Baku, Azerbaijan May 22nd, 2015

A long time ago I bought a book on the throw out table at Angus and Robertson. It was Ali and Nino by Kurban Said - a love story between a Moslem youth and a Christian girl set in Baku about the time of the First World War and now we are here in Baku. It is a city of 4 million people in a country of 9 million. As well there are 29 million Azeris living in Iran This afternoon we drove past on ffice of the Ministry for the Diaspora so it obviously has plenty of work! The people are Turkic and can understand Turkish. The city is attractive and European in looks and feel, but the traffic seems to be more chaotic Asian.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Taghliev History museum in one of the mansions built by one of the oil barons. It was worth going to see the building, and the exhibition was good too. The labels were in 3 languages but rarely including English..

 Typical street scene

 

 One of the grand salons in the Taghiyev mansion

 

 Ornate cornices

 

 Beautiful parquetry floors

 

Azeri carpets are famous and there is a carpet museum in the shape of a rolled up market but we have not found it yet

Embroidered wrestling trousers

When we tried to get a taxi to the museum the driver did not know where it was and we soon had half a dozen people all putting in their two bob's worth. We then had to negotiate a fare, so were pleased we actually got there. Not surprisingly the museum was not crowded! 

If you want to see where we walked yesterday, copy and paste into a new window, the link below. It will probably come up with the google hybrid view but you can change it to google map

 http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/20150522021107-30102-map.html

 All for this first instalment.