Ah, Buh, Juh, Cha, Duh, Eh, FFF, Guh.....

It’s the letters that get stuck in the back of my throat that will stand in the way of me ever becoming remotely fluent in Azeri, or as Roza; the language teacher calls it “Azerbaijani language.” Teaching one’s tongue to make shapes it has heretofore never been called on to make can be challenging…..but I am determined to get enough of the local language to get by. Someday, I’d like to do better than that, but for now not having to thrust out a handful of assorted denominations in the direction of a store clerk would make me very happy. If I could extend my Visa cards, then Bank of America would spare me that embarrassment…..but unfortunately they don’t go many of the same places as I do anymore.

I had my first language class on Monday afternoon. Ali and I picked up Roza and drove down to the office where we ousted a pair of engineers from their office and my studies began. John brought me a cup of coffee to help me stay awake in class, and before I knew it I was learning to make the hacking sounds that would get me through a day in town on my own.

There are 32 letters in the Azerbaijani alphabet. When the Soviets were here the Cyrillic alphabet was in use. After they left, the Latin one was adopted with a few letters added to make up for the fact that all letters are pronounced and there are no combo sounds (as in “sh” and “ou”)……like we have in English. There are some significant differences in pronunciation, too. “C” is like our “J” and “J” is like the French, “Je.” There is regular “G” and the “G” with a hat that requires suspension of ones gag reflex to say properly. “G” with a hat is followed by “H” and next comes the indomitable “X” which is supposed to sound like the “ch” in loch…..but only if you’re Scottish. Cheating and making a “K” sound is not okay by Roza. The problem is the “X” comes at the beginning of a lot of words, so the only way to say it right is to get deep down in your throat and attempt to “hock” it up. “Xeyr” means no….so I have to work on my hocking. It sounds sort of like “hair”……..feels more like hairball. Ali told me, today, that Azeri words and Turkish words are the same but that Turks don’t use the throat sounds. “X” is pronounced like “H.” So, if that’s the case, and I might be understood without knotting my tonsils, I’m willing to adopt a Turkish accent.

I’ve had two lessons so far with my third to come on Monday. Roza gives homework, like writing dialog and memorization. She checks the homework. She takes this all very seriously. But she’s good, I’ll have to admit that much and she’s a very nice lady who’s proud of her language and excited to help foreign people adapt here in Baku. She told me that next Thursday the National Dance Troupe will be performing at the Philharmonic and offered to use her box office connections to get us good seats. And that brings me to the most important thing I've learned in the last five years.....that a box office connection is worth its weight in gold.

Today was grocery day and in the car, on the way to Cinar Market and Ramstore, I was showing off my new mastery of the numbers one to ten, the number one hundred, and the right word for half. I told Ali I could order my own things at the counters.....now that I had these few rudimentary skills at my disposal. I didn’t mean it, though. I really wanted Ali to order for me, but at the meat counter he just stood there waiting for me to speak up…..and after a brief international stand-off, I caved and asked for 300 grams of ground “dana” which is cow and 300 grams of large chunks of “dana” for soup. When we got to the bakery counter Ali was nowhere in sight and I found him hanging around the magazines at the front of the store. Twice I asked him to come back to the back with me and twice he said he’d wait there. I had to ask for my own little pastries today. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was so impressed with my language skills he felt I could handle it on my own, and not that he thought I didn’t NEED anymore pastries from the back of the store. Problem is I came back with a half kilo of sweets because I forgot between the meat counter and the bakery all of the words for three hundred grams. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

A little something in the way of local entertainment. It appears to be shot off of a TV but you'll get the idea...

Spaghetti with Cow Sauce

The international assembly continues in the kitchen. I did another roll call and the following members have checked in: Pears from South Africa, Peaches from Greece, Butter from New Zealand, Ritz Crackers from the Emirates, Wheat Crackers from Saudi Arabia, Orange Juice from Austria, and Spaghetti from Sweden. Three boxes of food from America are sitting on the dock in Houston, wait till that gets here……everyone's going to have to move over to make room. In the meantime, if I don’t lay off Latvian potato chips my Levis from China won't pull over this global sized butt. That will be an international incident, trust me.

