Our first impressions of Baku

Salam, everybody!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we moved on to our new post about two months ago.
So far, we are really loving it here!
Azerbaijan is a country that most people we talk to have never heard about. It has just in recent years become a little bit more known to people because of the Eurovision Song Contest that Baku hosted in 2012, the first European Olympic Games and a Formula 1 race that both took place in Baku last year. I hope Azerbaijan is going to host more international events and attract more tourists in the years to come. Anthon and I have traveled quite a bit in the past few years and agree that Baku is one of the most beautiful cities we have been to and is therefore definitely worth a trip.

Azerbaijan is very fascinating to me. About 98% of Azerbaijanis are Muslim and you can definitely see some Middle Eastern influence in the buildings here, but then Baku also feels a lot like a rich Eastern European city like Budapest or Prague. You can feel and see that Azerbaijan has been part of the Soviet Union for about 70 years. Especially the political buildings and statues remind me of the former Soviet Union, but then you look around and see a mosque or a building with typical middle Eastern art patterns. Coming from Saudi, this mix is just very interesting to see.

Middle Eastern patterns on this fire tower

But then a very European looking Symphony hall

Not sure what this building is, but if you take a closer look, you can see some typical Middle Eastern arches and other adornments

Polish Embassy - the windows reminded me of Jeddah's famous Roshan windows that looked very similar

The Muslims here are mostly very liberal, eat pork (although it is not offered much in restaurants), have never been to a mosque in their life, dress "normal" and not especially conservatively, and people even celebrate Christmas. I've already seen first Christmas decorations at the stores this week and we are looking forward to experiencing our first cultural Christmas here soon.

The city is very clean, there are many old, but well maintained as well as new, modern and slick looking high rises.

Very modern looking Cultural Center

The famous Flame Towers that are lit with LED lamps

View over the city

The old downtown area is very nice to walk around, and Baku is full of little parks with fountains and beautiful trees. There is also a very nice broad 3.75km long boardwalk along the Caspian Sea with cafes, carousels, malls, museums, a ferris wheel, a bike park, and more fountains and trees.
We also really like walking around in the main downtown area that reminds us of German pedestrian precincts.

Downtown area at night

There is also an old, walled downtown area with cobble streets, called Icheri Sheher that is really nice to walk through. It dates back to at least the 12th century and has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 2000. There are several little tourist souvenir shops, a nice art gallery, small restaurants and huts where old Russian looking ladies make tendir, the traditional Azeri bread baked in a clay oven. The salespeople are surprisingly unobtrusive, which makes it very pleasant to walk and look around.

The Maiden Tower, the symbol of Baku, in the old downtown area

Walls that surround the old downtown 

I love the mix between old and new

We were put in an apartment in a high-rise about 3km away from the old downtown area (we have only little say in where we get to live). The apartment is quite spacious, but nothing luxurious and I was, quite honestly, a little shocked when we first entered our new home. I made some changes, moved furniture around, added personal touches and we now really like it and feel comfortable here.

Although I like that our apartment feels a lot more private than our home on our last compound did, I feel like it is more difficult to meet new people. It was super easy to make friends on our last compound, but I'm having a hard time meeting new people here. I guess I'm meeting new people every once in a while, but we haven't met many people that we really click with. I'm sure we will find good friends eventually, but it just takes a little bit more time than it did in Jeddah, I think.
I go to a kids' club a couple of times a week with William where he can run around and play with all kinds of toys. Before signing up, we were told that most US embassy moms sign up their kids there, so I thought that it would be a great way to connect with other mothers. I've been there so many times now and I have only met 1 other Western lady that speaks English. I have yet to meet somebody from the embassy there.
I think the problem is that pretty much all expats have nannies that go there with the children, so the mothers never really go to the club. Oh well.... at least William likes it there, right? :-)
And at least they have free wi-fi for me.

William in his toy heaven :-)

Besides the little connection problem, we are really enjoying our new city life. It makes me feel like I really live here in Baku, whereas I felt like I was living in a small, Western bubble on our compound in Jeddah.
From here, we can just hop in a cab or Uber taxi and go anywhere for really cheap. Taking an Uber taxi to the downtown area costs about $1.17 - so cheap!
We bought a nice car for a great deal before coming here, but taking an Uber taxi is sometimes more convenient.

