The trip to Baku came about roughly like this.
First came an email from Czech Airlines saying that if I didn't spend all those accumulated miles by date xy, they'd expire. Well, if I've got something for free (read: for the gazillions spent on plane tickets, mostly on business trips to the USA), I'm certainly not going to let it expire!
Turned out it wasn't that simple. It wasn't enough for a ticket to the USA. Upgrading a ticket to business isn't possible unless I buy the most expensive ticket. Using it for a trip to some reasonable place isn't possible either, because those are sold out years in advance.
Okay then, where do you have a seat. "Well, I can't see it like that, you have to tell me where you want to fly." By then I've got a map in front of me and I'm hunting for possible bizarre destinations.
"Do you have a seat to Kazakhstan, for instance?" (the movie Borat had just been on).
"I don't know, you have to tell me the city"
...frantically looking up the name of the capital of Kazakhstan....
"Astana"
"Well, that would work, but with two layovers. Flight time 22h."
"Hmm, no thanks. So what else is there. Azerbaijan. Baku."
"Yep, got that one. One layover in Moscow. At three in the morning"
...I'm done with this...
"Fine then"
And so off I went. For the first time in my life I'm going on an "expedition", short as it may be, completely alone. I don't know what to expect. Neither from the solitude, nor from Baku. But it's an adventure.
Azerbaijan is this mix of Soviet Union leftovers, Islam and the pomposity of oil revenues. In the centre of Baku you'll find luxurious modern skyscrapers next to a muddy chicken coop. A modern hotel with an entire 60-storey wall made of LCD screens, next to a mosque. Crumbling neighbourhoods next to a pompous ultra-modern museum the size of our most amazing president Heydar Aliyev. Luxury Mercedeses next to a rotting Lada. Gorgeous historical fortifications and medieval alleys next to a prefab housing estate.
Once I drove out of the city, all that was left was purely mud and poverty. On the way to Yanar Dag, an eternally burning oil vent, I finally got to see the real Azerbaijan, not the glitter of the capital. Oil derricks, muddy roads, rusty trucks and meat hanging on a hook in front of the shop like in Africa.
In two days I obviously didn't get to know the country much. But the sweeping, senseless spending of a dictator with unlimited funds from the oil industry stuck with me. And also the excellent food, the lovely people and the local poor folks' nostalgia for the times of the Soviet Union. The poor are apparently just as poor as back then. Only now they're no longer part of the Bolshaya Rossiya...
