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BAKU
"And when foreigners come to this city all they talk about is the heat, dust, and oil; why do they not love our city?" - "Because they are foreigners" - Ali & Nino
The Black Sea to the Caspian in one day. One long day. First leg - train from the resort town of Batumi with its semi-tropical coastline and sprouting hotel complexes, bonatical gardens and thunderstorms to Tbilisi, seven hours of comparative bliss on a shiny new electric train from the shiny new train station, a world of difference from the dreaded marshrutka. Plenty of legroom, space and time to relax. Two chachapuri breads and a bottle of pop, Kapuszczinski to keep me company: 'Travels With Heredotus'. Blissful. I chat to a girl who sits next to me. Her English is limited, and she readily agrees to everything, so much so that I suspect she doesn't understand a word I'm saying. 'Georgia's nice isn't it?' I inquired. 'Yes, it's fine ,'she nodded. 'And have you been to Abkhazia?' I added. 'Yes, it's fine' she assented. 'And Russia?' 'Fine'. I did glean from her however, that she had been on two days holiday to the beach - her summer holiday from a bank job she works in seven days a week. "And how was that?" "Fine." I went back to my book but was interrupted by a group of lads sitting in front of me. Drinking vodka. The police who guard the trains here had had words with them, presumably to keep the noise down, but they seemed good-natured. They spoke little or no English either but I understood in Russian that they were from Svaneti. Famed drinkers, famed for their hospitality. I had little choice but to join in their party. A few hours later, approaching midnight, we arrive in Tbilisi and I am legless. Not a great idea since I still have a flight ahead of me - at 4.30am - to Baku. I go to a neighbourhood bar for a coffee. Some rather unsavoury characters walk in and out, I don't feel too safe with my bags and computer. The space-age train station opposite doesn't hide the shabbiness of the surroundings. I decide to take a taxi straight to the station, possibly a wise decision. Three hours to wait when I get there. I hate airports. So sterile, so controlled, always overpriced and full of the type of travellers you never get into a conversation with. Flying: travelling's equivalent to fast-food. Fast, efficient, economical even. But never, ever, fun. My flight could not have been at a worse time. The hours between waking and sleeping, upsetting the body clock, keeping you awake, the time when night ends and day begins.
Finally, we take off - we're up in the clouds. A little double-propellored job which hardly inspires confidence, a flying sardine tin. Welcome to Azeri Airlines. I don't care much by this time though and just want to get there. We're in the air for only one hour and twenty minutes. A train journey would have taken 14 hours. The most uninspiring in-flight meal ever: a chicken and cheese roll wrapped in cellophane, served with a plastic cup of warm cherry juice. Dawn arrives as we begin our descent over Baku. It comes as a shock after Georgia, so close but so different. There, it is green, luscious, abundant. Here, I look down and it is semi-desert, shades of browns, beiges and greys, interspersed with alarmingly-coloured lakes; one is orange, another a kind of murky dark brown. Large patches of black dot the ground everywhere: oil, seeping up through the soil and polluting everything. Welcome to Baku - a post-industrial wasteland. Mad Max. We descend over the Caspian in order to turn around for our landing. and over the wide, crescent-shaped bay that Baku inhabits. Oil fields everywhere. One set of rigs, linked by roads, almost a town. In fact, there is a real off-shore town, two-hours' helicopter flight from here, in the middle of the Caspian. Dubbed in Azeri 'Neft Daslari' ('Oily Rocks'). Built in 1949, it is in fact the world's only off-shore 'town' - it's constructed on stilts out in the Caspian, with some 210km of roads, a cinema, a bakery, even a park. High Soviet tenement blocks accommodate the rotating population of 2000 workers. An intriguing tourist attraction - but unfortunately out of bounds unless you have an official invitation - or work there. Coming in to land, I look down at the sea - sparkling grey, with mottled patches of black everywhere, lurking just beneath the surface.
Through customs quite quick, visa on arrival - a rather steep $100 (thankfully it's paid for).Met at the airport by Emin, my D.O.S - mid-20's, clean-cut, and driven to my accommodation for the next month. Buildings going up everywhere, a sense of a city being invested in. Infrastructure seemingly better than Georgia's; handsome facades everywhere, buildings and roads on first glance good quality. My apartment is huge and fairly central. I share with Eve, another English teacher. 100m2, new build, wooden floors and fittings, double glazing, air-con. Can't complain - much nicer than my Krakow flat. You pay for it here though - $600 gets you a room for a month here. I retire to my room after a quick chat. No bed has ever looked so welcoming. It is 9.30am.
