A Person's Gotta Eat

Whoever came up with that March wind thing must have been from Baku. Thank God Kenai isn’t a Yorkie or he’d be in Turkey right now without his natural Lassie abilities to find his way home.

That wicked wind started howling in the wee hours of Friday morning and persisted all day. The rickety piece of board that’s filling in for the gate-to-be at the end of the wall blew down again, so the family of dogs living in the house behind that wall can drop by for a visit whenever they want. I suppose I should correct that statement, they don’t actually live IN the house. In fact, I’d be surprised if they’ve ever actually seen the inside of it, let alone spent a night there. It’s a mother and two pups of indeterminate breed. The Mama likes to bark…..a lot....and she doesn't seem all that personable when she sticks her nose around the side of the board to bark at Kenai. And Kenai, despite his mild mannered exterior isn't one to back down from a challenge....at all. He takes all comers. Unfortunately, he has no credit cards or medical insurance....or vet for that matter.

They seem kind of nice and docile here, lazing in the sun but buddy up there wouldn't be happy unless he stirred up some trouble.

They'll be moving when the house is finished and the builder moves out to make way for a tenant….Ali said he heard it was someone from an embassy. Please let them have a cat.

If I look out the windows on the other side of the house, I can see a German Shepherd who’s penned up in what looks to be some kind of concrete and wrought iron guard house all day. John says he’s let out at night. So, I know not to go looking for sugar over there in the evening….just in case the urge to bake something ever comes back. I don’t want to look out of the windows on that side of the house.

I’ve discovered a little corner store tucked away at the end of the street. This is my street...looking west in the opposite direction of the little store.

Some place to go! Down and back in less than 5 minutes, now that’s convenience. There’s a Citimart (aka. grocery store especially for expats) just as you turn off the paved road into our “dwelling area” but the chances of me walking anywhere to pay $9.00 for a dusty bag of Tostitos is slim. I’ll wait till Ali can drive me. I don’t think I’d be comfortable walking alone up the street with something so valuable swinging in a flimsy plastic bag from my arm.

This is the courtyard behind the wall of our house. The houses with the mud gray color are still under construction. It's just like Katy out here with all the new homes going up. These ones go WAY up.

Today we went back to Ramstore. Now this Ramstore is nothing like the brand new, modern, flagship Ramstore located in Moscow that I discovered online. If I think back to 30 years ago and place myself in small town in Maine, I could probably come up with an approximation of my Ramstore. I love its old fashioned funkiness and its candy lady who makes Turkish Delight from a carousel near the bakery…..just like we have sushi makers in Kroger. I first went to Ramstore on Monday to buy a few groceries…..first order of business in a new city, locate food sources. Ali was with me and served as interpreter at the bakery….if he hadn’t been there I would have come home with one kilo of what I had chosen to buy since I could hold up my index finger and say “kilo.” A quarter kilo is as yet beyond my limited, inadequate, non-existent Azeri language skills.

The bakery counter at the back of the store was piled high with little pastries that looked so good I was glad my Weight Watchers Points Finder and bathroom scale are still sitting on the dock in Houston. Yes, I brought a few home. It’s honestly remarkable how much retail space is dedicated to sweets in every food shop I’ve been to in Baku. Meat departments are teeny tiny but the bon bons are everywhere! I actually bought meat. I bought…..cow. Given the choice was “sheep or cow”……I think I did the right thing. My freezer now contains one half kilo of ground cow and one half kilo of stewing cow. And in my wallet I have a Ramstore card….so I can get points and the “endirim.” My first word in Azeri from back in October, it means “discount.” Tomorrow night we are going to have spaghetti with cow sauce for supper.

After the Ramstore shopping was done, we headed next door to McDonalds where we got sundaes and cappacinos at McDrav…….or the drive-thru. I still had a few things remaining on my list…..a dish drainer, a waste basket, and a pizza pan. We drove to a store that was supposed to have “everything for the house”……kind of like Walmart…..except unlike Walmart there was no parking lot and the entrance was down a flight of stairs off the street. Also unlike Walmart you aren’t allowed to go poking around the stacks for the things that you need. An official stack poker, who knows what they’re doing, will come along and assist you with your purchases….a personal shopper of sorts. I found out all of this after being abandoned by John and Ali who’d gone off somewhere to find a hole in the wall money dispenser…..because we’d need cash to pay for the things on my list. With my list in hand I was browsing the shelves and got a little too close. Luckily some young kid, who worked there, must have been paying attention in English class because he was able to tell me, in a most apologetic way, that handling the merchandise unsupervised wasn’t the way it was done….which really is kind of funny since I saw people at Ramstore pick up the pastries in their hands, take a little sniff and put them back. Even, Ali did that the first time we went to the grocery together and I asked him what was in those little pastries up on top of the counter. 

I learned another important fact of living in Baku today. Parking on the sidewalk is definitely doable, but sometimes it can be tough to get your door open to get back in the car when there is so much pedestrian traffic getting in the way. One good thing, though, is you don't have that should I or shouldn't I dilemma about returning the cart to the cart corral.