Azerbaijan 4

For those who haven't seen the location map I drew of where I was here it is and for those who have seen it, here it is again.   It shows my journeys from Baku and where I went by train and bus and then a flight across country to Nakhchivan, the enclave, or exclave, of Azerbaijan.  It is necessary to fly because there is a dispute about permission to drive across Armenia that is taking a long while to be settled.   (The internal flights sort of upset our plans a bit because the flights there and back were delayed by bad weather but, whatever, we were on holiday and you can't do anything about weather and whatever we did was new for me so I didn't complain unlike Miss Perfect who did complain).     Nakhchivan is an autonomous republic separated from Azerbaijan and is 280 miles west of Baku.   It has a population of 95,000

In all we slept in 5 different hotels, the longest time we had was 3 nights in Baku plus another added on when our flights were delayed mid week and that was in a different hotel. 

This was all fine and not a problem but it is wise to travel light if you can, which I can. Ian had a lot of camera equipment with him which made his luggage bigger than the rest of us.  

The day in Sheki was good because it was the historic city on the Silk Road and in the foothills of the Caucasus.  From Sheki we drove to Qabola which was the green area of the country that you saw in the photos yesterday and that was the farming area.   

 

In the train.  That's Jean nearest, Margaret by the window, and the guide,  Valli.  The train was comfortable and on time and there was an attendant in every carriage.  I asked where the toilet was and she accompanied me to the exact location, knocked on the door, and then waited for me.  She also did this with others on the train, not just me because I was a tourist.  The attendants also brought us water, for no payment.  We saw her taking the blood pressure of another passenger.  I am not sure if this was a service offered to all but I think it probably was as she was carrying the blood pressure equipment with her. 

Textiles in Sheki. 

Pots and all sorts in Sheki.  

Later when we were out of the train and driving north we saw markets for the locals with lovely fruit and vegetables. 

Always lots of these  of the president and or the former president or both , Ilham Aliyev and his father Heydar Aliyev,  who have been leaders in the country for many years.  It is a dictatorship with hopefully all the best things a dictatorship can be with efficiency of  organisation and prosperity. If the clean streets and law and order are anything to go by then it is good.

More shops for buying stuff on the Silk Road.  Crafts still made and hoping to have more tourists. 

The driving on from Sheki was hairy in the mountains of the Caucasus but it was always interrupted by a stop for tea.  

The roads were a bit dangerous.  I took photos from the bus

 

Azerbaijan more for you

This is the border with Iran.  I show it because it is a little bit topical at the moment I suppose.  We went there for a drive one day.  There was nothing happening and one look-out tower which looked like a wooden hut on stilts. 

American tourists were seen in some places in Azerbaijan, I add this because some think that Americans do not go on holiday because  of Iran war and Trump and this is what the mainstream media tell them.   This is not true and we saw American tourists.  

Driving around through the countryside which is how I expected it to look. 

Then some green areas with lush meadows and trees 

 

Most countryside looked like this.

Noah's ark came to rest in Azerbaijan at top of this hill.   I believe this claim is made in several countries.  

Man cleaning at the side of the road.  You would see this all over by all types of roads, men and women sweeping in isolation.  They are paid to do this. 

Lots of Ladas from Soviet times. 

Inside mosque

Inside the mosque lovely coloured glass

Memorial to the dead.  Apartments behind.  All low level apartment blocks are Soviet builds. 

The Imam was pleased to show me his mosque and pose for photo.  Soviets pulled down mosques so the mosques are new-builds.  I was told that old people pray at home because they got into the habit of hiding at home to pray.  Only young people use the mosques today. 

Tomorrow I will show you some more.

Some of Azerbaijan

 When we arrived in Baku on May 9th it was 6am and we had just had a night flight from Heathrow.  I was unable to sleep on the plane.  We were taken straight to the hotel and checked in at 7am and breakfast was being served.  I was too whacked to go to the breakfast room and went straight to bed.  We next met at 12.30 pm for lunch as a group and to meet the guide.  He had met us at the airport but this time we were to talk to him over lunch and get to know him and one another.  

I had met Mark on the plane coming over having identified him as a possible member of the group at Heathrow when I saw him wandering around alone and scratching his head.  I bravely approached him and I was right.  He was puzzled as to how I would know but I just instinctively did. 

Anyway, at lunch we all chatted a bit but I was still not recovered from the flight.  I really needed all day to recover.

Meanwhile it transpires that Margaret who I later named Miss Perfect had already done the first stage of our excursion for that day, a city walk, while the rest of us slept and was filling the guide in with what she knew which she had also done more extensively with him privately he gaily told us.  He did not seem to realise that we all hardly knew one another and that he probably knew Margaret at this stage better than we did.  The rest of us were a bit non-plussed and did not react to any of this. We were tired and ready for him to guide us as per our itinerary.   Below is a photograph of the two of them. 