The spaghetti with cow sauce wasn’t all that bad. It had a slightly different flavor than my usual concoction, but I put that down to the sauce itself as opposed to the meat. I didn’t have any spices to add, so what I dumped from the jar was what I got. I wasn’t planning to buy spices here since I have some coming (probably by Christmas) in the shipment from Houston. The first few bites I took of it were small tentative ones but by the time I got to the end of the plate, I was beginning to get it.

I’d buy Ramstore’s ground cow again......very very lean cow, t’was. Now, what I thought was a large jar of tomato sauce, was in actuality tomato paste. So, John had to make a stop at Citimart on his way home from work for some spaghetti sauce. I expected he’d walk in with a couple of bottles of Ragu since that stuff seems to be pervasive (Russian catsup tastes exactly like Ragu in a squirt bottle), but he didn’t have Ragu. He came in with two teeny tiny bottles of a runny looking sauce that was going to have to do. The consistency of the sauce made me glad I had a large jar of tomato paste to thicken it up and when it was done, it looked like a damn fine spaghetti sauce.

Since, I only have one working burner (the electric one); I had to take the sauce off the stove to cook the spaghetti. That dang burner isn’t a big frying pan size burner, it’s one of the smaller ones, so we had time to put away two beers a piece before I had to get up and tend to the stove again. It was also enough time for me to rag on John for not making sure I had four working burners (and cable TV) before I got here.

The stove top is an interesting beast, made by Electrolux of all people. It has three gas burners and one electric one which, on the upside, means that if the power goes out you can still cook and if the gas gets shut off you can still cook, though in both instances I think dining out is the preferred method of coping. To keep the sauce warm while waiting for the water to boil, I had John move the microwave from its spot in the microwave cubbyhole…..where they forgot to put an outlet….to the counter. It was the first time we powered that up, and amazingly enough, it worked just fine when it was actually connected to the wall. I think that’s one of the things I miss the most…an abundance of outlets behind the kitchen counter. We have one single receptacle outlet in which the toaster and the kettle trade places. There is another one…but of all places to put an outlet, it’s directly behind the stove top. If the gas ever gets turned on to the stove, I’ll be frying a few cords.

The other day we found the valve to turn on the gas to the stove. It took us a while to figure out it was hidden behind a kitchen drawer. I was all set to crank that sucker up but John held me back. He said he hadn’t turned on the gas because he had no idea who had installed it and what had been done to pressure test the lines…..oh. In that case, maybe we should go out shopping, take the dog, and our passports, and while we’re gone have the master come over to give that little yellow handle a crank. Or even better contact the landlord and tell him the “Mrs.” has arrived and would like an all electric stove, if you please. The Mrs. would really like a gas stove but in the absence of licensed installers, she’s willing to compromise.

I looked up when we were eating and noticed that the fume hood over the stove doesn’t vent to the outside. It essentially looks like a one armed “Lost in Space” robot hanging on the wall. You know, I bet they were waiting until the gas was turned on and a natural hole appeared in the wall all by itself.

Too bad Mc Drav isn’t on the way home from the office.

How I Met the Maid

I’m doing the laundry today. It feels pretty good to have something to do besides school work and making sure that the World Wide Web is still turning on its axis without me. Lena is sick so I’m taking over the job. She showed up at the house this morning to do the cleaning but I’d heard that she has been sick all weekend with a cold and today is the first day she didn’t have a fever. Apparently her daughter was giving her injections to make her better….injections for a cold are a new one on me, but anyway, I was prepared to turn her around as soon as she got here and…..after I took one look at her….no question, she was on her way back to the bus stop. I promised I would take care of the laundry and ironing so she wouldn’t be too backed up on Friday.

I first met Lena last Tuesday.

