Christmas and New Year's in Azerbaijan

I can't believe this Christmas season is almost over! Although I don't like the cold and rainy weather that comes with this season, I love the Christmas spirit that is in the air, the decorations and the many delicious Christmas foods.
We had a wonderful christmassy December this year. I decorated our apartment the weekend after Thanksgiving, we went to a Christmas bazaar in town, attended a choir Christmas concert, listened to lots of Christmas music, made some German gingerbread, caramels, Kinderpunsch, played Christmas music throughout the month, went to our embassy's Christmas activity, and Anthon designed a recycled Christmas tree for work.
They even made a video of the process:
https://www.facebook.com/baku.usembassy/videos/1446328128718427/

We also hosted Christmas movie nights every Saturday before Christmas. It was fun to watch some of the Christmas classics again like Elf, Home Alone, and the Muppets' Christmas Carol.
My mother arrived in Baku on the 23rd, and on Christmas Eve, we had a bunch of people over to sing Christmas carols with us. It was so lovely and made Christmas Eve very special.

A Christmas bazaar - it was sooo crowded!

Christmas activity at the Ambassador's residence. They had little work stations set up for the kids where they could decorate sugar cookies, decorate hot chocolate mix bags, write a letter to Santa and take a picture with him. William was not too happy to meet him :-)

Homemade caramels - yum!

Preparing our home for Christmas Eve

When I first saw Christmas decorations being put up in malls and stores in Baku, I was a little bit confused. I knew that Azerbaijan was about 97% Muslim, but since this country is a post-Soviet country, I thought that Azerbaijanis might actually celebrate Christmas. So, I decided to ask a couple of locals about the holidays.

Christmas decorations throughout the city

From what I understand, Christmas is only celebrated by a few people, mainly the Expats that live here, and small groups of Catholics and Protestants. Here, Azerbaijanis' "Christmas" is the New Year's celebration.
What are considered typical Christmas decorations in many Christian countries around the world, are New Year's decorations in Azerbaijan, and therefore, Christmas trees are called New Year's trees, which are taken down about two weeks after New Year's.
Families celebrate New Year's on the night of December 31st and most people get January 1st and 2nd off. That's when families gather together, cook traditional foods and exchange presents. I was told that there are not specific New Year's foods, but common foods on New Year's are dolma, plov, fried chicken, cookies and dried fruits. Like in many other countries, people put presents underneath the Christmas/New Year's tree and parents tell their kids that Santa Clause brought them.
At midnight, people let their fireworks go off. Every year, thousands of Bakunians go to Baku's boulevard along the Caspian Sea to watch a firework show that the city puts up.

A New Year's market in the main downtown area

             

Lots of booths that sell all kinds of different foods and drinks, New Year's decoration, toys and other random things

I talked about Christmas/New Year's with an Azeri lady who is about 60 years old, and she told me that these holidays used to be a little different. Until about the 1980s, neighbors worked together a lot, their wooden doors were always open and people could come in whenever they needed something or when they just wanted to chat. Neighbors fed each others' children, shared leftover food, and watched each others' children whenever needed.

When she was young and her parents were still alive, they used to celebrate Christmas on the 25th and New Year's on the 31st, instead of only celebrating on the 31st. Families used to gather together with their neighbors and ate, sang and prayed together. So, it was more the neighbors that people celebrated with than with the extended family.
But this was more the case when there were more interracial couples, more Russians, and Armenians in the country. Since then, the number of non-Azeris has decreased and with that, the Christian Christmas on the 25th has slowly disappeared, and people have, in general, become more private just like in many other countries.
The lady that I interviewed also told me that people used to eat turkey on Christmas day, but now it's too expensive and people choose to eat chicken instead, or prepare something with beef or lamb. A popular side dish was salad.
And kids liked to make necklaces out of ring cookies called Sushki.

So yeah, it was very interesting learning more about Azeri "Christmas".
Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and we're looking forward to experiencing our first New Year's celebration in Azerbaijan. We might go downtown to watch the fireworks, or just be lazy and stay at home. We'll see.


Update 01/02/2017:

We made it to 2017! Pooh!
After a very lovely New Year's Eve dinner with friends, my mom who is visiting us for 2 weeks, and I went to Baku's Boulevard to see the fireworks.
We tried to get there by taxi, but about half way there, the traffic was so bad that we decided to hop out and walk. The downtown area was very crowded with tons of people walking towards the Boulevard. My mom said several times that it looked like a mass migration.
The fireworks were pretty good and it was fun to watch everybody celebrate into the new year.

The Flame Towers were lit up in Azerbaijan's flag's colors 

My mom, very relieved that 2016 is over :-)

Other countries, other customs

We've been here in Baku for about three months now. We are very happy here and love the city and its people so far.
Being exposed to a new culture is always exciting, interesting but also funny at times.
Here are some things we have noticed so far that are a little bit different from what we've expected before coming here, or different from what we have experienced in Germany or in the US.
I don't mean to say anything negative about this beautiful culture. These things just stood out to us.
I'm leaving it to you to decide if they are positive or negative... or simply interesting ;-)



1. Floors are sacred




Whether you are going to the kids' indoor playground or to the dentist, you can find these baskets with plastic covers for your shoes at many places.
Azerbaijanis seem to be very concerned about not touching the floors with your street shoes.
I've only known no-shoe-policies at kids' indoor playground areas, but I had never seen these shoe covers for places like that. And I have never had to put these on when going to the dentist.

