First Impressions of BAKU, AZERBAIJAN! Azerbaijan Travel Vlog
hello guys this is doug i am here in baku azerbaijan and over the next few videos i'm gonna be showing you all around this beautiful relatively unknown country so i'm super excited let's go [Music] before we get started and go exploring azerbaijan i just want to let you all know full disclosure i was invited on this trip as part of a sponsored tour to show you azerbaijan and explore the country and really just show people what azerbaijan is all about but i promise you everything that you hear from me in these videos is going to be my impressions my true opinions and my genuine thoughts about my experiences here in azerbaijan what i like what i don't like in the past some people have accused me of having been paid for trips like to saudi arabia which is not true that was entirely self-funded this one i was invited on but again all opinions and statements will be genuinely mine so without further ado let's go explore azerbaijan [Music] all right guys so today we are in baku it is the capital of the country and i just got here last night uh basically arrived and had dinner stayed at the hotel and today we're on a tour around the city exploring this beautiful capital to be honest i didn't know much about azerbaijan at all before i came here i know it's a former soviet republic it's a country in the caucasus next to armenia georgia russia iran so it's in that part of the world but interestingly the people here are actually turkic by ethnicity so they speak a turkic language from the same family as turkish or turkmen however a lot of the people here also speak russian super interesting it feels definitely like a crossroads of different cultures you've got the russian influence you've got the turkish influence i'm sure we'll be exploring a lot more of that over these videos and that's about it that's about all i know so i'm really excited to discover this place alongside you guys and we're going to be exploring all different regions but today we're starting in the capital baku now guys one of the most recognizable things for some of my western friends about azerbaijan might be the formula one race that happens here you can see right behind me is part of the track they're going to come down this street and go that way and our tour guide zara was just saying this is one of the most dangerous parts of the track because it gets very narrow it's unique here in that the race goes right through the actual city of baku they are preparing for that it's in about 10 days and i'm hoping i will get to show you guys some of the preparations for that race but they don't have any actual spectators this year because of covet restrictions however you can totally tell it's a big deal here in the city they're getting a lot of things ready you see a lot of advertisement for it and you can tell it's a major major event that's happening very soon so we're walking on the formula one race track path right now in a few days this would be a very bad place to be standing we're getting on the bus and going to get some lunch i think so let's go i'm gonna try to show you guys some azerbaijani food this is not aktari georgian it's my favorite one all right guys so we made it to lunch we got some soup coming we've got this delicious bread that we're tearing off what is it called again tandir which is similar to like tandoor in india or pakistan so this is kaila okay she's from azerbaijan hi and this is sonia from portugal i'm shahab from pakistan from pakistan and from algeria from algeria maybe some of you guys know him some of my arab friends if you know a little bit his channel's all in arabic so how are you this is the code [Laughter] all right alrighty guys we got the main course here pilau which is some rice oops it's got the crispy part on the that was on the bottom of the pan there i think that looks delicious and sabzi and that's bros beef okay wow look at this what a what a spread let's try it out huh i'm trying to learn the differences between turkish and azerbaijani language because there are many similarities but also certain key phrases are are different and i just came from turkey where i was just starting to pick up the basic phrases of turkey and now it's switched so in turkey to say thank you very much you could say probably bad pronunciation but that's how you say it and here you say all right let's try some of this rice with the crispy part pilaf pulao very nice and what's the this meat called uh yes ashwa sabzi very tasty and the last one right now let me show you guys some of the drinks here this nataka nattaktari it's a georgian drink and it's basically like pear juice i would say tastes very sweet like pears and it's carbonated and then here we've got what they call kumput kompo you know it's similar to the english word compote which i guess is would mean more like jam or jelly in english but this is a juice and it has the real fruit whatever it's made of floating in there there's different varieties so i saw one with cherries last night one was made with some other tropical fruit this one looks like i don't know what that is let me know if you know what fruit that is very sweet very tasty very unique i've never seen a drink sold like in a packaged bottle like this it's not homemade you know sold with real fruit chunks inside of them very tasty all right guys a unique custom here in azerbaijan they drink tea like they do in turkey in these nice little uh glasses hourglass shapes which i love but instead of putting their sugar cubes in the tea they put it in their mouth and then keep it on their tongue as they take sips of the tea and it you know takes a little more sugar with each sip so this is how you do it take the individually