John woke me up as he was leaving for work because the maid was coming at nine and I wanted to get my shower, and be dressed in my best sweats and tee shirt before she got there. I wasn't pretending to be someone who's up and dressed before nine every day because that is a total falsehood....well it was in my previous life....not so much now. But I was told she was nervous of dogs so I didn't want her walking into the house with the dog she's never met before guarding the bathroom door. So I get putzing around the house before I get in the shower...John calls to tell me that he called Lena, the maid, and she was just leaving to get the bus and would there in 20 minutes. I asked him if he had let the dog out that morning and he said, "No." So we end our conversation, I scoot from the 3rd floor down to the first to let the dog go pee. When I get there I discover that I'm locked in. I can see that there is a deadbolt engaged but can't see any way on the inside of the door to unlock it. I go to the garage...it's locked and there is no inside release on the garage door. But it does have a lovely series of deadbolts. The dog is not impressed and me...less so. I have someone coming to the house in, by this time, 15 minutes on the most windy chilly God awful day ever with no way to let her in...She can't even get in a car and drive home since she came on the bus. How will she understand me as I try to communicate in English through a steel door? Huff and puff up to the 3rd floor again...the home phone is not working because as the “robot” says, when the English translation kicks in, we haven’t paid our debt. My Verizon cell doesn't work over here, but John gave me a local cell phone the night before. I scramble for that and dammit.....it wants a PIN to open it. It's also set up in Azeri. Now what? I spied the Blackberry charging on an end table.....$3.00 a minute with roaming but this....this was an emergency.

The following conversation ensues as I call John for help......BWAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (That cost him a $75 steak dinner last night). I asked him to send Ali back to unlock the door. He tells me they're too busy right now and he's sorry but he didn't realize that the second lock wasn't able to be opened from the inside. (There are three deadbolts on this door). Finally he says okay, he'd send help......but he didn't...not right away, and Lena is buzzing at the gate and I'm looking like crap (seriously....tired, greasy, unwashed, and frazzled)....BUT finally a small part of my brain engaged (a miracle without coffee) and I thought "I'll drop my keys to her off the balcony." She didn't seem one bit concerned that we met with me hanging off the front of the house trying to toss her some keys. I kept trying to tell her to move over so I wouldn’t end up dropping this 5 pound key ring on her head but it seems she thought “move over” meant “move closer” and as I moved my arm away from her, she kept moving beneath it with her hands extended upward. So as not to break one of her fingers, I tossed them away from her and now she probably thinks that I’m not only helpless but a really bad throw.

I keep asking myself if the purpose of that lock really is to keep someone in....you know, like away from the mall? Even I wouldn’t climb out a window to go overpay for something. However, I guess my suitcases and my butt would, with a little squishing fit out the ground floor windows come tour time. Yeah, I thought of doing a hand off out one of the windows much later.....no coffee, you have to understand. Later that night, John said he wasn't in any rush to get home because he knew I'd figure it out eventually. And honestly, I think I would have if it weren't for the damn phones not working.

Friday went much better, though I’ve forgotten I meant to take that skeleton key away from John. If he starts bringing home bags of candies and pastries to me, I’m going to get suspicious. Lena’s ironing has put me to shame. I’m most impressed. I wonder how long it takes her to do one shirt. I spent a good half hour trying to figure out the washing machine and the dryer, which has a tank to collect the water from the clothes behind a panel on the front. When the tank is full, the dryer stops and you have to empty it to get it to run again….reminds me of the vacuum cleaner. This might be modern laundry technology of which I was blissfully unaware but how odd. The dryer doesn’t vent to the outside…..but then again neither does the hood over the stove. I would guess that 99% of the people here hang there clothes out to dry.

Which is only an issue if one cooks, I suppose. Which reminds me…..frozen pizza the other night which had some kind of mystery bologna on it and corn kernels. Pizza from Turkey, pickles from Bulgaria, jam from Germany, pasta sauce from Azerbaijan, and McCain potato wedges from Poland…..everything seems to get along well enough in my fridge. What’s wrong with people?

The potato chips come from Latvia.