Besides my theory of floors being sacred, it might just be that Azerbaijanis are very clean people. When we first walked around the city, we were surprised at how clean the city is.

The other night, Anthon and I went to a popular burger place in town where they hand out these plastic gloves to their guests to not get their hands too messy while eating their burgers.

2. Azerbaijanis' love for children

People are sooooo nice to children here. At the restaurant, the waiters keep coming to entertain William and to keep him happy. When we're walking around downtown and let William walk around, most of the time some woman or young lady will come and want to hold and kiss him.
We experienced that a little bit in Saudi, where women would come to us and ask us if they could hold our blonde, blue-eyed William for a little bit. They then sometimes took a selfie with him and gave him a kiss on the cheek, which supposedly brings luck. But it was by far not as extreme as it is here.
William seems to really enjoy getting so much attention, though :-)

3. The unfortunate unavailability of hot chocolate

We don't drink coffee, so we like to get a hot chocolate sometimes. We have asked so many restaurants for a hot chocolate, including the lounge at the Four Seasons hotel, but nobody seems to have hot chocolate, even if it's on their menu.

While we were walking around downtown, we found a "Choco Cafe". I got super excited and thought that we had found the Azerbaijani version of Max Brenner's. Okay, maybe not Max Brenner's quality, but at least a chocolate restaurant that offered hot chocolate and other fun chocolate dishes. Turns out, they didn't have any hot chocolate and the most chocolatey dish they had was this fruit and ice-cream filled crepe with chocolate sauce on top. I should cut some slack though. Some of the ice-cream was chocolate. It didn't really taste much like chocolate, but it was brown, so I'm assuming it was chocolate ice-cream.

The other day, we stumbled upon a little Christmas market in the downtown area. There were about 4 stands that had "hot chocolate" on their menu, but none of them was able to make one for us. Booh!
But homemade hot chocolate is so much better anyway, so I guess we'll just keep making our own, very chocolatey version at home :-)

Update 1/1/2017: I have finally found a restaurant that serves excellent hot chocolate!!! Today, we went to a Russian restaurant called Mari Vanna and they had dark hot chocolate with spices as well as white hot chocolate with and hint of orange. Both were very delicious. I hate it when restaurants charge me +$4 for mediocre hot chocolate made with chocolate powder and hot water. That's the worst!
But at Mari Vanna, you can tell that they make their hot chocolates with hot milk and real chocolate. It's thick, creamy, rich and full of flavor - delicious!


4. "Milkshakes"

When you are ordering a "milkshake" off a menu, don't expect a super creamy, cold milkshake like the shakes from McDonald's or the Shake Shack.
Milkshakes here are basically room temperature banana milk, strawberry milk or whatever-fruit-you-want-milk.
I looooove shakes. They are one of my favorite desserts, so I was bummed the first couple of times that I "just" got banana milk, which I make at home almost every morning.

5. Hardcore traditional salads

No explanation needed. And apparently no dressing either. Just dill and parsley branches, garnished with a little piece of tomato and cucumber. Nope, we just could not finish this one.

6. Christmas decorations 

About 97% of Azerbaijanis are Muslim, so we were a little surprised to find out that Azerbaijanis celebrate Christmas, or at least have tons of Christmas decoration everywhere.
I'm not quite sure yet how exactly it is celebrated here, but I'm in the middle of trying to find it out and will write a separate post about it ;-)

A Christmas bazaar that we went to a couple of weeks ago

Christmas booths in the main downtown area

    

7. Heydar Aliyev cult of personality

We have never lived in a current or former Communist country, so the cult of personality is a new thing to us. We had heard and read about it in the media before many times, but we've never seen it in our every day life. 

Heydar Aliyev had served the country for several decades in the Communist Party and all kinds of political positions, and later became Azerbaijan's president. After his death in 2003, he was succeeded by his son, Ilham Aliyev, who is the current president. 

When you drive around Baku, it is very likely that you will pass at least a portrait of him or some place or building that is named after him. Baku's international airport is named after him, there is a concert hall, called the Heydar Aliyev Palace, then there is the new Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, a Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex, a Heydar Aliyev avenue, a Heydar Aliev park with a very typical soviet looking statue of him, and several more buildings and portraits Heydar throughout the city.

                                        

                             

On our trip outside of Baku, we noticed that this cult is not limited to Baku alone. Every town we passed through had an important street named after him. We also saw several statues and town halls named after him. 

So yeah, just very interesting to us, who have never lived in a country that honors their former leader so much. 

Asking around locals, I got the impression that most people find it a little excessive. So, I wonder who the people are that were in charge of naming all these places, and why they feel like everything has to be named after him. Hopefully, I will find out at some point.

