The Main Ingredient for Traveling in Azerbaijan...Patience!

So this past week I decided to visit some friends for the holiday (New Year’s is the holiday that people have time off work for here; I worked on December 30th and then didn’t have to be back until January 5th). Here is not so much of an account of what I did (it was nice and relaxing, but not super eventful) but how traveling works in Azerbaijan.

So Wednesday morning I woke up to snow. I had planned to meet Chris and Katie in Ganja around 12pm and Ganja is about two hours west of me. But it was cold and I didn’t get as early of a start as I would have liked, so I left my house about 9:45am. I took a taxi to the bus station because it’s on the very outskirts of town and it would have taken a good 40 – 45 minutes to walk to, especially with the new snow. So after arriving at the bus station it was a matter of waiting for a bus to come by that’s going west. There was a cashier open who I asked when a bus would arrive, but he didn’t know. There aren’t really schedules. So after an hour and a half of waiting (inside, thankfully) a marshrutka came through that was going to a town west of Ganja. That was okay because they make stops along the way so I hopped on. On the positive side, I discovered that I won’t have to wait much if I’m going east (Baku) because MANY busses came through headed in that direction. It took just under two hours to arrive in Ganja. I met up with Chris, Katie and a couple others and we spent the afternoon in Ganja but then we picked up another marshrutka to take us to Shemkir, which is where they live. From the bus stop we grabbed a taxi to take us directly to their house. Unlike the big cities (Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja) the smaller ones (Shemkir, Ucar) don’t have marshrutka routes, so it’s either walk or take a taxi, and after a long day it’s definitely worth it (usually only about 1 manat for an in-town destination).

My initial plan was to leave Thursday afternoon between 2 – 3pm, which I thought would be plenty of time to get back home at a reasonable time (before dark). So on Thursday Chris and Katie took me to the bus station to catch a bus. Kind of like going west, it was just a matter of finding one that was going at least as far east as I wanted to go – I wasn’t going to find one going directly to Ucar. So there were lots of busses going to Ganja, every 10 – 15 minutes or so, but I needed to go further east than Ganja. There was one marshrutka headed to Baku but I was told it was full (more people then got on…grrr). So we asked around and a man who seemed to know what he was talking about said the next bus for Baku would be coming in 10 minutes. Okay, not a bad wait, we thought. 45 minutes later we were still there. Did I mention that Shemkir’s bus station is not a building? It’s just a location on the side of the road where all the busses know to come. Brrr. So at this point I was contemplating just taking a bus to Ganja, but I didn’t know where to pick up the Baku busses once I got there or how often they left. Looking back, I probably should have just gone to Ganja right away, but I can’t change that. So the last straw was when two big busses (charter bus size) headed to Baku passed the bus stop without even stopping. At that point we’d been waiting in the cold for almost an hour and a half and it would have been kind of late to arrive back home. So I headed back to Chris and Katie’s to stay another night.

Friday morning I got up at a decent time and left Chris and Katie’s at about 9:45am. After a couple tries I got a taxi for a reasonable rate (there’s snow, so they wanted to charge more) and headed back to the bus station. Pulling up to the bus station I saw a bus waiting there…would I be that lucky? Was it going where I needed to go? Yes! So I got on the Baku bus, made sure they knew where I wanted to get off, and sat down to wait for departure. We left after a short wait and made our way east. During this time I got to answer the woman sitting next to me as to where I was going, why, do I have family, am I married (no, why not?), etc. It’s good to carry on a conversation in Azerbaijani but it can be taxing, especially when they are asking questions that you would never ask a complete stranger in America. So the windows of the bus were not the cleanest and it was very foggy out, so it was hard to tell how far along we were. After a couple hours I started to ask the woman next to me what town it was whenever we made a stop because I didn’t want to miss my stop and have to figure out how to get back to Ucar from wherever I ended up. So the attendant (I’m not sure what to call him – not the driver, but there’s someone who collects money and seats people, etc.) walked by me to collect money from a couple people who had just boarded and I caught his attention. He said Ucar was soon and to follow him to the front of the bus. So I grabbed my stuff and ended up in the front row, I’m assuming so the stop would be as short as possible. About 5 minutes later we pulled into the Ucar bus station and I was back to familiar territory. I got a taxi home from there and that was the end of my trip. Time to warm up in front of the stove!