Picture Time

Some of these are from our October house hunting trip and some from the past weekend. The new house is somewhere behind that TV tower, on the other side of the hill. The boulevard wraps around the Caspian and is a favorite place for people and families to hang out on a nice day, there are some teahouses and amusement park rides for the kids.....lots of places for a person to sit and watch the passing parade. I did see people fishing from the pier that day. I hope it was for recreational purposes only.


This is not a one way street. Some of the one way streets dead end, so you have to back out if you can't find a spot to park. The parking is really tight but this is actually pretty orderly for Baku. I'm glad we have the Land Cruiser, it helps get over those higher curbs. Luckily there is often someone right there to help you back out or stand saving a spot for you.....for a small donation.


Smoggy sunrise over the Caspian. The building crane is the state bird of Baku. There is massive construction going on all over the city....lots of skyscrapers.

But there is also preservation and reclamation of beautiful architecture, like this.


The building below was cocooned in a shroud when we were here in October. Now, its rejuventation is almost complete and it looks like this.


Looking down the pedestrian part of Nizami.


Where stall after stall, they sell these dolls, bagged in plastic as protection from city dirt and grime.


The Boulevard from the Park Inn window.


There are a gazillion stray cats here.


And just like everywhere else, a meal through a window is extremely popular.

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.

"Welcome to Baku, Lassie"

It took us seven months to get here but now it’s done. I’ve unpacked our six suitcases and figured out how the shower works in my bathroom. That’s pretty settled, I think. Having stayed in so many different hotels over the past five years had to give me an edge in conquering the shower in less than a day.

John got back to Houston from Baku on the 22^nd and since I hadn’t seen him for almost two months, I was nice and in a good mood for as many days. Then the very ugly nasty bitch in me reared her ugly head and generally freaked out over every thing…..big or little. I guess I had some issues to work out before I got here and it feels good to have all that done and over. No one died and the bruises are healing okay. Since we’ve moved umpteen times in the past, I believe John recognizes the pattern of behavior, gives me some room, and puts all sharp objects out of sight. But anyway…….

That’s done and I’m here in Baku, happily being a vegetable. I don’t think I have ever been so exhausted in my life…..could I really be getting too old for this? Our flight from Houston left at 4 PM on Saturday. This time we had a window and an aisle seat, so I got my window and a place to rest my head, and John got his aisle and a place to stretch his long legs. The not-so-good-this-is-really -their last chance- travel agent had us booked in two seats in the center section of the Air Bus 340-600 and I wasn’t about to sit squished in a middle seat for the 10 hours it was going to take to get to Frankfurt nd the four additional ones to Baku…..again. I had bugged John to confirm where our seats were for about a week to no avail, so I managed to find out by calling Lufthansa directly. I was told we were sitting in the same row but on opposite sides of the aisle. Um….okay….but not. I changed them to seats A & C. I found out later that it was John who had also called Lufthansa, a few hours before I had, and secured us those across the aisle seats. 

For some reason the trip didn’t seem as long as it did in October, when we came over here to check the place out. Neither one of us slept much. I read my book, drank a fair bit of free wine, and thought about Kenai down in the hold….no doubt all stretched out in his first class crate having a nice snooze. I can’t believe what a gem he was at Bush. I was on the check in line while John put the crate together in front of the Lufthansa counter. He had Kenai on his leash and that dog was totally unconcerned with all of the people milling about and seemed completely nonplussed about the fact that he was going in to that crate when the last clip was clipped closed. When we put him in the crate….which is big enough for him to stand, turn around and lay full out in….. he had the good manners not to whine in front of all the other passengers who were going to be squished into restrictive seats and pay a whole lot more for the privilege. Once he was crated, and our luggage checked in, we had to wheel him down to the end of the terminal where they security screen oversize bags, which includes live animals. I wish I had a picture of Kenai getting his TSA pat down…seriously. It was too cute. I don’t think he thought so but it was cute nonetheless.

We waved goodbye to him at the conveyor belt and the TSA guy walked back with him to make sure he got to the right place. That was one of the hardest parts, letting him go like that. It was going to be such a long trip and he’d only flown once before and not nearly that far. No drugs or nothing…..not even free wine.

