old dilapidated peer a few hundred meters out into the middle of Baku bay.

The wind blew gently in a direction so that, from their launch site, the exploding fire-works suddenly bloomed directly over our heads and burned-out cartridges plopped and fizzled into the sea all around us. We choked on cordite and ran for cover, doubled over, while the smiling man on the golf ball strode confidently across the world stage, shaking hands with statesmen and cutting ribbons.

Then Baku froze for three solid weeks. We watched from our balcony while Mercs, BMWs, Volga’s, Kamaz trucks and Lada’s pirouetted through intersections and elegant ladies in stilettos flailed, clutched madly at the sky, and threw their shopping to the gods.

Locals, expats, kids and even construction workers (the latter wearing hard hats for once), aimed snowballs at each other; Erich and I even dusted off our cross-country skis.

BP (rather thoughtfully) closed its offices and issued the following advice:

- wear rubber soled shoes;

- walk with your legs slightly spread apart and your arms outstretched;

- gather in groups near graveyards, scrabble in the dirt and, when foam builds in the corner of your mouth, scream “brains”; “I must eat brains”.

We’ve not actually eaten brains in Baku, at least not knowingly. On occasion we’ve not known what animal we were eating, or what part of what animal; and we’ve tried asking, but are always advised, condescendingly, “It’s meat!”

New Year's and Beyond

After Christmas Rory and I jetted over to Boston for New Year's. Why Boston? Why not? We were ultimately heading to New Hampshire to enjoy a friend's house while she's vacationing in Baghdad for a year. I attended Boston University my first year of college, before deciding the Air Force wasn't for me, giving up my scholarship and going back to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I hadn't visiting Boston in a long time, Rory had never been there, and it just fit well with our plans.

If you haven't been to Boston, what are you waiting for? It's a wonderful walking city, with plenty of interesting sights, pubs, and restaurants to wander into at will. I intended to show Rory some American history during our long weekend there -- we walked past lots of historical places but didn't go into many. We did, however, spend lots of time eating pasta and drinking wine in the North End. We walked along the Charles River, went to the top of John Hancock Tower, saw the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes Christmas Spectacular, toured the USS Constitution, went to the Aquarium, and saw the fireworks at midnight on New Year's Eve. It even snowed one day which we enjoyed immensely...especially since it was practically sunbathing weather the following week in New Hampshire.

We planned our trip to NH with visions of days spent cross country skiing and nights spent by the fire. Nights (and afternoons, since sunset was at 4:20pm) by the fire weren't a problem, but there was very little snow. We had one day of light hiking on Mt. Major where there was still snow, and lots of ice, on the trail but that's about it. NH is filled with lakes of all sizes; we spent a couple days just driving around taking in the views and imagining owning a vacation home there. We were just getting into full relax mode when our 5 days were up and we headed in separate directions for 3 weeks. Rory returned to work in Baku because of some loony rule that he can't be away from work for more than 15 business days, and I returned to Phoenix for a couple more weeks with the family.

We're both back in Baku for the moment, but traveling to London for a few days this weekend. Rory is going for business, and I decided to tag along and play tourist. So maybe some London pics next week! Ciao for now.

Vacation in the Land of the Shopping Mall

Go ahead, call us bad bloggers. We went on holiday from work and from Baku and neglected our blog entries as well. Rory is back in Baku now, but I'm still on vacation for 5 more days.

We arrived in Phoenix the weekend before Christmas and had time for last minute shopping and the beginnings of serious relaxing at The Boulders Resort in Cavecreek, AZ just north of Phoenix. We only spent two nights there, but it was luxuriously relaxing and we hope for another visit sometime. We had major jetlag that first week and spent several mornings walking or jogging golf courses before dawn. By the way, Phoenix is having its coldest winter in years (start temp was 29F and high was 44F for last weekend's Phoenix Marathon) and we did not bring the clothes for it. We froze on these pre-dawn ventures until we bought some warm stuff. These pictures are of Arizona's famous saguaro cactus, exclusive to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. Saguaro cactus can grow to 40 feet tall, begins to grow arms between 50 and 100 years of age, and lives 150-200 years.

That's a sunrise just starting to peep over the horizon.

We were only in Phoenix for 10 days, but found time to squeeze in a morning of hiking in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix in between the bouts of frenzied shopping in which we always find ourselves during trips to the States. There was an unusual thick fog covering the Phoenix area that morning. Rory and I had no idea we were even in a mountainous area until we drove above the fog right at the trailhead. Our trusty guides knew exactly where we were however. Good thing since Rory hasn't figured out exactly how that GPS he bought works yet.

