Flying Carpet Ride
Azerbaijan is enjoying a day off this Monday, as the country celebrates Heydar Aliyev's 85th brithday. The actual day and associated celebrations were yesterday but offices are closed today to mark the occasion.
This unexpected day off was kind of nice as this was my first real weekend in Baku and I kind of craved some extra time to walk around the city and do some errands. The weekend started with an efficient shopping trip with one of my co-workers to buy some basics for the apartment. In a more severe way than I expected, I have been extremely price-conscious since getting here, not only because I am a poor graduate student but due to the inflation and awful exchange rate one gets in Azerbaijan. Sadly the US dollar only gets you about .81 Manat, compared to 1.25 Manat for the Euro. Strolling through the supermarket brought me face-to-face with further proof of these strains. As perhaps shouldn't be a surprise given grain prices worldwide, I quickly found that branded cereal like Frosted Flakes cost nearly triple what they would at home. It's a sad reflection on my life when cereal becomes a luxury good.
Once home, feeling somewhat battered (and dusty) from the increasing winds throughout the day (I have already mentioned the gusty winds that howl incessently off the Caspian), I was a bit startled when a mid-sized Persian rug came flying through the air, hitting my balcony window before landing on the balcony floor. At first it seemed like a big bird had committed suicide using my window as the poison pill but this was disproved when I went out to find the rug and pieced together the likelihood that it had fallen from the clothes-line in the apartment above me. So this turned out to be a nice excuse to visit my upstairs neighbor, who invited me for a quick tea to thank me for rescuing the rug.
It's been great to have some free time to read, and while the first two books of the summer were related to current affairs (The End of Food and The Audacity of Hope), I have become engrossed in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which so far has been amazing. It has also served as quite an attraction to locals, and four kids now have come up to me at Internet cafes or outside and commented on the book, showing their approval at my reading this Russian classic.
This unexpected day off was kind of nice as this was my first real weekend in Baku and I kind of craved some extra time to walk around the city and do some errands. The weekend started with an efficient shopping trip with one of my co-workers to buy some basics for the apartment. In a more severe way than I expected, I have been extremely price-conscious since getting here, not only because I am a poor graduate student but due to the inflation and awful exchange rate one gets in Azerbaijan. Sadly the US dollar only gets you about .81 Manat, compared to 1.25 Manat for the Euro. Strolling through the supermarket brought me face-to-face with further proof of these strains. As perhaps shouldn't be a surprise given grain prices worldwide, I quickly found that branded cereal like Frosted Flakes cost nearly triple what they would at home. It's a sad reflection on my life when cereal becomes a luxury good.
Once home, feeling somewhat battered (and dusty) from the increasing winds throughout the day (I have already mentioned the gusty winds that howl incessently off the Caspian), I was a bit startled when a mid-sized Persian rug came flying through the air, hitting my balcony window before landing on the balcony floor. At first it seemed like a big bird had committed suicide using my window as the poison pill but this was disproved when I went out to find the rug and pieced together the likelihood that it had fallen from the clothes-line in the apartment above me. So this turned out to be a nice excuse to visit my upstairs neighbor, who invited me for a quick tea to thank me for rescuing the rug.
It's been great to have some free time to read, and while the first two books of the summer were related to current affairs (The End of Food and The Audacity of Hope), I have become engrossed in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which so far has been amazing. It has also served as quite an attraction to locals, and four kids now have come up to me at Internet cafes or outside and commented on the book, showing their approval at my reading this Russian classic.
posted by Pearl of Dubai at 2:04 PM
1 Comments:
I love reading your blog, it is so well written and a fun trip while i am sitting at my office desk in dc :)
glad your enjoying anna karenina- it's possibly the best summer reading choice (in part due to length and in part because i kept going back to read parts over and over again)
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