Azerbaijan - a hidden Beauty!

Baku - old meets modern architecture

 Ferry to Baku

We needed to wait a long time in Aktau to catch a ferry as you now but in the end we were happy that we did. Otherwise we would have never met 13 amazing American people. They are doing a world race. For one year they are travelling around the world and volunteering in between in different projects organized by a christian organization. During the planned 30 hours on boat we talked, sung, tried out some light painting, had deep conversations, shared experience, watched meteor strikes and the super clear milky ways and had lot of fun together. Besides listening to guitar music Emma was playing the Ukulele and Julia was singing along. It was amazing meeting them and enriched our days a lot.

Soloman and Eric playing the guitar

We also talked to some of the younger guys of the crew who spoke some English mixed with our Russian and Turkish knowledge. They were studying Engineering at University and they needed to do an internship over the summer: they chose this one. We arrived before lunch time in Alat -  port at one hour south of Baku. But we couldn't board right away and the crew kept on telling us in an hour, in another hour. Dinner passed and we stilled didn't know if we would spend another night at the boat or not but in the end the ferry was allowed to enter the port and we could get off at around 10 pm. We walked to the passport control and customs and there it took another eternity to get through again. We tried to reach our Couchsurfer in Baku and she told us to let her know when we are in the Taxi to her place. By 1am we were finally through the border check and tried to find together with the 13 Americans taxis to Baku. But there were only two and we needed to organize another one which took another enternity.

An amazing sunset on the boat

Baku

Around 4 am we were in Baku wandering through the streets because we didn't want to wake up our couchsurfer at that time. We tried to find a hostel but it was really hard. By accident we met a guy on the streets - Asef- who asked us for what we were looking for. We told him that we are looking for a place to sleep for the rest of the night. So he offered us to stay at his apartment - for free. He was really nice and therefore we went with him. It was amazing to finally have a bed to sleep and Asef was very kind to us and let us sleep till 11 the next morning. On top of all this he said that he works in a restaurant close by where we could leave our bag packs during the day and pick it up later. It was like a dream everything went so smooth that it was almost unreal.

Old own wall

The atelier

The city of Baku is just amazing! It is a mix out of Europe and Asia, Iran and Turkey. Just wonderful! Probably the most beautiful city we have been except of Auroville and India of course ;-). We walked through the old town - which looks nice by night and day, passed by a small atelier, visited the main old palace, green parks with fake "waterfalls", a temple with an ever burning fire, spectacular viewpoints over the entire city and the Caspian Sea, the Flame towers, statues and monuments. So much culture and beauty after Aktau was incredible! After picking up our bag packs and saying good bye to Asef we finally met our couchsurfer Asya and had a nice evening at her place.  

Streets of Baku

Flame towers

The next day we went to the bus station to get tickets to Tbilisi and meet some of our American friends from the ferry which told us that some of them would be in on the same bus like us! We were happy about it, left our bags there and took a bus and metro to Yanag Dag. It is a mountain where a part of it is constantly burning naturally. It is super interesting out of a geological perspective but  slidely disappointing as everybody always said it is so huge and apparently it is one of the major attractions of Baku. 

Yanag Dag

Pedroglyphs

Because we still had lots of time left we decided to take spontaneously a taxi to Gobustan where mud volcanos are located. 50% of the world's mud volcanos are located in this area. First we went to a super new and intersting museum about petroglyphs in the middle of nowhere and then we actually saw this 1000 or more years old petroglyphs which were in an open air museum. So amazing! Afterwards we drove to the mud volcanos. We never saw anything like this before. They were bubbling and mud was everywhere. We expected it to be hot when Hannah touched it but it was cold. Afterwards we drove back to Baku. 

At the bus terminal

We met our American friends again and needed to figure out that they would take a bus before us so we wouldn't be on the same. Sad about it we told them "good bye" and walked to a close by cafe where we used the wifi earlier the day so Hannah would be able to skype with a shared flat possibility in Stuttgart. Yeah, besides travelling and organizing that and as we are coming closer to the of our travel we need to start organizing our lives after the trip like rooms to live in, university things, etc.. But unfortunately the cafe was closed and the wifi turned off and nowhere else in the entire bus station was wifi!!

Hannah, Eric and Julie at the bus station

Super frustrated we met some of our American friends again and they told us that two of them are not taking the bus and due to that there were two free seats. If we wanted to take them we could and... we wanted. After a little chaos and stopping the bus in the middle of the road and talking insistently with the bus driver Whitney and Sam arranged that we could take their seats! So cool! It made our evening!!! So we drove together with our friends to Tbilisi where we arrived at the border at 5 o'clock in the morning and while walking over the border the sun rose so that when we reached in Georgia it was already bright daylight!

Good bye Baku