A Cossack in Qazak*

I really wish I had just gotten over my distaste for humidity and really just got ‘er done in Azerbaijan, but unfortunately I didn’t and I have had to live with the consequences ever since.  I got so little done there!  After I got back to Baku from Quba, the next morning I went to the bus depot and bought a ticket to Ganja, thinking I might enjoy myself there.  Upon entering the bus depot, I discovered that it was highly unlikely that I would enjoy myself there.  I think it was raining or something made me not want to exit the bus so I paid for an extension to the end of the line, which I think was Tovuz.

The Tovuz terminus was actually quite a run down affair and I was actually a little regretful I had decided to take the bus there.  I kept walking out of town in the direction of the Georgian border and I stopped in at an internet café to make sure I was on track.  The kids in the internet café (as usual playing some sort of war game) loved me and would not let me leave (Azerbaijan.  They didn’t want me to leave the country at all) and I promised them I would return.  I’d still like to, because as I have mentioned there is a lot I seem to have missed. 

So I walked towards Qazak and I hadn’t made it too far out of town when a marshrutka stopped for me.  It was empty so I was a bit hesitant, but for days now I had been practicing how to scream “No!  That is NOT the price!  It costs X manat to go from (blank) to (blank) and this is the not the accepted fare!  I will NOT pay that!” in Russian and I was just itching to use it.  I was so trigger-happy.  So as we inched towards Qazak I was getting so pent up ready for the impending scream-fest that when the marshrutka stopped and I handed him 50 kopek, he smiled, and swatted his hand in a gesture to indicate it was on the house.  Of course, this gesture also knocked the money out of my hand and I never did get back 25 kopek and I presume it’s lost forever somewhere in the woolen blankets covering the bolted in seats of that orange Mercedes van.  

Qazak is, as the name suggests, full of Kazakhs.  Or at least it was.  No one can really be certain any more where anyone is in the former Soviet Union.  A popular past time has been to take people from the Caucasus and other troublesome regions and ship them to Central Asia.  I believe some Kazakhs were shipped to Azerbaijan.**  In any case, the town was really nice and the entire centre seemed to be composed of huge parks with outdoor seating and people sitting around drinking tea, or playing pool, or having shashlik.  In fact, I kind of wish I had stayed the night there but sometimes when I have my mind set on something I will achieve it come hell or high water. 

Both Hell and high waters seem to have manifested themselves in the form of a TWO KILOMETRE long truck lineup at the border to Georgia.  Or it was more like 5km.  It was friggin’ long is what it was.  After leaving Qazak on foot, I caught a ride with a great truck driver who took me to a gas station where we hung out for like 30 minutes while he smoked and did whatever, and then we got on the road for 5 minutes and hit this enormous lineup.  He also tried to get me to throw his old Coke bottle out the window but I refused and carried it all the way with me to the border where I could find a garbage can.  

He apologized for not being able to take me to the border, and I apologized for how his day was going to be wasted in this traffic jam, and I continued to walk towards the border.  I passed all sorts, doing all sorts of activities, and there were trucks from everywhere trying to get through.  I made it to the border but was totally disoriented on as to where I was supposed to go because the crossing was being completely overhauled and I foolishly went into the building that had absolutely no personnel working in it and I came out the other side and realized that I was entirely in the wrong place.  No sooner had someone started screaming at me and soldiers rushed at me with guns that I used that ol’ western charm, flashed a white and toothy grin and said in about as clueless-American-tourist as one can get, “Sorry, where is the crossing?”  They took my passport, passed it around, took me to various offices, and then a young soldier personally escorted me to where I was supposed to go, which was a corralled section down the hill.  

Down the hill by the river was a temporary crossing, made up of a portable and some wire fencing.  The soldier, probably 18 years old, asked me if I had an iPod.  Instead of saying, “B****, please, I have two” I coyly hinted that I might.  He told me to give it to him.  I upped the coy factor and said, “No.”  He said okay.  My main take-away from this experience is that being coy always wins the day.  And while no one else finds it funny, you can write about in your travel diary later and then post it to a blog three years later and still find it extremely funny.  

*I've frequently been referred to as being a cossack in the past.  Partly due to my steely blue eyes and striking features, and partly (mainly) due to the way I can devour an entire loaf of bread in one sitting with my bare hands.  
**Or it's actually full of cossacks.  I have no idea.  Very little research went into this one.

