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 ;-)