Talking about cheap, eating out is fairly affordable here, too. For one of our date nights, we went to the Four Seasons hotel, sat down in their lounge, ordered two mocktails, a cheese platter that was pretty big, and then 4 little cake pieces. I think we paid around $24 for everything. Remember, this was at the Four Seasons, the nicest hotel in town.
Going to the movies is super cheap, too. A ticket costs $2.33 per person. So, we go together and watch an English movie, buy two popcorn cups, two drinks and only pay around $8 - that's pretty awesome!
The typical local street food, a doner (different from the döner that you get in Germany) and an ayran drink only cost 1.5 Azeri Manat, which is only $0.87.

Salads might be cheap here, but they are a little bit too hardcore for us with the whole dill and parsley branches and no dressing :-)

Room service at a hotel. We were super hungry and ordered way too much, but we got all this for $21.

Traditional Azerbaijani restaurant

We have also found a great babysitter that we are very, very happy with. She is a local, but speaks English very well. She has been very helpful with her knowledge about the city and where to get things.
As a specialist, Anthon unfortunately rarely gets any language training, but we are surviving here with English.... and our hands and feet. It's definitely a little bit more difficult than it was in Jeddah though, where most people spoke English.



So yeah, generally the transition has been pretty smooth. Every time we drive or walk around the city, we tell each other that we are so happy to be here. It is really a nice place and we hope to convince our families and friends to come and visit us while we are here ;-) Book your tickets!

Bye, Bye Jeddah!

We moved to Baku, Azerbaijan about 2 months ago and I feel bad that we never really posted much about our 2 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia!
Life is busy and since having William, it seems even more difficult to sit down and write a post.
But I didn't want to start blogging about Baku without having finished our old chapter.

During our home leave in the US this summer, we had a lot of time to ponder about our past 2 years.
In general, we are happy to move on. Towards the end of our time in Saudi Arabia, we were kind of done with this place. I don't know if it had actually much to do with Jeddah as a place, or if we were just really excited to move on to a new chapter in life and live in a new, much nicer city. Probably a little bit of both.
Some expats really, really like their life in Jeddah, but for us and many other expats, it was not always that easy to deal with the traditions, the strict rules and limitations, the weather, and other inconveniences.

To review our time there, I would like to share some things that we think we are going to miss and some things that we are gladly leaving behind.


1. Our compound
Although I'm not a huge fan of living on a compound (I prefer more privacy and anonymity - so German!), there are definitely some advantages to living on a compound.
Besides being allowed to behave like Westerners (wear "revealing" clothing without an abaya on top, PDA, convenience store not closed during prayer times), you never really feel alone. There was always somebody in the neighborhood to hang out with at home, at the playground or at the pool. The compound also regularly hosted events like a Halloween party, or a Welcome Back party after summer break.

At the compound's Halloween Party last year 

We're also going to miss being able to host big parties on our compound.
We hosted a big Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's and William's 1st birthday party with about 25-30 people, and we absolutely loved it. On our compound, we were able to request tables, chairs and a fridge for keeping drinks cold for free. That made hosting bigger parties pretty easy. I will miss organizing these events. I find much joy in putting together the guest list, thinking about the decoration, menu, music, and activities.

Last year's Christmas Party that we hosted for our friends and colleagues  

We now live in an apartment in Baku, Azerbaijan, which means no more bigger parties for us. We will still host parties, but definitely with a much smaller group.

Valentine's Day Party

William's 1st Birthday Party

We will also miss the pools. One was only about 10 meters away from our backyard and there were three more pools on the compound. We never really used them as much as we thought we would (so typical!), but it was still nice to look outside while doing the dishes and looking at the nice blue pool and the green plants and palm trees surrounding it.