Our hike included lovely desert scenery, perfect blue sky and Tonto and John Wayne hiding behind every second saguaro cactus. We even encountered a GENUINE HUNTER on our hike. He was a bit pale and pudgy with glasses and a knotted hanky on his head and carrying a big big shotgun. We hadn't seen a living (or even moving) thing for a couple hours so Rory asked him what he was shooting at, tin cans? He tells Rory, "I am a genuine hunter...I shoot to kill and I kill to eat..." He claimed to be hunting rabbit, but hadn't seen anything to shoot at. We made sure to get way out in front of him (which in retrospect probably wasn't the best place to be) and our trusty guides directed him to an alternate trail less likely to have rabbit-looking hikers for target practice. We heard two shots echoing through the valley a couple hours later.

After a wonderful Christmas with Chris' family, we headed to Boston and New Hampshire to celebrate New Year's.

Candy Cane Mountains

I'll let the photos speak for themselves. I was pleasantly surprised to see something besides oil detritus once we got out of town. The unofficially named Candy Cane Mountains, an ex-pat landmark because of the red/white stripes in the rock, are near the town of Gilazi about an hour drive north of Baku. Enjoy!

He's Doing What?

Friday night the Baku Bicycle Club (BBC) hosted a presentation by fellow cyclist Rob Thomas. Rob, a 26-yr old New Zealander, is cycling solo from Japan to London on a recumbent bike. . . during the winter. He's already crossed Japan, South Korea, China, the Stans, and the Caspian Sea (he took a ferry for that one). Rob is spending a few days in Baku before continuing his journey. On Monday he sets off across Azerbaijan towards Tblisi, Georgia.

Check out Rob's blog 14 Degrees.

Rory and I did the "Candy Cane" mountain ride with the BBC on Sunday. One of Rob's comments is about how aggressive the dogs are. My fastest speeds on Sunday were when the dogs were chasing me. A snarling, snapping dog is quite the motivator.

If you look closely at the picture of Spike the dog in Rob's Day 140 entry (Dec. 9), you'll see that Spike has no ears. The villagers cut the ears off the dogs so that wolves can't grab them by the ears. That's also the reason for the thick collar Spike wears: so the wolf can't grab the dog by the neck. Aggressive dogs are prized possessions because they're more likely to survive a wolf attack. True or not, it's hard for an animal lover to see these beautiful dogs all with chopped off ears.

First Discoveries

Baku is situated on the Absheron Peninsula in Azerbaijan. We spent the afternoon driving back roads (or maybe they were main roads) looking for tourist attractions listed in our Mark Elliott Azerbaijan guide book. Mapless except for the 2-inch maps in the guidebook we did pretty well.

How to describe the Absheron Peninsula? Mark Elliott says it best in his book: If Azerbaijan is an eagle flying towards the Caspian Sea, the Absheron is its eczema-plagued beak. The landscape is faintly disturbing -- an eerily fascinating wasteland of parched hillocks and plains which sprout pylons, nodding-donkey oil derricks and pools of oily effluent amongst ragged scrub. It is not the most immediately appealing area for tourism. But with your expectations suitably lowered, there are a fair number of curiosities."

We lowered our expectations and went searching for something interesting yet easy to find. First stop was the castle in the village of Ramana. According to the guidebook, this castle is the most impressive in the Absheron. With that description we just had to see it. We walked around the perimeter in the rain and never bothered to find the guy with the key so we could go inside. Doesn't look too bad does it? Castle on a hill, green grass......

Now check out the view immediately behind us. That's our Pajero in the foreground.

Wow! Literally a 180 in both direction and content. That's a working oil field and the "ponds" are a sludgy mix of oil and water. Nasty.

Next stop was a little place called Yanar Dag. How to find it? Look for the fire coming out of the ground. The fire burns constantly because of underground gas leaking up to the surface. The gas was accidentally ignited in 1958 and has burned ever since. See what you're missing? In addition to warming up by the fire, we very nearly adopted a puppy at this place. If anyone is interested in adopting this cute little guy, let us know and we'll ship him to you.

Building Boom In Baku

The Azerbaijan economy is growing so fast at the moment there is a building boom going on, and we are part of it. The Baku skyline is peppered with really tall apartment blocks, just like the one we live in, and more are being built all the time.

In our apartment, the glass bottles which get dropped into the trash-chute by the residents above us reach terminal velocity by the time they get to our level, the level at which (for the first time) they normally bounce off the side-walls of the chute. When this happens, our building booms.