8. Women cleaning the streets

No matter what country we have lived in or have traveled to, I don't think we have ever seen so many old women sweeping the streets. In other countries, it's usually men that do this work. 

Most of the street sweepers look similar to the lady in this picture. Wearing a skirt, a jacket that shows that they are employed by the city, a head covering, and a traditional broom made out of twigs in their hand. 

9. Very well dressed people

We were also surprised to see how nicely people dress here. Really, most people look very neatly dressed and styled. I've also never been to a place where so many women wear skirts or dresses than they do here. And high heels. Lots of them, even at the children's indoor playground. They would rather walk around in them with plastic covers on, than walk around in socks :-)

This mom was not even wearing shoe covers, let's judge her! 

There are also a lot fewer head scarves than we expected. I heard from several locals that the head scarves and full niqab with black abaya have only recently become more in the city. But those, as we were told, are mostly tourists visiting from the Middle East for recreation or medical tourism.

More about Azerbaijan's government trying to increase medical tourism in this article: http://www.azernews.az/business/91430.html


The little OCD inside of me would love to end with a No. 10, but I can't think of one more right now. I'm sure this list is going to grow, though, as we learn more about this country. So, keep your eyes peeled for another article in the future ;-)

Brace yourself!

For about 15 years, I've been wanting to get braces. When I was a kid, I was pretty jealous that both my sisters got braces and I did not. Back then in Germany, your teeth had to be pretty crocked in order for the insurance to pay for them, so I guess mine were not crooked enough for German standards.
I've been looking into getting braces for probably 6 years now. I got several quotes from orthodontists in the US and they all told me that it would be around $5000-6000. And who knows what other costs were not included in that price.
It might be worth it to some people, but I don't have severely crooked teeth and I didn't find that it was worth the money for how little crooked they are.

In Jeddah, it would have cost about $2000-3000, but with William joining our family, I kind of forgot about that idea... the first year with William was pretty much just trying to survive somehow :-)
So, we decided to maybe get my braces at our next post if prices aren't too outrageous.

As soon as we got to Baku, we had a consultation with an orthodontist that many expats as well as the embassy's doctor had recommended to us. His price quote for braces sounded very pleasing to our ears: 1925 AZN, which is $1100. Plus, we found out that our insurance covers 50% of that. So, heck yeah, put on those braces, Dr Anar!
Of course, it made me a little nervous to get it done in a country other than the US and in addition, to get the braces by an orthodontist who himself has pretty crooked teeth. But my treatment should be pretty standard and simple.

So, I finally fulfilled my dream and got ceramic braces about 1.5 months ago, and this is what it looks like:

The procedure was painless, as expected. But I have to admit that I was a little bit surprised at how huge these brackets are and how rough they feel in the mouth. I expected them to be much thinner and smoother. I can definitely relate to this now:

The day I got them, Anthon kept asking me all day if I was excited to finally have braces. Well... not really!
It's not the braces that I'm excited about, it is the result after year when I get them out again that I'm excited about.
After the first couple of days, I found them so awful that I kind of regretted getting them, but I kept (and still keep) telling myself that it will be all worth it in the end... hopefully :-)

After having them for about 7 weeks, I can testify that they really suck! I feel so bad for children and especially teenagers that have them. They definitely make me feel even more self-conscious, even though I usually don't see as many people and friends every day as children do.
Even after 1.5 months, I notice them every time I laugh because they feel so big in my mouth, which is quite irritating.

I was also surprised at our difficult it is to smile and talk normally. Since the brackets are just as thick as your teeth, it is actually not that easy to smile. I deleted so many pictures during the first couple of weeks because my smiles just looked awful.
I also had to get used to hearing myself speak with braces. There is more of a shh sound to hear now and it was super irritating at the beginning and sometimes still is. I don't know if I'm getting used to the awful sound or if I'm speaking more clearly with them now.

When we first got together with friends, I remember them often mentioning that you can hardly see them. But then when I look at pictures or videos of myself, I'm sure that people are just being nice :-)

Definitely visible

Having braces also makes flossing more complicated. I'm a very eager flosser and I've already had to go back 2x because a bracket or the wire became loose due to flossing. I have to go back every two weeks for tightening, so every extra trip is a little bit annoying.

I also don't like how it makes my teeth look more yellowish, as you can see in some pictures. I think it's because the ceramic brackets and the colorless elastic ties tend to get discolored quickly and in certain lighting, the discoloration is more visible.

And, as everybody of you former braces wearers knows, eating most foods becomes more difficult.  I think I lost a couple of pounds during the first 3 weeks because of that (which is actually one of the few advantages right now). Apples, carrots, meat, even cucumbers and bread and some pastries- everything hurts or feels uncomfortable to eat, even after 7 weeks :-/

And nuts!!!! Candied almonds!!! I'm going to miss eating them this Christmas season.

So yeah, after 7 weeks, it's still a love-hate relationship. I'm glad that I finally got them and that for a very great price, but it is hard when you're as self-conscious as I am. At the same time, I'm of course super excited to see the results in a year or so. I might have the upper ones for only 4-6 months, so that will makes things only half as awful :-)

                              But until then: