To Baku from Urgench at midnight
Entering Azerbaijan! I successfully entered Baku from Urgench International Airport in Uzbekistan! The 3 a.m. flight was probably the first one I've ever taken at that hour, so it was really tough. By the time I arrived it was 5 a.m.
I descended the stairs and entered the airport. Azerbaijan requires a visa, so I had to register. They have a special system where only Japanese nationals can get an arrival visa for free, which made me feel how much Japan is trusted.
There was a kind of machine where you input your address and other details and a receipt comes out. That was the visa.
After getting the visa I went to passport control. Maybe because it was the middle of the night, everyone was fiddling with their iPhones and chatting happily with the person next to them — I thought that was nice. I felt that kind of casualness is important. Not everything needs to be done seriously like a robot.
A biologist I met on the bus
After entering I bought a SIM card and took a bus to the center. Since it was my first time I had no idea, so I confirmed with the person who sat next to me on the bus, like, this bus goes there, right?
She was a biologist who had gone to a forum in Uzbekistan. She had been traveling in Uzbekistan around the same time as me! She said she went to a forum in Osaka last year and told me all about it.
When we arrived we exchanged WhatsApp contacts and she told me to contact her if anything happened. It was a very warm interaction.
Hostel in Old Baku
I got off the bus and walked to the hostel. The hostel was in the heart of Old Baku and the location was perfect. Old Baku was truly romantic — it felt like I'd slipped back in time to around the 1800s. The buildings were stone, and orange lights made them even more striking.
I went into the hostel and decided to pay the owner in cash. Booking.com said 2,000 yen, but apparently there was a fee and the email said 10,000 yen. In the end I paid 100 manat. I got totally ripped off.
Everyone at the hostel was asleep, so I quietly got into bed so as not to wake them. The shower was shared, the room was dirty and in the basement. There were security cameras, but I still felt the area didn't seem very safe. My roommates were talking loudly and I felt like the odd one out. It was a dud. The timing was bad.
So I took about a four-hour nap, and when it was noon I booked another place on Airbnb and left the hostel. I paid 100 manat — disappointing, but paying for safety is much cheaper.
Filmmaker's Airbnb
I walked through the city toward the Airbnb. It was a little further from the Old City but had a big park nearby and was really beautiful. One thing I noticed on arriving in Azerbaijan was that there wasn't a single piece of trash anywhere.
The city was really clean and sophisticated. Just being here made me feel like my heart was clean.
Checked into the Airbnb! It turned out he was a film director. He said you can find him on Google, and recently he went to the Uzbekistan Film Festival to present.
But shooting films takes a lot of time and money, so he can't do it all the time. Still, I thought making films is really creative and amazing.
The room was great. It was a bit tilted and made me a little dizzy, but only in one spot. It was really cozy — his room was on the first floor and mine on the second, completely separate. I guess he renovated it to use as an Airbnb.
Olivier and plov
While relaxing in the room the owner brought out Olivier. Apparently in Azerbaijan it's called "strichnaya."
When you hear 'strichnaya' in Russian you think of vodka, so I thought that was funny — it's interesting how different things are between countries. The Olivier was really delicious. It tasted even better because I was tired.
He said it was his mother's birthday, so when I came back to the room at night he brought out a huge Azerbaijani plov.
The plate was piled high so I thought I couldn't possibly finish it all, but when I tried it, it was really delicious. It had spinach on top and was very salty. But this was the real deal of Azerbaijani plov.
Line symmetry of the Heydar Mosque
The next day I went to the mosque. Maybe because it was midday there weren't any people. Azerbaijan is a secular country, but at certain times you can hear the call to prayer. This mosque was really beautiful and perfectly symmetrical.
Apparently in Islamic culture being symmetrical is considered beautiful, and the buildings are all symmetrical. It was so large that there was even an escalator before you entered the entrance — I was really impressed.
It's called the Heydar Mosque and it was a recently built mosque. It was so big that its scale shocked me.
At the restaurant I ordered a very sour milk soup and kebab. It wasn't very tasty. The atmosphere wasn't very pleasant either.
Carpet Museum and a 23,000-yen notebook
I also went to the Carpet Museum. Carpets are very famous in Azerbaijan — when you say 'carpet' in the world, people think of Azerbaijan.
I saw the traditional methods used for making them and many different kinds of carpets.
They were made so intricately that I was constantly impressed. I thought about buying a carpet-patterned notebook at the souvenir corner. Since the price wasn't listed I figured the prices must be different for tourists and locals. When I asked, the notebook was 23,000 yen. I burst out laughing. That's way too much.
The saleswoman was incredibly beautiful, well made-up, with perfectly shaped lips — she seemed to embody Russia's beauty standards.
She also had a keratin treatment in her hair. No wonder she had so much confidence. But 23,000 yen was really over the top, so I laughed to myself on the way back.
Baku sushi
I suddenly craved sushi and had salmon sushi.
There was a Japanese restaurant, so I went in. To my surprise the owner was Japanese. But when I asked in English, 'Can I sit anywhere?' he nervously said 'Yes.'
Maybe it was because he realized I was Japanese. Well, that's fine. As for the taste, it was ordinary. I wouldn't call it good. And it was really expensive. It made me feel almost moved to tears at how amazing and beautiful Japan is — you can get such exquisite food at Sushiro for 100–200 yen.
At night I wandered around Baku, visited a park with fountains and the Baku Tower, and had an adventure. It was a fun Baku adventure.