The main pool on the compound

2. The people
When I asked people, who left before us, what they were going to miss the most about Jeddah, the most popular answer was "the people", and we totally agree.
It was very easy to make friends on the compound and at the consulate. There were always some bbqs, casual pool parties and other events going on.
Having William with us definitely complicates things and makes it difficult to get out together in the evening. But our friends have been so flexible and understanding. We feel like we really lucked out with our friends and neighbors.

Mike and Krista, our friends who were even gutsy enough to go on a Germany trip with us

Our awesome Korean neighbors - the best neighbors we could have ever asked for

                             

More friends, food and fun

3. Mocktails
Since alcohol is forbidden in the Kingdom, many restaurants offer a wide range of mocktails. As a member of the LDS church, that's pretty convenient. I never have to double check with waiters to get me the virgin version of drinks.

4. Availibility of groceries and foreign restaurants
Since there is a very large expat community in Saudi Arabia from Western countries, Africa and Asia, the grocery stores offer a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, herbs, American products, Asian, Indian and of course Middle Eastern ingredients. I like to cook internationally, so this was pretty awesome to have available. There was also a decent fish market right next to the Red Sea where we sometimes bought some delicious fresh sea food.

Saudis love American food, so we were lucky to have many American chains like the Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack, P.F. Chang's, Papa John's, Texas Roadhouse and many more.
We felt especially lucky to have one cheaper and one more upscale Korean restaurant in town. We looooove Korean food and went there quite often.

5. English
Again because of the large expat community, most people can speak English, which made life there a lot easier. Street signs are oftentimes in both English in Arabic, the same with menus at restaurants and product labels at grocery stores.
Here in Baku, we have to guess a lot more about what we are buying since most product labels are in either Russian or Azerbaijani, which we both don't speak.



3 Things we're not going to miss:

1. Lack of entertainment
We didn't feel it too much during the 1st year of being there, but after that we kind of got bored of seeing the sames things. The "highlights" of Jeddah are the old downtown area "Al Balad", which was about 30-40 minutes away from where we lived. Al Balad consists of many old, not too well maintained buildings, some more interesting to look at than others, some old city gates, and many stores with cheaply made products. There are some cool looking spice stores and some gold and silver jewelry shops, but we were never really interested in buying anything there. We mainly went to the downtown area to buy larger quantities of nuts.

Many old buildings that are falling apart

A typical spice shop

The other "highlight" in Jeddah is the "Corniche", a boardwalk that runs along the Red Sea. Before coming to Jeddah, I imagined Anthon and me walking along the beach, putting our feet in the water, playing a little bit with the waves and collecting some seashells, kind of like you do in California. But sadly, the Corniche is not that beautiful. There is not really a beach where you can walk along the water, but instead there are huge rocks that were put there to protect the shore, so you are several meters away from the water. We have something similar here in Baku now, but it is done sooooo much nicer with a little park along the shore, very nice paths to walk, various plants and trees, cafes,....

So after walking along the Corniche for several times, I had no desire to go there anymore. Especially because I, like all other women, had to wear an abaya, a long dark dress that you wear on top of your clothing. Since Jeddah is right at the Red Sea, it was very humid and hot most of the time and wearing an abaya on top of your clothes never made walking around outside sound like a great idea (unless it was December, January or February).
So then the next "entertainment" was going to malls, of which I got tired very quickly, too. I never bought anything there, except my graduation dress, but besides that the prices were never that great.
We mainly went there to get some food at the food court.
So yeah, entertainment options were kind of limited there, but luckily we had some good friends and neighbors that kept us entertained :-)
So, since there is not too much to do there, people eat out a lot with friends.

2. Prayer times
Definitely not gonna miss those! In Islam, you are supposed to pray 5x a day. Since Saudi Arabia is a very strict Muslim country, all stores must close during the prayers. Although the prayers only take about 10 minutes, stores usually close for about 30-45 minutes. So we always had to kind of schedule trips, grocery shopping, and date nights around those times.
It was especially difficult when William was a baby and took naps throughout the day and had to be nursed every couple of hours. Another problem was that we weren't allowed to take normal taxis and had to call the embassy's drivers preferably at least 3+ hours before your trip. I just didn't like not being able to be spontaneous and leave the house whenever I wanted and whenever I could with William.
Some stores didn't even open until the evening, so you never really knew if all the effort it took to get out would be even worth it.