As she walked very fast at the front I spoke to the guide after 15 minutes of chasing to keep up that could he please slow down and bear in mind that Margaret should not be used as the basemarker for pace of the group as we were all much slower, either because we wanted to stop and photograph and look around or because we simply did not walk fast or both.  He took this on board and from then on the pace was slower and more suited to an elderly bunch of tourists who wanted to stop now and again to photograph or buy the odd souvenir.

Other things we saw in Baku were lots of traffic as it is a busy, modern city, lots of shops, people and daily life.  Here are some photographs. 

traffic

flame towers in Baku, the city of fire

Mark standing, Annie sitting and Ian taking photos

old city 

old city 

textiles in shops

and more of the old city 

After that exhausing afternoon I went riding with the driver while the others walked some steps, below.  It was a bank holiday weekend in Baku and the driver explained that the roads were busy for a weekend as everybody was out with family just like anywhere else on a bank holiday.

Home from my Travels

 I have been to Azerbaijan and am back today.  I have been in London for a night at the airport as it was a late night flight. 

The tour was very good and I documented it on Instagram which many of you followed.   I found it easy and delightful and no trolls.  

I wrote quite a bit while I was travelling.  The poetry came back especially after we had been to the tomb of Nizami the most revered poet and philosopher of Azerbaijan/Persia.   I read some of his poems while I was in my room in the evening and started to write again. 

I was with five people,  Mark a lovely man from Sheffield, Annie and Ian from Lytham, Jean from North London and Margaret from Peterborough.   I gave Margaret the nickname of Miss Perfect, others gave her the name of Sheila Hancock because she looked liked her;  Margaret was well travelled and the oldest in the group at 76, the fastest walker and the least accommodating to the needs of others. 

Jean was a nutty accounts clerk still working in her late 60s and appeared to be have problems understanding  instructions which upset Miss Perfect greatly.  

Annie and Ian caused some problems with missing passports and were unable to board the train when we arrived at the station for a cross country journey so four of us went on the train without them and they had to get a taxi.  We were unable to board the train without id.  I don't know if this was because we were foreigners as we were not crossing any borders so id requirement seemed  odd to me.  They later found their passports and were at odds between the two of them who was to blame.  

There was a big row between Jean and Miss Perfect  one morning when Jean was late.  

I kept  out of all upsets and trouble.  

Troubles would come and drift away with shrugs and Jean and Miss Perfect avoided each other after the row. 

We all sang from the same political hymn sheet which was good for calmness where there could have been storms.  Mark from Sheffield was as middle of the road as they come.  No calling for death or horrors to befall politicians, no hate for anyone past or present, just political facts current and on-going, home and abroad.   We left  England the day after we had voted in our local elections so some political chat was inevitable.  

It was odd to be with people everyday for almost a fortnight when I am used to being alone at home for days on end.  I am finding my house incredibly quiet at the moment and strange to have nobody to talk  to.  

I spent some time on my own or with the driver and had different experiences to the rest of the group because I did not always want to spend all day walking because my body just couldn't take it especially in the heat of Azerbaijan.  It was always at least 27C

Azerbaijan lived up to all my expectations and did not disappoint.  I saw oil rigs, textiles, fruit, vegetables, wheat and barley.  I saw wonderful modern architecture in Baku and some very ancient architecture elsewhere.   I saw clean streets everywhere with ladies and men sweeping and weeding always, even miles from anywhere, always cleaning and sweeping.  No graffiti anywhere.  The food was lamb and chicken kebabs and stews with rice and salads and many cheeses.  Drinks were always fruit juices, particularly cherry juice.    I photographed farms and tractors, cars, markets and mosques.  There was much evidence all around of former Soviet Azerbaijan with blocks of apartments, cars and the sweepers.  The people were friendly and loved to talk about football.  There wasn't a great deal of English spoken but football and the English Premier league were frequently a topic of conversation from Baku to isolated villages miles from anywhere and crossed the language barrier without a problem.

The cats were well behaved while I was away and look pampered and content and happy to see me. 

 

Friday

 I am heading this Friday because it may help readers who are arriving late because of non-up-dating by Blogger.  This is the longest of no up-dating of posts on reading and blog lists that I have known in almost 20 years of blogging.  Now that my blog is hardly followed in any case I am noticing it a lot more than I have in the past I suppose.  I started following my own blog so that I can see if I up-date.  I know I am not as the reading list is still showing Polanski as my latest post.  So annoying.  

