Quba!

Monday was a holiday, Military Day, and Saturday was a day off too (I don't come in on Saturdays, so whatever!) so it was a nive long weekend in Baku. Oksana from work invited me to go to Quba with her and some people she had met at a human rights training a year before. So off we went!

Quba is 3-4 hours away from Baku. It is a small city to the North of Baku, getting towards the border with Russia. Fidel Castro jokes are not appreciated. We didn't really go to the city itself, we went out in the mountains to spend the day "relaxing."

First, I went to Sumgait, where Oksana lives. It is about half an hour from Baku. Sumgait was built to be an industrial city- LOTS of factories, making chemicals. Most of them are closed now. The city is just blocks and blocks of apartments, and a big beach on the Caspian.

When we were there, it was HOT. Brain frying hot. We walked on the beach (you can drive cars there! and most people here don't swim!) and there is a rusty boat sitting out on a pier (one of the few things the guide book mentions about Sumgait!) and hung out with her friend who works in a pirated dvd/cd shop. Oksana actually lives outside of town in "Voenniy Gorodok" which means literally "military town". It's 6 apartment buildings next to a small airbase surrounded by empty fields and the mountains. Like, the midddle of nowhere! But, everyone there knows each other, and they stop by each other's apartments to talk. It may be isolated, but it's a community! Her mom stuffed me with yummy food including blinchiki with tvorog, which i LOVE! Oksana's mom is Tatar and Bashkir, and her father is Azeri and Iranian, and so i told her that she is like an american- all mixed up!

Saturday we got up bright and early and met the van full of her friends on the road to Quba. We drove up to Quba listening to russian pop all the way. We stopped at a shrine- a domed building by the road near a rock outcropping called 5 fingers- and left some money for a good trip. Superstisious!

When we got to Quba, we stopped at the bazaar to get food- meat, fruit, drinks. It took FOREVER- because, as it turns out, THEY WERE KILLING THE LAMB! Here, the fresher the better, so the guys went and picked out the lamb and there you go! I mean, here in the USA we divorce ourselves from the idea that our meat was once a cute little animal and buy it all wrapped in plastic. But I felt bad!

IRONICALLY, we didn't even eat the lamb we slaughtered. We went to an outdoor picnic space out in the mountains where they cook your meat and serve you and everything for a fee. They mixed up out meat with someone else's, the days big disappointment.

Anyway, we sat, we ate, we played in the river, we climbed a mountain! The driver said, hey there's a waterfall around here. So we all went to the waterfall. I thought it would be a 20 minute stroll down the river. No, it was a 3 kilometer hike up the mountain! One of those climbs that you remember forever becasue of how freakin hard it was. Pictures of the waterfall etc. can be found at

my flickr account

I would put some up here, but I can't get it to work lately.

OK, the trip was almost a week ago. I'm lagging! Hopefully I will have internet access at the conference next week, in which case I should have time to post tons.