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Marina and I on the square near the Main Railway station. On
the right an entrance to the soviet era metro can be seen.
I had a striking desire to go to the Baku Television Tower,
so we hired one of the many taxis in the city. Most of the
taxis in Baku are old French cars like the one we drove seen
here above. Our driver was very nice and came with a very
peculiar recommendation, that the most important thing in
life is to get acquainted with different girls?! The reason
why it was peculiar were because Marina was sitting on the
backseat. Azeri's are friendly people but sometimes have a
bit strange attitude towards foreign women.
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On our way back from the Baku Television Tower which
by the way was closed we encountered a memorial park
for the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the
beginning of the 1990's. Here we had a good view of
the bay and the center of the city. The memorial
park also featured a beautiful mosque which became
the first I got the see from the inside... and yes,
I remembered to take off my shoes:-)
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As already mentioned before the view form the memorial park
was staggering. One can easily see that Baku and the
surrounding area including the bay is rich on oil as the
many oil wells show in distance. Since many foreigners work
in the Azeri oil industry you quite often hear other
languages than Azeri and Russian in the city. If anybody is
wondering about whether Azerbaijan has a lot of tourism I
can tell you that it surely does not look like it, however I
think they have a good potential if they focus on it.
I could not help smiling when I saw this sporty version of
the Ukrainian car ЗАЗ (Zaz) in the old
city. Rumours tell that this car is not well known for good
quality, but I think a test ride would be recommended to
make the final judgment:-)
The actual reason for choosing Azerbaijan as a destination
was because of the fact that Marina lived there with her
family in the 1980's and beginning of 1990's until the
political situation forced them out of the country. They
were living in Azerbaijan because her dad was serving in the
Red Army and stationed in Astara - a small city on the
border between Azerbaijan and Iran.
Back then they lived in
the military camp seen behind us on the picture. We were
lucky enough to get access to the camp. According to Marina
much had changed since they left and especially the lack of
renovation was to notice. The camp
now belongs to the Azeri military, but only a small amount
of soldiers are stationed there now. 
Me next to one of Azerbaijan's nice green mail boxes. This
picture is taken in Astara not far from the Iranian border
and of course I mailed a postcard back home to my parents in
Denmark. For you information the postcard took approximately
2 months to arrive - whether it traveled by donkey all the
way the story doesn't tell:-)
Here 4
months after the trip I can almost only look back at good
memories and would recommend everybody to go there on
vacation, but do not expect to get first class service or to
find any McDonalds nearby. Near Astara we could see
mountains in the distance and if I would go there again I
would definitely go hiking in the mountains. Please notice
that hiking in the mountains in the west of the country can
be very dangerous due to many scattered land mines laid out
during the war in the region of Nargono-Karabakh. 3rd
September 2006
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