Our first day in Baku

A few administrative details in the morning (finding a guidebook at the Hyatt) and we were off, in the heat of the Baku afternoon for a walking tour of the old city. Our guide was wonderful, a college professor who made more money as a tour guide. She gave us an interesting sense of the city and country. The country is almost 100% Moslem (90% Shiite, 10% Sunni). It’s a mix of Caucasian, Persian and Turks. The language is Turkic. The religion is actually Islam tempered with Zoroastrian fire worship. The women’s mind-set is very similar to Western women.

The tour took us to Maiden’s Tower, an 8 story fortress originally built as a fire temple in approximately 500 BC.

The old town is filled with 19th C oil barons’ mansions that have been converted to corporate headquarters for the oil companies doing business in Baku. We went through Shivanshah’s Palace. The oldest remains are from the 5th C and the complex is quite extensive.

Hot and sweaty, we finished our tour and looked for the closest air-conditioned bar we could find. We found Finnegans, the “Irish” pub near Fountain Square, complete with English language newspapers, a Russian waitress named Natasha (who could have been on the Russian men’s Rugby team) and ice cold white wine. We struck up a conversation with the regulars- a group of Scottish and English men working in the oil industry and living in Baku. The wine began to flow too freely (we couldn’t even finish one glass without the next one poured and waiting for us). The conversations were fascinating. John locked on to a Scottish guy who had spent time all over the world, travelling with the oil industry. The perspective they had was fascinating. They looked blue-collar, but were educated by experience.

I was talking to Trevor from the UK and his Azeri girlfriend (23 years old with an attitude). She had a different sense of life under the Soviet system. Under the Russians, her parents and grandparents had vacations and pensions and she got an excellent education with the opportunity to travel. Today, her sister, with three children, cannot find a job and is struggling just to feed her children. Things were not getting better today. (Although, Trevor was funding her to go to the UK for English language training in Bath and provided for her every need). This was a girl that would be nothing but problems in the future.

We staggered to Shakespeare’s pub for dinner of Thai soup and Indian curry. What a strange city.