3. Bad Internet
Ugh... the internet there was so slow! We tried several internet providers, paid quite a bit, but they all sucked. We could never really skype or factetime with family.



Our highlight during the 2 years was probably our trip to Mada-in-Saleh, which is about 7 hours away from Jeddah. The archaeological site is also called "Saudi Arabia's Petra" because it was built by the Nabateans who also built Petra in Jordan.
Since there was not too much to do in and outside of Jeddah, it felt really refreshing to see something totally different. I don't think we would have gone there by ourselves with our very limited Arabic knowledge, but luckily we had great friends who invited us to go with them.

I couldn't decide on one picture - it was so beautiful and interesting there that I took sooo many pictures. 

I think I was about 22 weeks pregnant with William then

Elefant Rock near Mada'in Saleh and Al-Ula

Archeological remnants of a very old city called Al-'Ula

                                                 




Some other highlights were having family and friends in town 💓

Last Christmas, Anthon's parents visited us for a week

Friends in town - the Kellys

My mom and sister came to visit us, too

We're excited to tell everybody more about our new post. It's a place that people usually don't know much about, but it's pretty nice here, so we hope we can convince more people to come and visit us :-)

Saying our goodbyes before leaving Jeddah - these people made life there so much more enjoyable and fun!!!!

Our everyday life in Jeddah

Lately, nothing major has happened, but I still wanted to keep everybody updated with our daily life ;-)

I'm 30 weeks pregnant now, and I'll be flying to Germany in only 25 days - crazy!!!

Well, there is something 'a little bit' major that happened last week: We found out where the State Department is sending us after our time in Jeddah.
We will be living in Baku, Azerbaijan from 2016 to 2017.

Anthon and I are thrilled about our assignment. Of course, Baku is not like Germany or the US, but our bid list was kind of crappy this time with these 5 options: Baku (Azerbaijan), Pristina (Kosovo) (which were our 2 top choices), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Dakar (Senegal) and Shenyang (China).

We have heard many good things about Baku, including a 10-minute walk from home to the consulate which makes it possible for Anthon to come home for lunch and play with our baby (or me to bring lunch over and eat together), many beautiful green parks to walk around which will also be nice for when we have a baby/toddler, plenty of fun things to do and see in the city, decent climate, great restaurants, great pay for Anthon, and a good variety of groceries which is important to us food lovers. And, a roundtrip ticket to Munich is only about $400-500, which is pretty affordable.
As you can tell, we're pretty excited about our new assignment! Start booking your flights to come and visit us ;-)

Besides waiting patiently on our next assignment, we've been busy preparing everything for our baby boy who is coming very soon - in plus/minus 10 weeks!!!
Last week, we pretty much purchased everything from Amazon that we would need during the first months: over 60 items, which added up to a total of about $2,400.
Not as bad as I had expected for the fact that we bought everything new. That's still cheaper than our Apple products or my camera :-)

Also, Anthon turned 27 years! Yep, only 27 years. Most people think he's older :-)
I made a cake and we had a couple of friends over for a movie night, which was fun. We had originally planned on eating out that night, but Anthon couldn't wait to eat sushi, so we already went out 2 days before his birthday :-D

Our families and friends often ask us what life is like in Jeddah. Well, I would say that about 80% of our life is very similar to what our life in the US would be like.
Anthon drives to work in the morning, works there for about 8-10 hours, drives home, we eat dinner, then we just relax, and go to bed. Pretty much what most of you do during the week.
The only difference is maybe that Anthon works a lot with staff that is not from the US. Most of his staff is from Yemen, Bangladesh, India and the Philippines. Since the Jeddah consulate is not in the US, Anthon has to deal quite a bit with cultural differences and restrictions typical for this region, which make his work very interesting.

Since I got pregnant soon after I came to Jeddah, and it would have taken about 2-3 months to get a security clearance in order to work at the consulate, and we had already planned several vacations, we decided that I'll just stay at home and be a homemaker until the baby gets here... well, after that, too, of course.
So, right now, I'm a typical housewife.... or somewhat typical. I guess there is a lot of variation in what people consider a "typical housewife".