Yesterday, Thursday, I went to see The Devil Wears Prada 2.   I liked it but didn't love it.  I thought it  a bit disjointed in flow in a odd way of slick movie making capabilities.  I can't really explain it.  Stanley Tucci had the best lines with the best deliveries, the dry humour and observations.  I liked him.  I thought the Andy romance with the Aussi property man should have ended up on the cutting room floor and remained there.  I couldn't see the point of it, like it was thrown in to fill in some time.   Apart from that it was ok.  A kind of curate's egg of a movie. 

I re-packed my bag last night, watched a documentary on Jane Fonda which took all evening and is the last in my documentary watching series,  which interrupted Evil Lives Here,  and was preceded by Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, and Robin Williams on previous evenings this week, all very interesting. I think I have also missed one out but I can't remember. 

I voted on the way home from the film in the afternoon.   There was a steady flow of voters at around 4pm and I chatted to a local farmer in the car park who I have known since I was about 5.  She was lamenting the state of farming and her son who is farming alone on the land now and she at almost 90 is still tending the yard animals and flock.  She said she would be speaking to my brother as she needed him for a quiz night.  Life in the rural backwaters.  Quizes for young farmers and old alike.  

I am off to London later when I can get my act together to go for a train.  I firstly need to leave the house in a bit of fit state for the neighbour to feed the cats and to gather my thoughts and brace myself to get going.   Decision decisions decisions on how to leave the house.  My ex had his good points, when he was here  - I never had to think about how I would be leaving things, they just carried on with him.    At least the sun is shining which means I can go without thinking about wearing a jumper, one less thing to carry around unnecessarily later. 

I slept well which means I can put one foot in front of the other today.  Always a good thing to be able to do that but it doesn't always happen. 

It looks like Reform are doing well in the local elections.  Fear not, this is not a sign of "we love you, Reform" it is the fickle British voter who is telling Labour it doesn't like them and possibly more like "we don't love Starmer" than anything else.    Stupid fools.  Anyone for Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband Chancellor?  No thanks. 

Football and Other Things

 Yesterday I had my hair colour which coincidentally came up this week and well timed for travel.  A good cut and colour and thinning for hot travel.  My hair is thick and needs thinning regularly.  I am fortunate in this way.  Hannah and I talked a lot about football and films.  Hannah is a top female footballer, was scouted in her younger days by London clubs but never went,  and is on the verge of retirement but then she has been telling me this for two years now.  We discussed the Arsenal Athletico Champions League match of the night before.  

I cried at the end of the match.  It was almost like a final in itself.  Arsenal have not reached the final since 2006 and Lehmann was sent off.  My ex came in while I was watching the game and asked me to make him a cheese sandwich and the game went downhill. (He took no interest in football and had no understanding of the emotions experienced by the supporters).   As soon as I went into the kitchen the game turned.  I forever blamed him for Arsenal losing that night in 2006.  I was an art student at the time and used to draw footballers, cartoons about football, and discuss football with my Arsenal supporting tutor Simon who commuted from London each day to teach at Norwich.  I had a good relationship with Simon and when I got a 1st people said I must have slept with him.  I hadn't.    

I have supported Arsenal since I was 17 and met an Arsenal supporter on the London Underground when I was living in London in a bedsit.  He took me to Highbury and my first match was a Fairs Cup game.  The Fairs Cup was the equivalent to the Europa League now.  It finished in 1971.  It was over-whelming and I can still remember that moment when I entered the stand and saw all the supporters.  I had only been to Carrow Road to see Norwich City previous to that. I fell in love with Arsenal and Highbury.   We went to all home games and the turnstile price was 12/6d.  This was pre-decimal days.   I went on to live with him for six months in a couple of bedsits, one with only a cold tap and a shared toilet between three floors and no bathroom,  but he became controlling and mentally abusive to me and my mother eventually had to rescue me from a very nasty situation.  He went to prison while I was with him and I passed cigarettes to him through the bars of Tottenham Police station cells. I learnt a lot about life with him in spite of the abuse and control and they are experiences I will never forget.  They are part of the rich tapestry of life I have led. Throughout all this I had a job and never missed a day of work and never told anybody what was going on.  

I watched Arsenal v Athletico on Prime and was able to tune out Alan Shearer and watch with my own thoughts, the crowd and no commentators.  This is my preferred way to watch football.  

Arsenal will meet PSG (Paris) in the final in Budapest on May 30th. Kickoff 5pm.

As Clarence  Seedorf said at the end of the Arsenal match, when you get to this point in the competition who you meet in the final is irrelevant and of course that is how it is.  PSG are the current cup holders.  May the best team win.  Seedorf is a very intelligent football pundit.   