Getting Out of One's Grill

If there is one thing I remember vividly from staying with a family of dentists in Transnistria it is that I was told I could get a tooth implant with the very best western equipment but with eastern prices.  This offer was incredibly attractive to me, but then I checked myself and said, "Wait, is the tooth going to be made out of steel?"  Metallic teeth are serious business in the FSU.  I am not quite sure where the dividing line is--and between what, exactly.  Is it North and South? East and West?  Europe and Asia?--but somewhere the steel teeth of the Ukrainian front becomes the gold teeth of the Transcaucasus.  While chronic shortages persisted across almost all sectors of the Soviet economy, thankfully procurement of steel and gold for dental purposes never seems to have been an issue. 

My life is a constant stream of regrets and one of them is the fact that I wasn't ballsy enough to get closer to the sign and take a picture.  It's such a great sign!  I don't get nearly the sense of adventure and intrigue when I go between BC and Alberta.  Testosterone-driven teenage soldiers with AK-47s notwithstanding.

So imagine my delight at walking across the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan* and coming across a wall of gold teeth, led by a particularly aggressive and liberated large woman, asking me if I needed a taxi.  If only my little Russian phrasebook included a translation for, "Really? You want me to pay 10x the rate for a taxi ride?  You're just going to spend it on more gold teeth" because that is exactly how I was feeling at the time.  So by the time I was ready to board that bus that was to take me to Sheki (I believe I bused, then marshrutka'd a couple of times) I had been made very familiar with the Land of Fire's penchant for flashy grillz.

I wish my country had so much money that we could try to reinvent our own history by building 1,001-Arabian-Nights-style border crossings that sketchy taxi drivers hang out at. 

A note to prospective Sheki visitors: the marshrutka doesn't always go directly to it, but drops you off 10km outside the city.  This was another In the Heat of the Night moment: what had once been a major caravan stopover was now fairly marginalized by the major highway presumably built to express hazelnuts to Baku.  So I was left with the task of actually getting myself to Sheki and an old man said we could take a taxi together from the vultures on the side of the road who quoted 4 manat.  The old man proposed that I pay 3 and he 1.  I said no and attempted a quick explanation of the currency exchange rate (1 manat at the time being worth more than the euro).  He insisted but I said I would walk.  There happened to be more taxi drivers across the road who quoted 3.  The old man then proposed I pay 2 and he 1.  I said no and that I would walk.  Somehow the price was reduced to 2 for the whole ride and the man said "Okay, you can pay the 2." And I said, "Okay, now I am really walking." He then got desperate and said, "Okay, okay!  1 manat each!" and I said, "No.  You had your chance, and you got greedy.  This is what happens when you try to take advantage of someone who has slept on a pile of bricks at a construction site in Albania in February to try to prove a point that a hotel room does not necessarily need be heated and therefore should not cost 30 euros."  Well, I sort of said that.  Russian can be really difficult sometimes. 

The gate to Sheki.  At right you can catch a taxi for 2 manat.

The taxi driver got impatient and made the old man leave with him and I kept walking.  The day was young, and I walked past beautiful fields and streams and was somewhat in the shade when suddenly a Lada whizzed past and screeched to a halt.  Out piled a gaggle of Azeri teenage boys who started hollering at me and insisting I get in the car with them.  Of course this is a good idea! I thought.  Of course getting into a black Lada with all my belongings and 5 teenagers was a smart move.

It was such a smart move.  They loved me.  One of them spoke excellent Russian and one of the spoke almost flawless English.  I say almost because while he couldn't put together an English sentence to save his life, he scream-sung the lyrics to "Boom Boom Pow" (I don't even know these lyrics, and every time I hear the song I actually wonder if it is even English.  Maybe it's actually Azeri because what is supposedly going on in that song makes no sense) which was blasting out of the Lada's system with the windows down.  They took me right to the centre of town, making the requisite loops around the town to holler at a couple girls, of course, and then dropped me off at a homestay.  And after all the excitement and my disembarkation they even alerted me to the fact that I had left my iTouch in the car and handed it back to me.  So maybe you should be a little less judgemental of teenage boys.

*Okay, there was a fantastic sign that basically welcomed all to Azerbaijan and it had clearly been made 40-50 years ago.  Can you imagine getting in a station wagon and just doing the Soviet Union with your family in the 1970s?  What a wild adventure.  What an absolutely safe time to go too, when the state apparatus had basically lockjawed because Brezhnev was so senile and incontinent and I'm starting to suspect not even alive.