A tour or a person?
I finally met Zeyneb on the last day — I had met her a few days before heading to Azerbaijan on Moji. I was originally planning to go on a tour to the mud volcanoes or a Zoroastrian temple, but it came down to meeting Zeyneb or going on the tour.
So I decided to prioritize someone you can only meet when you’re young. Tourist sites are unchanging, but people change. I can meet her now precisely because it’s now, and I thought I would surely gain something from her, so I decided to meet.
My introverted companion
I always get nervous when it comes to meeting someone. I get especially nervous if I know the other person is introverted. That’s because I think they probably won’t talk much.
As expected, she mostly just answered my questions and rarely brought up topics herself. It’s just that she overthinks things and has trouble speaking up. Because I understood her properly, I was able to grasp that quickly.
So this time I was able to respond without rushing. Until now, the people I’ve met at least talked to me, but first encounters with introverted people can be really quiet. They might not be my strong suit.
But their emotions are incredibly strong — romantic and dreamy. That’s why people often say they live in another world. But that’s fine. I think everyone is different.
Heydar Aliyev Center
We took the metro to the Heydar Aliyev Center and then walked back to the center from there. We talked a lot.
She told me about Azerbaijan’s Christmas, and that she grew up mostly at her grandmother’s house and feels more at ease there than with her mother or father. She said she calls her mother almost every day and talks about what happened that day.
Sometimes for as long as two hours. I thought she must have deep family ties.
The 100-step staircase and the sushi restaurant
After that, we went to a sushi restaurant for dinner and then headed to a park near a high-rise building.
The stairs were probably around 100 steps and she was very tired. But she climbed them with me.
She was very emotionally rich and the type to cherish others. She didn’t have many opinions and said I could do as I liked. I personally felt it would be more fun if she had a bit more of a "I want to do this" opinion, but I thought that’s also a kind of personality.
At the end, she wrote a message in a notebook near a grave. I also wrote a message on a card and said goodbye. Meeting various types of people helped me better understand myself. It was a good experience.
Azerbaijani cuisine
Azerbaijani food is oily and has a lot of very sweet dishes. Maybe because of Middle Eastern and Turkish influences, really sweet desserts are famous and it felt like a lot of oil was used. So my stomach quickly got upset. I thought it might not suit me.
The only thing I thought was 'delicious' was a soup with something called dushbara — like a small version of pelmeni — eaten with bread.
Other than that, I thought Uzbek cuisine was still tastier. Why is that? Maybe because I shared meals with friends? Or simply because I thought it was tastier?