wrapped sugar cube you give it a little dunk in the tea to wet it and then put it in your mouth and then you're just gonna ship and it goes over the sugar very delicious very unique i'm still learning how to do it i don't you are explaining to her about i didn't know you're recording i'm just talking to myself you see the issue of a small camera yeah but in certain places small cameras are very good like egypt when i'm always hiding from the police you guys know i think some people they didn't give you a like before oh yeah what the heck they should they should stop and go put some likes and comments then come back that's a good idea hey thank you so much i like this guy for the algorithm you heard him like and comment alright guys we just finished up lunch now we're continuing on exploring more of baku just driving through here all the buildings are so like grand i don't know how else to describe it like they're all made of this nice sandstone and really really beautiful by the way guys like i said before you can see signs of the formula one rays everywhere like where we're driving right now along this main street is going to be part of the formula one track you can see that they're putting the fences up along it these metal fences here in preparation for the race i swear guys azerbaijan is the land of cool buildings look behind me got another one over here check that out and just beautiful buildings all around they're so cool so many uh amazing ones and the flame towers the flame towers are maybe the most famous and we're going to go there soon i think hopefully i'll definitely show you guys in this video look at this building oh my gosh that's so cool so guys this is the carpet museum and if you've ever been to turkey you know that turkey's famous for carpets i don't know if azerbaijan is too but i'm guessing if they have a whole museum dedicated to carpets they must be so let's go inside and check it out oh look and there's the flame towers behind me the three really cool shaped towers hopefully we'll get a little closer soon right now carpet museum let's go all right guys so this is the carpet museum here in baku azerbaijan it's a really amazing place this entire museum devoted to azerbaijani carpets and the craft of carpet making and they have artifacts and carpets from all throughout the history of azerbaijan including through soviet times so you see some pretty soviet-looking carpets featuring the worker and oil rigs and things like that so very very unique place very cool to check out here in baku and there's even a few very unique items that i was not expecting to see such as this cool thing that i'll show you right now azerbaijani mustache cases right and the mustache was so important in appearance of men here that they would wear a case like this over their mustache while they slept to preserve the shape and integrity of the mustangs amazing they didn't have gel yeah no gel back then so that is wow that's unique you have to come to this museum just to see the mustache cases all right so we're all done in the carpet museum that was really really cool if you couldn't tell my favorite part was the mustache cover mustache case that was hilarious and awesome that that was an invention that they actually use oh it's a beautiful day out here in azerbaijan there's the building behind me you can see it from the side now and i think we're walking right now to the caspian sea uh which i have certainly never never seen in real life uh so i'm very excited to show it to you guys check this out little boats going by down this little man-made canal so cool all right let's go see the caspian sea here it is guys the sun is so bright but here is the caspian sea first time seeing it i can't reach it i always want to like feel the water and put my hand in the water when i'm in a new place but look more amazing buildings over there is even more a bunch of nice yachts out here too oh my gosh so zara what's this called sherban shah shirvan shah so this is before soviet obviously way before yes yes it's it was around 15th century okay wow 14th century it feels very silk road to me yes it is yes it is because it is on a silk road sure yes that's why amazing so guys obviously this fort is very old and has seen a lot of different phases of history here in azerbaijan and in the caucasus more broadly in this wall behind me you can see a bunch of holes in it those are actually bullet holes from fighting that happened in the early 20th century in 1918 actually between armenians and azerbaijanis so some of the traces of it here the bullet holes look at that the old and the new old new wow this whole tour is filled with uh vloggers and youtubers and journalists so everyone's got cameras it's kind of funny everyone's trying to film all the same stuff and we're like all over the place but really cool to meet all these different people from different professions that are broadly related to travel or telling stories like this from journalists for actual tv channels in uzbekistan to people like me who are just you know casual more casual youtube vloggers i love the old cars here soviet cars [Music] so this is all part of the old city of baku now it dates all the way back to the 9th of the century so it's amazing the history and everything that you can see walking through these little alleys absolutely beautiful [Music] so we're in the middle of the old city here and we're gonna go inside the maiden tower you can see it right behind me big stone tower about eight eight floors tall yeah i think yes yeah and uh we're gonna head up there right now and hopefully get a view of the city around us so let's go check it out and before we go up there check out this view from the old town when you come around the corner