Baku is going through an unprecedented building boom. The town is sprouting new apartment and office blocks like mushrooms; it seems hard to believe that so much space is needed. Xatai, our neighbourhood, is just acres of empty shells, waiting to be filled. "A lot of these buildings are built from laundered money", I am later told.. I have rarely seen a city in such a state of flux. Cranes and building machinery dominate the skyline, and I search for shade as I stroll into town from my residential neighbourhood. The city is not built for pedestrians - sidewalks are narrow and often non-existent, and cars take little notice of you when you're crossing the road. The heat beats down from the sun - a dry heat, much more reminiscent of the middle east than in Georgia. Not much shade. I walk past the docks then down to the promenade, to the wide sweep of Baku Bay. More construction work, several huge skeletons dominate the skyline, along with a host of other shiny new glass-fronted malls, office blocks, apartments and hotels. Families walk along the front with its neatly trimmed grass verges, manicured plants and fountains. All very tidy, spruce. I go to the old town, dominated by the striking 19th Century military watch-tower, dubbed Maiden's Tower. It looks fairly unprepossessing, quite an oddly-shaped, blunt stone tower, but it is said to date back as far as 500 BC, and has many myths attached to it. The most bizarre of these is that an old khan fell in love with his daughter and asked for her hand in marriage; stalling, she asked that he build a tower for her to show his love, and when it was complete, she threw herself off the top to avoid the terrible fate of marrying her own father. I climbed the tower for a better view of my surrounds. From the top of it, you get a great view of 'Ishacishari', the old town.
This old, walled part of Baku is its heart, charmingly redolent of a bygone era, and an escape from the city's traffic and noise. It's the kernel in the nut of Baku, a town within a town. It's not exactly up there with the old walled cities of Damascus or Jerusalem, but it's atmospheric enough, and, in The Palace of the Shirvanshahs, a beautiful 15th Century complex, has at least one building which is on the UNESCO list. It's all very pleasant. I go into Lezgi Mosque, and feel for the first time that I am actually in a Muslim country. The Muezzin call is conspicuous by its absence in this city, and along with lax attitudes to things like consumption of alcohol here, one can get the impression that this is only nominally an Islamic country - an incorrect impression, although mosque-going is not as strictly observed here as in the Middle east. Women never wear veils and only occasionally do you see headscarves. Alcohol is drunk, though not in great quantities, and rarely by women. In other respects though, the country is deeply conservative, and is entrenched in family values. Women have to do as their parents or husbands say very often, and have not really got outright autonomy as women do in the west. A strange brew of eastern orthodoxy/islam with Soviet attitudes in this part of the world; in some ways the Soviet Union made people here (and Georgia) cling on to their culture (and religion) more strongly, while from the outside these values, along with churches (and here most of their mosques) were being destroyed.
I go in search of food. Lots of pricy restaurants. I choose one, a sushi place, and look at the menu - it's like being back in western Europe. Dishes 10-20 Manat (1 Manat = 1 Euro). I quickly leave. Most restaurants I go in are exhorbitant, and, it seems, the bars are too. I had read that restaurants are a mix of Persian/Turkish/Russian influences here, which has given the food quite an international flavour, though I notice Turkish restaurants dominate. Most of the bars are of the fake Irish, expat variety - the Maccy D's of bars. I generally avoid expat bars - they are the same the world over, full of drunk outsiders who don't have a clue where they are, but are usually earning too much. Boring, and often quite depressing. I meet a group of English-speaking guys and tag along with them, we find ourselves in a restaurant called Caravanserai, which, as its name suggests, is designed like a historic travellers' inn. Carved out of stone and on two levels. All open-air, decorated with Arabic designs and with live music. Azeri food. I notice that it's all very similar to Turkish food; kebab-based with some variatians. Lots of lamb, beef. Dolma, lentil soup, baklava. Azeris identify themselves culturally with the Turks, and their languages are almost identical; were they neighbours, they would probably be happy to be absorbed. Azerbaijan has historically never really been an entity in itself, only as separate 'khanates', areas ruled over by local lords, and always as part of some greater empire, be it Persia, Ottoman or Russian, so like for example Belarus, is still in the process of working out what national identity means. For the most part, it seems, it means hating Armenia. Our meal is fine, though expensive. Turns out I am sharing the dinner table with Tony Blair's neighbour - these guys are all important CEO's or shareholders with Shell and Azeri Telecom. Inevitably, we end up traipsing around a few expat bars. I forgive myself as it's my birthday, but when I wake up the next day I've gone through 50 Manat. And no, it wasn't worth it. It seems there is a bar for every football team in the premiership, and there's even one for Sunderland and Leeds. Most have girls who are hangers-on to the BP workers, often hookers. Maurice: (owner of Irish Arms in Krakow) all is forgiven. Baku expat bars are so plastic paddy it is almost funny; but the characters you meet are often sad and lonely misfits, Brits who no longer have North Sea oil rig work. All in all, an experience I don't intend to repeat.