I get up with Anthon every morning, prepare a good breakfast, pack Anthon's lunch, kiss him good-bye, clean up the kitchen, get ready for the day, stay busy with cleaning the house, preparing meal plans and shopping lists, answering e-mails, preparing my weekly Sunday school lessons, and cooking dinner. Since Anthon is the hardworking breadwinner in our house, I try to be as diligent as possible while he's at work. I would find it unfair towards him if I just stayed at home, watched TV and did nothing while he's working.
Many women here in the expat community have maids that do almost everything for them, so that they can meet up with other women during the day and have a cup of coffee, or go shopping in the malls and souks. But that's not me... I'm too German :-)  I always make a to-do list for every day. If I'm running out of to-dos, I'm working on some longer term projects, like our 5-year anniversary book.
With our baby coming in 2.5 months, I've also been busy looking for baby and nursery stuff. Once the baby is here, I'm sure that I'll stay busy without writing a daily to-do list, though :-D

While other guys would prefer having a second income, Anthon prefers having a stay-at-home-wife. This was a little surprising to me since Anthon loves finances, saving more money to become financially independent by age 50 (= the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live, without having to work actively for basic necessities) and all that kind of financial stuff.
However, Anthon tells me quite often that he LOVES coming home from work to a wife that is not stressed out and complains about work, coming home to a clean house, dinner ready on the table, ironed clothes, not having to worry about laundry and other household stuff,... and I enjoy being at home. For me, it is fulfilling to take care of my husband and make him happy, and to take care of our home.
But Anthon is not a macho at all (luckily!). If I need his help, he jumps up and helps me. We've just decided to do it this way - he goes to work and makes the big bucks, while I stay at home and do everything to support him in his job, and make his life easier, and save some money by smart householding (not sure if this is a word, but in my opinion it should be one) :-)


While our daily life is very similar to what our life would be like in the US, our weekends look a little bit different. We especially feel that we live in a different country when we go outside of our compound.
Before we go out, we always check when the next prayer time starts. Stores close during the 5 prayer times a day for about 30-45 minutes. If you happen to be at the grocery store when the prayer starts, you are not able to check out and/or exit the store. Your frozen items have to either be brought back to the freezer and picked up again later, or you just let it thaw in your cart if you're too lazy :-)
Restaurants won't let you in during prayer time either, but most places will let you exit during prayer time, which is nice.

As you might have noticed in our pictures, I'm always wearing a black outfit. No, I've not joined the gothic scene. That's a long dark dress that every woman has to wear in public, called the abaya. Some Western women absolutely hate it, but I wouldn't say that I hate it. I would just prefer only wearing 1 layer of clothing in this very hot and very humid climate. Especially when I see Anthon only wearing a short sleeve shirt and shorts. Kind of unfair, but I guess I have to accept the rules of the country.

As a woman, I am also not allowed to drive here. You know, it could curl up my ovaries, push my pelvis upwards and make me infertile... or I could show my willingness to be raped, in case the car breaks down at the side of the road (someone please make sense out of these arguments why women can't drive!?!?).

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24323934

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2948592/Saudi-Arabian-historian-says-American-foreign-women-drive-rape-no-big-deal-them.html

Luckily, our consulate provides motor pool services, so that I can go to the hospital, consulate, go shopping if I wanted to, etc. Honestly, in this crazy Jeddah traffic,  I prefer to not drive here. It seems like the only rule is that there is no rule :-)
Usually, I always fall asleep when Anthon is driving... I'm like a baby. I just get tired with the white noise in the background and the car rocking me to sleep. But here in Jeddah, I cannot fall asleep in the car no matter how tired I am. Since people drive like crazy here, Anthon has to constantly switch lanes, step on his brakes, honk at people who randomly change lanes without looking and almost bumping into our car,....
My blood pressure probably always goes up a little bit when we're out and about. I just can't stay calm enough to fall asleep while we're on the road :-)

Something that is also a little bit different is our kind of entertainment here. In the US, we loved going to concerts, theater plays, go bowling, eating out,...
Here, we don't really do any of that much. Saudi Arabia doesn't really have typical theaters with classical concerts and plays. If they have something like that and I'm just unaware of it, I'm sure that it would be for men only, or it would be in Arabic which we both don't speak.
Mixing genders is not liked here, which is the reason why there are family sections and single sections for men at each restaurant. Many fast food restaurants like McDonald's and Papa John's even have separate entrances - one for families, and one for men. Some places that sell Middle Eastern fast food even don't allow women in them, so I usually just stay in the car while Anthon orders the food.

