Teapots for sale at the base of the Maiden's Tower, a landmark near the Caspian waterfront in Baku, Azerbaijan. From the Top Fifty Prints collection at EarthPhotos.com.
From the eventual book, Common Sense and Whiskey:
The ride in from Georgia foreshadowed what Azerbaijan was all about. In the morning, the train window filled with oil derricks and post-Soviet housing.
The night before, over dinner while rolling out of Tbilisi, young Georgian businessmen were certain that in any Middle East, or, for that matter, any other war, Georgia would be victim to summary Russian bombing for its petulant courtship of NATO. We thought it fanciful at the time, but now I take that back.
The train was an improbably named express, the Viking, consisting of the engine, two sleeping cars and a restaurant car in between, and was priced far outside local means. The price of admission apparently bought express service at the border. Zaza, our friend in Tbilisi, had rued our having to deal with the border, but he had only traveled the local train, which spent, he said, some hours on each side.
In our case, we surrendered our passports on boarding, crossed into Azerbaijan in the restaurant car and that was it.
They would have you understand Baku is crawling with western oilmen. Outside our hotel, in which harried, unhappy or uneasy young salesmen, thrown into a foreign land in ill-fitting suits, jostled through the elevators, we found not a trace of it.
In fact, Baku, of the three Caucasus capitals, easily filled the bill as the most Soviet city. With a caveat – head scarves.
Down at the waterfront, from high above, atop the Maiden’s Tower (originally dating from the 11th century, with an inside-the-fortress well), is a fine view of the old town and the harbor, and a ferris wheel enclosed in a strip of trees.
Down at the Caspian waterfront, the waves in full chop, there’s a long concrete bund, where families promenade. Alongside a small amusement park were kids were king you could enjoy Efes beers from Turkey in the fine breeze.
But still, it’s a company town. Oil dollars have brought a fine mix of ethnic restaurants and a perfectly urbane and modernized long pedestrian plaza called “Traders Street,” showcasing Baku’s magnificent glory days, when, in the 1890’s, Baku pumped half the world’s oil supply and Europe’s finest architects clambered for commissions to build signature buildings.
- from the eventual book Common Sense and Whiskey. See more photos in the Azerbaijan Gallery on EarthPhotos.com. For more from the Caucasus, see also the Armenia Gallery and the Georgia Gallery.
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