Sunday 25th July - my birthday, Look at my phone when I wake up. No messages. Ah well, I am 4 hours ahead of the UK here, 3 ahead of Poland...still time.
I spend the morning relaxing, writing. 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we go out to meet some students of Eve's; we are to go out on the Caspian for a boat trip. The 30 minute walk into town is exhausting, the 35 degree heat is too much. The students arrive, just three of them, and they are keen to show us everything. I soon get into a conversation about Nagorno-Karabach with one of them, a guy. This is Azerbaijan's Abkhazia; the thorn in their side, an issue so devisive that, when asked your opinion on the subject, I had already been warned, it is best to shrug your shoulders and claim ignorance. (Which in a way is being honest as I really know very little about this conflict). Basically, it's a sliver of land about the size of Lancashire which the Armenians grabbed after the break-up of the Soviet Union, with Russian backing. Azeris had a very good claim to it, but so did the Armenians. Stalin had a hand in it all of course, awarding the land (which was in until the 30's part of Armenia) to Azerbaijan. On the break-up of the Soviet Union, the conflict started, and lasted four years. Many thousands on both sides died; the Armenians prevailed. The region is not officially recognised by the world now as part of Armenia, and still appears on Azeri maps, as Abkhazia does in Georgia. "We would fight again today," Tale told me, "but the British say that they would take their oil company (BP) out of our country if we did. They want peace here". Oil, politics, money. This city is built on so much potential, but no one seems happy. We went out on the boat as the sun was going down. Striking views of the city - it looks better when viewed from a distance and when the temperature has cooled down. I look down at the water. Rainbows of oil on the surface; thick globules bubble up now and then. "No fish here, all dead" I am told. The sturgeon fishermen, who fish the waters of the Caspian for the sought-after caviar, have to sail for days into the centre of the sea, miles away from the oil fields, before they have a chance of catching anything. There is a terrible environmental problem in this country, and you don't need to travel far to notice it. Not only the sea, but the beaches, the rivers, the countryside..they are all suffering, whether it be because of the ubiquitous oil, which you often see literally seeping from the surface of the land into stagnant puddles on the outskirts of the city, or because of the lax attitudes to rubbish, which is just strewn across the landscape, even in the countryside. Tragic, but noone appears to care too much.
I travelled outside the city to the Abseron Peninsula, which contains a few scraggy beaches and one or two tourist attractions, the most interesting of which is called the Atshegar Fire Temple: a living monument to the erstwhile religion of this region before Islam came along - Zarostrianism. Most people know this religion simply as fire-worshippers. Zorastrians from all around the Middle east and Central Asia used to come here to worship - Baku was considered the centre for this religion, and mystics would lead their followers to these strange lands where fire once came through the very ground, burning from eternal gas vents lying far beneath, as black, flamable liquid seeped up with it. Along with the fierce sun that scorched the earth for months on end here, it is no great surprise that people ended up praying to fire and the sun: it was, to them, God. The temple itself is bizarrely situated in the outskirts of town; to get there, you have to take a metro and long bus ride, then traipse along a railway line, past a field of oil derricks - nodding donkeys - and through some waste land (at no point is there any signposting, you have to ask locals). Arriving can cause some shock to the people working there, who probably get very few visitors, and I'd imagine a handful of foreign visitors each year; they follow you like a shadow round the temple, deeply suspicious of your motives for being there. I enjoy the surreal experience nevertheless, though being near these gas vents spewing fire (no longer natural) in 38 degree heat is probably not a good idea; I feel faint from it all and am dying for a drink. Although it's a small temple, it's interesting and the Hindu inscriptions above the entrance are a fascinating piece of evidence that this place links Europe to Asia. I am reminded of Baku's unique geographical position.