We don't really eat out that much here, though. We definitely ate out a lot more when we were in the US. Restaurants can be quite pricey (or at least cost more than we are willing to pay for American, Italian, Asian food), and I pretty much never crave Middle Eastern food, which is mostly a little bit to a lot cheaper than other cuisines.
Since Middle Eastern food is some of the most affordable food here, you would think that we mostly eat out at Middle Eastern restaurants. The problem is that I never crave Middle Eastern food. There are only 3 cuisines that I never crave (at least 3 of the many cuisines that I have tried so far)- Mexican (sorry!), Indian and Middle Eastern. I don't know what it is about these foods that I just never crave them. I don't mind eating them and I like them when I happen to eat them, but they never really sound good to me and I just never crave them. So, that's another reason why we don't go out to eat that often. The foods that we like and crave are just a little bit too pricey for us to go out often. So, I usually just make those at home.
However, when we do go out by ourselves, we mostly get Korean food. I cook very internationally, but it takes a lot of time to prepare Korean food with all of its side dishes, so I prefer eating out when we're craving Korean food.
Two weeks ago, I felt a little bit experimental and cooked Bulgogi with 6 different Paanchi (side dishes). Anthon is excited that he no longer has to pay for Korean food. One less reason to eat out and spend money :-)

When we do go out to eat to other restaurants then usually with friends, which brings me back to the topic of entertainment.
Since the things that we like doing in the US/Germany don't really exist here and we don't share a love for many Saudis' favorite hobby, which is shopping, we hang out a lot with other people from the consulate. We have also made some friends here on the compound.
I can't remember the last time we had a weekend without a potluck, birthday party, some event at the consulate, or us hosting dinner. That's the kind of entertainment you do here the most, and our weekends are always filled with these kinds of get-togethers.
Luckily, the consulate has plenty of nice young people in their late 20s like us, who we really enjoy hanging out with. The good thing is that most of them came to Jeddah only a couple of months before us or came after we arrived, so we'll have them here for the majority of our time.

Eating Yemeni food with friends at the Corniche

Branch Pool Party on our compound

Cooking Middle Eastern food with friends

Enjoying some American food 

Hosting friends for a Raclette dinner

Dinner at a friend's house

National Day celebration at the Consulate a couple of weeks ago. It's just too miserably hot and humid in July to celebrate it then :-)

National Day at the Consulate

Date night at the Jeddah festival

They don't happen too often, but sometimes expats put together little events that we like to go to to feel normal again - no separated gender sections, no abaya needed, and PDA is allowed :-)
A couple of months ago, one of the international schools performed the Wizard of Oz at their school, which was awesome. The other day, the British consulate hosted their yearly X-Pat factor talent show, which was a lot of fun, too. We wish there were more of these kinds of events, but... you can't have it all, right?

Wizard of Oz performance

If we find some time between all these get-togethers and events, Anthon and I like hanging out on the couch and watching shows that we can watch for free on Amazon instant or Youtube.
We also like baking and cooking together. I love having a husband, who loves to cook, who enjoys good food, and who really appreciates homemade food. This has challenged me to make almost everything from scratch - normal noodles, Spätzle, Schupfnudeln, German potato and bread dumplings, bread, rolls, pretzels, ice-cream, homemade broth and soup,...
Living abroad and not being able to buy baking mixes and all kinds of other stuff really makes you a better homemaker, I feel :-)

So yeah, that's a little insight into our daily life here in Jeddah.
Let me know if you have any questions about life here and I'll answer them in my next blog post ;-)