You'd think I would have nothing to show for being 6 months in lockdown in Baku but, seems we got through with a few photo's to document life here. The first few pics were before the proper lockdown where for many months we were required by law to gain Police permission to leave the house. And then only for food and medical attention. No gatherings, and no exercise outdoors. Pretty grim but on the whole we survived well.
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A whole lot of loose tea from Azeri friend, Sureya
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Azerbaijan flag with Flame Tower background
A rainbow on a cloudy day. Notice the pipeline running in front of the fence - these functioning oil pipelines are everywhere throughout residential Baku, including in private gardens.
These are two ladies from Bible study group; Joy and Mikyoung who we celebrated special occasions with.
Finding addresses in Baku relies alot on additional information such as a photo of this gate to Joy's place.
One week we met at Bonita's place - her home has many typical decorative features. And here's the door of her place photo.
Many expats departed before the full lockdown and here are alot of people I know on board a charter flight bound for the USA.
Before lockdown I joined the Refugee Care Team and this is one of the photo's sent to enable me to find an RCT meeting at leader, Katie's house.
This is Sureya. I met her through expat friend, Sarah. Sureya kindly picked me up and took me to see some furniture stores when we were looking to buy a bed.
We stopped in at a carpet shop also. Silk, wool and blend carpets galore. We're very much looking forward to taking part of the Silk Road tour once we've able to.
Many city dwellers depart for their summer house or dacha. Sureya and her family took off for the two hot months to their place. This is their dog and Sureya fishing.
We haven't met many to know well but most Azerbaijani people are open and friendly. This is a sweet treat package that I was given by Sureya. Delicious local Pakhlava.
With temperatures ranging between 32-38 over the summer and high humidity we were quite ok to be locked down with AC. I decided when we were finally allowed out to use our 2 hours for exercise also to take some early morning walks along the seaside boulevard. Often the smell of petroleum strips my throat but the sight is pretty beautiful and worth it.
This is a pretty sight on the walkway. The walkway is extremely wide and varied with plenty of space to avoid one another.
A more sombre morning. Change is coming and autumn with the wind will return.
And occasionally we'd get out or an evening walk which is less appealing to me as it's often crowded on certain parts and extremely humid.
It is mandatory to wear masks in supermarkets and there are store entranceway customer body temperature checks. So as in many countries, there are varied types of masks worn and even the statues get masked once in a while.
There are alot of different themes and areas on the boulevard, each immaculately maintained. I like to walk by the memorial photo's which are featured along both sides of a wide pathway. Below are snippets of how life was in Baku in the early 1900's.
This is a real street cleaning broom! Everyone uses them and I've yet to see a broom, as I know it, used here.
Nice to spot a Dutch touch in a cafe.
Donna's orchid. Over the 6 months, I have been looking after Gracie the cat belonging to Donna and Steve next door.
Our driver, Shukur, produced these from his Dacha one day. Local figs, so tasty!
On the subject of food, we often miss our Dutch food supplies so I spotted this biscuit house in the supermarket one day, thinking it may taste familiar. Sure enough, it tasted like Ontbijtkoek or gingerbread. My lovely husband insisted we needed to assemble the house before we sampled it.
Jeroen was on construction duty and I did the decorating. Not my finest work but I was in a hurry to get a taste!
Remembering my Nana, Iris. She would have loved a plant shop named in her honour.
Yes, we're still big kids and play pokemon! I have yet to find where this mural is though.
Another old photo - look at how tall that statue is presiding over the city.
This is a tourist shop across the road from us. I particularly enjoy the 'dot' painted plates and pottery. And the silk rugs.
This is the outdoor office for one of the self-appointed street car park attendants. He (invariably it's always a he) will earn 20-30 Kapek (similar to NZ cents) per car parked.
As always, I enjoy hearing from friends around the world. Loriat in Zimbabwe has kept in contact and telling how life is for her. It seems her farm has gone from strength to strength and she's branched out with livestock, fruit and vegetable and also soya beans.
Some of her produce and below, the lovely Loriat. I miss her company and laughs we had together at Alliance Francaise in Luanda.
Once we were able, Monika and I met a few times in our apartment gardens with our home coffees'. So good to reconnect again!
Monika on a windy day.
And often I'll receive whatsapp funnies from her.
Here's Gracie at our place again. She's gone from being hissy and snarly and afraid to leave her front door to now walking to our place twice a day unaided. Smart girl. And tastier biscuits here I guess. Which just happen to be the same biscuits as at her home.
The pouffy cat. Below, Charlie never seems to notice or mind if he has his fur or paws in water. He still races to watch the water flush when the toilet's flushed sometimes!
Here they are, taking a constitutional together. While Charlie is fond of seeing how much she'll play (none) Gracie has a limited time span before she loses her cool with him. She's an old girl now, wanting a simple life.
We're at Gracie's place and Charlie has set himself up on a particularly rickety set of plastic shelves that are full of small mosaic pieces.
Charlie's first activity of the day is to see how soon he can get out into the hallway. Here he is, lolling around outside the door....of the neighbours. We're at 1111, Charlie!
Below, we got through a few 1000 piece Wasgij' puzzles. Charlie thought the pieces would be fun to chase.
Finally, they've stopped eyeballing one another and I can watch Frasier. I missed the series when it first came out in the 90's - I'm a big fan now owing to Frasier and Niles' witty, dry humour. Love it.