One of my students invites me to a football match: the local team, Karrabach Baku v Wisla Krakow, my adopted city. Of course, I have to go. Europa Cup qualifying round; Baku won the first leg, surprisingly, in Krakow, 1-0. I finish classes and go to the match with him by metro - only two stops from the centre in a place called Gunchlik. Outside the stadium stands a statue to the famous Azeri linesman Tofik Bakhramov, hero to England in 1966. I have my photo taken next to him. Fans mill around outside the ground, all good-natured, though I notice that there is a heavy police presence. Tickets from a tout - marked up to 2 manat (2 Euro) - one of the few bargains in this country; it seems this is still very much a sport for the workers, no flash cars here. Inside, the stadium is shaped like a big 'C' - in tribute to Stalin ('C' in Cyrillic is 'S' in Latin), it's all concrete and crumbling, pretty decrepit, but the atmosphere is amazing. Half an hour before the match starts, the stadium is already nearly full, there's a solid firm in the centre chanting, setting off fire crackers, waving the green, blue and red Azeri flag. The teams come on the pitch: Karrabach players to a hero's welcome, Wisla's to a round chorus of boos and a hail of abuse. The match kicks off and Wisla are on the front foot, but slowly Karrabach get a toe-hold in the game and on a counter-attack they score; 2-0 on aggregate. Then they score another. And another. 4-0 on aggregate, and they are all over Wisla, who have visibly wilted in the balmy summer heat. Out of Europe at the first hurdle. Wisla do get two goals back in the second half but it's too little, too later and they are out. Fans celebrate like they have won the competetion; they are absolutely delighted, and why shouldn't they be - this is quite a scalp for them. Next up: Borussia Dortmund. For Wisla, a long flight home, and plenty of soul-searching no doubt. It seems football is on the way up in this country - I recently found out that Tony Adams is managing a team called Gabala in the north of Azerbiajan, a town of 14,000. And they are paying him premier league wages. You do the math..just don't ask where they are getting that money. He just lost his first match in charge. Good luck to him, god knows he needs it here.
Baku is a bridge between two continents - it belongs to neither, and probably never will; it's one of those obstinate places in between that refuses to be classified. It's blessing is also its curse - oil brings it potentially untold wealth, but it remains in the hands of a few - the drivers of all the Mercedes, BMW's and Hummers are far outnumbered by those of the Lada in this country - and yet those people have to struggle by on the high prices and inflation that these lucky few have helped to bring about. A foreign teacher's wages are only just adequate here, god knows what life is like for normal shop workers and civil servants, teachers and nurses, those in public administration. It seems they have to work 6 or 7 days a week to make ends meet a lot of the time. For now, it makes do, and the oil justifies everything, as buildings go up, fancy new bars and restaurants open, gleaming malls and shops with vastly-inflated western prices line the boulevard by the sea front. You get the feeling that it's all just a little false though, like too much make up on an ageing woman, used to hide the cracks. Until they have things right at grass-roots here - ie until corruption is tackled and politicians start doing a proper job - that status quo will be as it is, and the foreigners will continue to view the city as they did in the time of Ali and Nino. Which is sad.
- comments
marcus and the teaching?
Stuart teaching? what teaching?
Vikram Ex-minister’s AND ADVISOR TO THE GOV OF BAKU assets scierintzudInvestigative committee freezes accounts of Mantelis and his best man; ND wants former PM Simitis to testifyA state committee set up to investigate money laundering yesterday called for the freezing of a Greek bank account belonging to Anastasios Mantelis, a former transport minister under the previous PASOK government who earlier this week admitted to accepting payments from the Greek branch of German electronics giant Siemens.The committee is to probe all the assets of the former minister, who on Thursday was banned from leaving the country and charged with “seeking to legalize revenues from criminal activity” after it emerged that some of the cash he received from Siemens Hellas between 1998 and 2000 had been spent on his son’s education.A cross-party financial committee is also seeking access to all the declaration of income statements (“pothen esches”) made by Mantelis during his political career.According to sources, the head of the anti-money-laundering committee, Stelios Grozos, has also frozen a Greek bank account in the name of Giorgos Tsougranis, Mantelis’s best man. It is thought that undetermined sums were transferred into this account from another account opened at a Swiss bank by Tsougranis under the code name “A Rocco.”Earlier this week, Mantelis testified that 200,000 German marks (around 100,000 euros) were deposited into Tsougranis’s Swiss account in November 1998 by Siemens Hellas. Documents related to the case suggest that cash deposited into the Swiss account had come from a slush fund used to pay off politicians and public officials to secure public contracts. Tsougranis is expected to be charged as an accomplice to money laundering over the next few days.In a related development, the main opposition New Democracy party called for Costas Simitis, who was premier when Mantelis was transport minister, to be summoned by the investigative committee. On Thursday, Simitis expressed “sadness and outrage” at Mantelis’s statement. Reacting to ND’s calls for Simitis to testify, government spokesman Giorgos Petalotis remarked, “Targeting specific individuals in order to create an impression can sometimes hinder the search to uncover the truth.”