This week I had a massage with the lady who has been training with me as the guinea pig.  She is in charge this week as my usual lady is away working in London.  On her own the new lady (new only to the clinic because she has actually been a masseuse for years in Thailand) was confident and gave me a very tough, hard deep tissue massage.  She spoke some English but we did not speak during the massage which is the way it should be I think.  I felt like I was walking better when I left and I hope that is able to stay with me for the duration of my holiday. 

Today I will go and see The Devil Wears Prada 2.  I only saw the first one six months ago and was pleasantly surprised and thought it was a great movie.  I am hoping to enjoy this one too.   

Sadly Blogger is still not up-dating correctly.  My blog post will be read by very few. 

Zach Polanski

 If you don't study PPE at university the next best thing for the budding politician must be drama mustn't it?  Polanski studied drama at Aberystwyth.  He is a charlatan in politics.  A would be Liberal when he thought he would enter politics.  He isn't actually an MP.

Born as David Paulten but changed his name back to a/the family name of Polanski because he wanted to be Jewish as his mother.  He also didn't want to be called David anymore because he didn't like it. .  Zach was found as a good name.  

I have never heard his voice but I have seen a blogger write that he speaks so nicely.  Well I suppose if he is an actor then he would do wouldn't he? Never mind what he wants to say.  His political beliefs change like the wind.  

It has been said that he is not capable of running anything but he likes the sound of his own voice, likes to self promote.  A political huckster.  

 He loves drama, dancing and himself.  He has worked as a hypnotherapist.

 As a Lib Dem he supported Israel and Judaism.  As a Green he no longer supports Israel and Judaism.  His mother no longer speaks to him.  

He sought a seat in local government with the Lib Dems.  He spoke at the Lib Dem conference.  He was considered a star of the Lib Dems in 2015.  

After failure with the Lib Dems he defected to the Greens.  He no longer supports Israel but takes the exact opposite and opposes Israel and then starts the grotesque anti-semitism that has become what is the Green Party with the Corbynists who came out of the Labour Party and joined the Greens. 

 He likes to speak at Saturday anti-Israel protests.  He likes things on X all day long including the condemnation of the police who held down the Jew attacker last week.  "They might have hurt the attacker ".   He later made a weak apology for this but wants the police investigated.

On a national level if they were to win a General Election the manifesto is that all illegal immigrants would be given an amnesty, a house and no requirements to work.  

The deputy of the Greens is Muslim Mothin Ali who is suggesting that any Greens disciplined for anti-Semitism in the Party should sue their own party. Ali is a Tik Tok user who does not condemn the October 7th atrocities.   All this anti-Semitism in the Green Party is coming from the top down. 

If this were a General Election and not local election, you could be forgiven for confusion here if you are reading overseas, then it would be another vote for Muslim Britain which is on its way.  (That is not just via the Greens I might add).

On Thursday it is a local election for the dustbin collection, social services, town planning and everything that local government do for us.  However,  I will not be voting Green for more 20mph villages, impossible driving.  

I will not be voting for those who put central government issues on their campaign literature.  Refugees, social media in schools and the under 16s, net zero, are dealt with by Parliament in Westminster, not the local town hall.  Concentrate on bins and council tax spending wisely.   

I will vote for the Conservative candidate for South Norfolk. 

Strangely enough Adrian Ramsey who Polanski defeated in the Greens leadership contest is my MP.  He has been very quiet recently and there has been nothing coming from him about Polanski whatsoever or about his beloved Green Party which he must surely be seeing crumple in front of him.  Ramsey did at least study Politics and Sociology at university and is a local boy.    The fact that South Norfolk has a Green MP is in itself an illustration of the fickleness of voters and the stupidity of voting for someone as a protest vote.  He has done nothing for us in the area which was always a Conservative seat.  He votes in support of all things net zero and stopping good country pursuits.   (Waveney Valley is what South Norfolk now is although I have never seen the River Waveney or at least knowingly so). 

If you start letting Greens take control of local government it has a nasty way of getting bigger and bigger in people's minds as a party to take over.  Norwich is run by Labour and Greens. 

 Local councillors from the Greens tend to be young.  A few weeks after the election fun has died down and they have to attend meetings they don't show up, better things to do.  This is  a regular pattern reported in the local paper for us.  No show Greens in City Hall.  Do they take their duties seriously when the euphoria of winning is over?  When it boils down to it local government nitty gritty can be long boring meetings about street lights, cats eyes and planning approvals and two way driving through a built up area and a shingle bank and a driveway that is debated for three hours.  Incidentally Norwich has always been Labour, never anything else but the Green Party with all those student voters has slowly but surely been creeping in. Come on Labour Norwich, stop them.