The Dialogue Groups presents: Armenia & Azerbaijan, part 1!

The ISFiT 2013 Dialogue Groups travelled to Armenia and Azerbaijan last October, and they have written about their journey. This story will come in three parts. Part two will be published on Wednesday the 5th of December, and part three on Friday the 7th of December.

Part 1

Monday 23.10.12

I came to Baku after a long trip from Norway through Moscow, and to be honest, I didn’t get much sleep. It didn’t matter; I was there and ready to start the interviews. I met up with my friends at the hotel, had a quick shower, and off we went.

Even in front of Khazar University

We had arranged for a room at a downtown university and after some well spent time finding the centre of the city (none of the taxi drivers we met during the trip knew English or how to read a map), we were finally there, at Khazar University. We met with the Dean, and he took us quickly to the room we were to use for the interviews. There must have been some kind of misconception—we were going to interview a lot of people, but not all at the same time.

The room where the interviews were held

The interviews went really well; we were very impressed by the students and our expectations for the seminar at Røros grew considerably. On our way home, after the interviews, we decided to take our chances with the metro. This old colossus from the Soviet era lies beneath all the big and modern buildings of Baku. The fact that it probably took us three times longer to get back—partly due to our own incompetence for not bringing a map – didn’t matter that much when we had so much to look at.

The trip back to the hotel had made us hungry and after a short rest it was time to try some Azeri food. A quick look in the Lonely Planet guide directed us to a cosy and cheap restaurant in the city centre.

Even gazing at the menu

As experts in drinking beer, we must say that the local one was very tasty!

I really don't remember the name of the dish I had, but it was delicious.

Before bedtime, we had tea, dried fruits, nuts, and a shisha at a traditional teahouse in the beautiful old city.

Ane in front of one of the many fountains in Baku.

Although we walked through many dark alleys, we never felt unsafe in this city.

The wall surrounding the old city.

Shisha after the tea.

Tuesday 23.10.12

Even and I got up early to do the rest of the interviews while Ane went out for some meetings. We didn’t have that many interviews planned so in our break we sat down at the university café and had a coffee with some local students. We had a great time and suddenly our break was up—it is amazing how quickly two hours can pass. We finished the interviews, handed over some chocolate to the Dean and took off to ISR Plaza where we were going to have a meeting with the Consul of the Norwegian Embassy. Luckily there was time for a quick döner on the way.

The meeting was excellent and gave us a lot of new information and contact with people who fight for human rights in Azerbaijan. The intern at the embassy, Hedvig, was especially helpful.  After the meeting, we dashed back to the hotel repeating the same routine from the day before, a quick rest and then out to eat. After dinner we met up with Hedvig and her friends at a bar in the city centre. We wished we had met her friends before because they gave us some valuable insight and information. They were from Azerbaijan, Canada, Latvia, Poland and Turkmenistan, and were great people to hang out with. By the way, did you know that apart from being the second most closed country in the world after North Korea, Turkmenistan has its own carpet minister?

Stay tuned for part 2 of the journey, which will be published on Wednesday the 5th of December!