you can suddenly see the the flame towers such a beautiful view honestly i this this entire area is so beautiful i i'm surprised that more westerners haven't really come here to discover it yet because it's it's absolutely beautiful i don't know this is my first day discovering it and i'm just pretty blown away and i don't understand why it's not a more popular tourist destination okay nice we made it so the maiden tower actually dates all the way back to the 12th century and back in 2001 it was declared a unesco world heritage site along with siobhan shah's palace where we just were earlier it's so important azerbaijan that you can actually even see it on some of the country's currency all right guys i just showed you the old part of baku now let me show you some of the new behind me you've got the flame towers which i showed you at a couple other points during this video from afar but here they are now they're so cool looking i'm gonna get yelled at by the police for no mask one second okay and across from them you've got this the very soviet-looking parliament building and you know if you know anything about me you know i love i love former soviet style architecture so guys zara one of our guides here in azerbaijan was just telling us that this memorial here that i'll show you now is for the victims of what they call here black january which is when the soviets came to squash an independence movement that was emerging here in the 1990s specifically uh january 20th 1990 the soviets came in here with their tanks and just started shooting and shelling the city and killing pretty much indiscriminately so these are all the victims of that of that night and you'll see on uh these gravestones that the death date is the same for every one of them you can actually see there's even a few that are blank they don't have a portrait and they don't have a name because they're they're just unknown but shortly after these people lost their lives during the black january azerbaijan did finally gain their independence on october 18th 1991 so guys we just met here a pretty famous photographer named reza de gadi he is originally from iran and is now a french citizen living in paris but he's of azerbaijani descent and he has documented both this black january massacre that occurred as well as some of the events in the karabakh region i want to let you guys hear a little bit from him about his experiences documenting these pretty tumultuous events here is important very important because in 20 january 1990 baku city was one of the first city that people demonstrated against the soviet union they didn't want so between they want to get rid of it and obviously it was not something that the soviet wanted so they wanted to show an example to all the other cities so they crashed the demonstration at the night at midnight by tanks so you have many hundred people in a big square and in the midnight suddenly the tanks came and rolled over the people so 103 people were killed and then they were shooting everywhere i was in paris at this time so i heard the news and i get a visa at the soviet time you were not getting visa as a journalist to come here sure you're only getting visa to moscow so i went to moscow and in moscow i hide myself in a train which was coming to baku for 48 hours and i arrived in baku here it was a disaster people everywhere crying they were burying their dead body here all the city was surrounded by the tanks and my soldiers were soviets soldiers and i had to hide for three days and three nights here to get the pictures of the hospital when they were treating the wounded people but there were secret police everywhere so i had to be very careful not to be taken finally i was able over three days to get all these pictures and those stories got back to paris and distributed all around the world so this was how the award get now what was happening here in baku all right guys went back to the hotel just then got some rest and now we are going to a very special place called shervancha it's basically a restaurant and a museum let's go check it out we're gonna have some delicious food and end this wonderful day exploring baku off on a great note let's check it out cool place wow oh my goodness look at this i feel like we're dining in a castle right now this is so cool amazing creaky stairs [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right guys we finally made it to our table after that wonderful tour through this absolutely enormous building it's really really cool if you ever come to baku i recommend coming here i haven't even tried the food yet but the building itself is worth coming for anyway we've got our english speaking squad here at the table you've met most of them hello hello hello hello but over there is max he's from the usa my brethren so he arrived later than uh some people on our tour because he came all the way from north carolina alrighty guys well i kind of forgot to film the food because it was coming in waves and i just kept eating it because it was so delicious but don't worry there's going to be a lot more food in this azerbaijan series tomorrow we continue on we're leaving baku the capital and we're going onward throughout the different regions of azerbaijan i am so excited i'm gonna end this video here this was exploring baku the capital but tomorrow we start again we're gonna see so much more of azerbaijan so i hope you guys are enjoying have a lot more to come please don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you're enjoying these videos so you don't miss the upcoming episodes and follow along on instagram if you'd like to keep up with me in real time thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you in the next one bye
2021-06-17 22:58
