Baku has threatened to stamp its mark on my travel document for the past year or so. The threat has intensified over the past few weeks. If all goes well, soon I will start the journey by catching the Royal Brunei Airlines flight to Dubai, and another 2 hour flight on Azerbaijan Airlines to the oil-rich capital of the former Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
I say soon because its a bitch getting a visa to the former socialist republic.
Admittedly, if not a little shamefacedly, I imagine Baku to be populated by gun-toting, vodka-wielding, bearded men (and women!) who are rough, very rough. The ones I have met briefly think nothing of downing two bottles of wine during a lunch meeting. I've also heard that they drink vodka like its water. It doesn't help that one of the more alarming sentence which jumps out of the CIA World Fact Book on Azerbaijan is that "corruption is ubiquitous". I was nervous at the thought of going and had planned to lay low and don a burqa.
But then the husband made me see the light (read: Apr/May 2006 DestinAsia - Finding the Beat in Baku). The article on jazz and the capital city is filled with smoky grainy black & white photographs of Baku, its people and places, architectural wonders and Jazz bars included. Cuban cigars and caviar are in abundant! Say hello to the Caspian Sea! Suddenly work in Baku doesn't seem so bleak and I should be grateful at the chance to visit and dispel my as-yet-unrealised view of Azerbaijan.
I will nevertheless, leave my contact details with my nearest and dearest just in case of emergency evacuation and/or the U.N. needs to be informed. Godspeed to me.
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