A happy Gracie after some brushing. Her green eyes are truly that vivid. We've just heard news that her people are unable to return to Azerbaijan for work or even to pack up. So, after 6 months Gracie will now go to her new home. Thankfully the house driver's wife is besotted with her so I'm sure she'll be happy there.
On the streets here you'll find many Lada cars, first made by Russia in the 70's. They are such a popular car here that an official Lada shop opened earlier this year. I've posted a pic of a lada outside 'The Pub' later on this page.
I like this shiny older auto -according to my trusty 'Vintage Cars from the Soviet Union Guide' this is a 3rd generation Volga circa 1962-1970 -she resides in our parking garage. The flash supercars have gone for the summer.
Huseyn Cavid was a prominent Azerbaijani poet and playwright of the early 20th century.
Expat birthday's can be lonely if you're in a country alone. So to avoid that, this young woman's mum in the UK called on Monika who called us to go celebrate with her.
I loved to see this street cat being treated to a seat up high with a cafe guest. Cats are found aplenty here although it's good to see people care for them which is a totally different mindset to previous countries we've lived in.
Another street tooty. Take me home they all seem to say!
Below, are photo's from the city theatre. Even though there are no English titles, it's easy to see what the show's are....
Despite the challenges and heat of Azerbaijani summer one thing I have loved is the bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables here. And at such good prices. I bought last week a few cucumbers, a kilo of nectarines, a bunch of bananas and a bunch of coriander, spring onions, basil for only a few manat (3 NZD). So we've devoured cherries, strawberries, peaches, nectarines and watermelon for the last few months. Always fun to go shopping!
It's always interesting to see familiar produce in it's raw form. Below are fresh almonds.
Each bunch of herbs comes gathered in these reed ties.
Below another google translate giggle. This is self raising flour. The other day I bought more flour that translated as 'wallpaper paste@.
And at the city boutique grocery store downstairs in the mall where we live, one will find my super-favourite fruit- but I won't be buying them for 41 NZD! I took pleasure in seeing and sniffing them instead.
We often enjoyed home juiced watermelon on those hot hot days.
Mid-September and we're able to go on some small trips which will suffice until the provinces open again.
Here, we took a day trip to visit the Fire Temple, Ateshgah of Baku. Built in the 17th and 18th centuries the pentagonal complex has outer cells for monks and a fire alter in the courtyard. The natural eternal flame extinguished in 1969 and now it is lit by gas piped from the nearby city. It was used as a place of Indian and Zoroastrian worship. Monika could read quite alot of the inscriptions.
Memorial stones laid outside the monks cells.
Above and below are before and after oil was discovered here.
After our fire temple visit we travelled along towards the Pink Lake and we took some stops along the way.
Here, Jeroen is delighted to see first hand the 'nodding donkey' oil pumps - there are thousands!
We stopped at Yanardag, which is a natural gas fire burning on the side of a hill.
Hey, it's a Lada outside 'The Pub'.
This is how you can buy doors (or anything else) on the side of the road.
Well, this is the Pink Lake, one of less than 10 in the world. Lake Masazir is a salt lake and mined since mid 1800's. It's not listed as a tourist spot and it's fenced around the perimeter. Although we're told the colour is more vivid at different times of the year, I would say there was only a pink hue the day we visited.
The best road-side lunch- Monika-Subways and Sharon-Banana bread. Although it was a stinking hot day with no shade or place to sit, we created quite a stir with a huge number of locals waving out to us as they drove by and even the Police waving and saluting us (in between ticketing two traffic violaters). A very nice day out.
The adventure was a little spoiled by being pulled over by the Police and we were left stranded in the boiling car with only one window down, no keys and no idea how long or where Shukur had been taken. Thankfully, he was only gone 20 minutes and there was no issue. Just making sure we hadn't stolen the company car.
On another day outing, Jeroen and I took a stroll through town home from our clinic appointment.
This is known as Fountain Square, a huge pedestrian only area with parks, fountains, and shopping.
These little green kiosks are everywhere selling everything from newspapers to candyfloss.
This is one of my favourite museums, the Nizami Museum of Literature. I will visit inside one day soon.
Finally, we're able to sit inside a cafe and I took Jeroen for his first outing to the Baku Roasting Company - what a very nice place. Great coffee and food and service second to none.
We stopped to look at this beautiful mosque. Currently we're unable to visit but it's wonderful to view from outside.
We took a few hours to visit the Old City of Baku, an ancient walled city not too far from where we live.
It was an unexpected surprise to spot the Nederlands Embassy.
I hardly see graffiti anywhere here and yet here is an full alleyway of it in the Old City. Pity.
Just before lockdown I took a trip out to the massive Sadrak market where you can buy anything and everything.
Somehow, I can't insert this photo earlier on..here is the Police station our driver was taken to while we were stranded in a very hot car.
Below, simple sugar biscuits. I've never made them before but on this occasion they were for a young girls's birthday. RIP Simon, Georgia's Dad.
Some beautiful night shots of the many fountains in Baku.
Reading stories from around the world about people preparing for lockdowns, supermarket scuffles and hoarding of food and supplies, it was a treat to see that life here was more sedate and I barely noticed a difference in supplies.
But what did dwindle were our Dutch supplies. So, this past week it was like Christmas when a Dutch colleague of Jeroen returned to Baku with a whole bunch of goodies for us - yippee, to receive my rooibos thee met honing and Jeroen's almond speculaas biscuits!.
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