The best kinds of trips are uneventful and so Houston to Baku with the 5 hour stop in Frankfurt was the best kind of trip. I love Lufthansa. Getting through immigration in Baku was pretty smooth, just long..... there was a gal arriving for an embassy job, or something, who thought that since the embassy was picking up the tab for her visa that it should have been prepaid. At least that's what I gathered from six places back in the line up. It seemed like the immigration guys had no idea what the hell she was talking about. It took them quite a while to sort it all out and I dozed off in the queue, mesmerized by the sight of my luggage going round and round and round on the baggage carousel, so I have no idea how it was all resolved in the end. But I was just about ready to cough up the money for her. The visa fee for Americans is $135, Brits $100, and everyone else (including us Canadians) $65US. Between us John and I only came up with $58 bucks…..we had enough manat to cover my visa but all of the signs said US dollars. Surely, they’d take manat since it is the local currency, and they did (grudgingly) but at par with the US dollar…..and the manat is worth more.

With visa in hand, it was off to find out where to collect Kenai. I had envisioned him sitting, in his blue Cadillac of crates somewhere on the tarmac but he was parked right next to the baggage carousel keeping watch over our six pieces of luggage….one of which contained a ten pound bag of IAMS Active Maturity and a large box of Milk Bones. John went off to find a couple of carts and I began to retrieve our bags. A man in a uniform came over and I thought he might be the customs inspector to check out the dog’s Health and Vaccination Certificates but he wasn’t. He looked into the crate and when I told him that Kenai was with me, he told me that he was looking for another dog who was supposed to be on the flight going out and couldn’t be found. Uh oh!

Importing Kenai turned out to be a breeze. I had been so worried that we hadn’t done something right or had forgotten something but everything went amazingly easy. I offered his documents and Kenai was waved through with a “Welcome to Baku, Lassie.”

Ali, and his brother Mahmoot, were waiting to pick us up, and we were off to the big yellow house another 40 minutes away. I couldn’t wait to see the place now that it was finished and furnished. "IKEA on steroids," is what Jill said when I showed her the pictures John sent in December. It looks better in person, a lot better….and not so small. I think the size of the rooms dwarfs the furniture a bit.....but it’s definitely normal sized and so is the fridge, thank God. It’s surprisingly quite normal, it’s tall and thin but it’s certainly big enough. So is this blog. I’ll save the room by room for later…HA! For the past few days I’ve been discovering the quirks that John hadn’t noticed in the 2 months he was in here before me, including the fact that the gas to the stove isn’t hooked up. He forgot to order the cable TV, so I can get some shows in English via the BBC and wouldn't you know it, ESPN. There's also the little matter of some deadbolts on the doors that don’t open from the inside. I'll save that one for later.

Sally Moves On

If scroll down to my previous post you'll notice the great big typo I made when I entered the date. Yep! It's right there is black and white. August 30, 2006. Has to be some kind of typo. No way has it been that long! No way. Okay....maybe it's been almost that long. But anyway...I'll not let the past get in the way of the future, what’s done is done and what isn’t done, isn’t done and never will be.

I've been gone a long time and where I went there is no place to drive BUT I'm not allowed to drive anyway. And, no....it doesn’t have anything to do with that speeding ticket I got just outside Dallas in December. The company said so. Hmmm….not the “company” company, the company where John works. At the beginning of the week Sally, and company, took up residence in Azerbaijan and I promise myself that I will diligently and faithfully write something every day (or a reasonable facsimile thereof)….

There won’t be a timeline exactly. I never drove too many places in a perfectly straight line but I promise to proof read so things at least make sense. Pinky swear.

So, here we go….and to think after last summer driving all over California with one in a rental car….all Sal wanted for Christmas was GPS. There aren’t all that many places to go to from here by car but there is a McDonald’s Drive Thru (or McDrav as it’s known in these parts)

.....and I don’t know how to get to it from here, in the big yellow house. No need to scratch that Garmin off the list just yet.

Okay, that will do for a transition from the old life to the new.

Welcome to Sally of Azerbaijan!

I remain, your servant….etc. etc. etc.