die letzten Tage in Baku

Hello everyone,

I spent my last days in Baku. On Staurday I chose to go to art galleries and check out what was displayed in the State Art Museum. I must admit the State Art Museum, located in an Oilboom mention, had a greater collection of more "older" art but was not as overwhelming as one of the private art galleries in the old part of town. The paintings, nicely displayed in an old house, were more vivid. Of course the galleries had contemporary art, so they are not really compareable. In both I tried finding art which expresses some azerbajanian feelings or how the people lived at that time. I discovered that is really mixed, Persian influence vs. Russian influence.
After having finished my cultural part, I met with Asmar, Gülnar's sister, and her friends to have a walk through town. Afterwards Günel and Leyla, friends of Gülnar, picked me up and we went to a pub in which a turkish band played. It was very crowded and in the smoky atmosphere many foreigners, who probably work in for the Oil industry were gathering with locals. Afterwards we hit a club, which later got closed down by cops... Cops overall are a special topic, which I don't want to discuss further.

The next morning, we went alltogethere with Günel's and Leyla's brother to Quobostan. It is an hour drive out of town, passing by some oilfields and desertlike landscape. In Quobostan are Stones which show engravings of the people who have lived there a loooong time ago. Also quite interesting were the huge stone drums. They actually make lound noise on account their porosity. And then time was allready over and I was driven by our driver to the Airport. On our way we stopped in a little coffe place, which was the meeting place for nearly only foreigners living in Baku.

My plane departed at 20:20 and in it was me, having seen a very political and economically interesting country, located between Russia and Iran at the Caspian Sea between desert and rich mountain pastures, filled with very friendly people!
I am really glad having made this trip, meeting so many nice people, experiencing overwhelming hospitality and having the feeling that eventhough not having seen or talked to somebody in 5 years, everything was just yesterday.

Baku + Quobostan