Colours

It is challenging to convert a government rented place into a home, even more challenging when a furniture is provided for you too. But there are also some comforting familiarities - the embassy uses the same stock of furniture all over the world and you know what to expect regarding colours and patterns. Plus, we were blessed to be stationed in Beijing a few years ago where markets offered a huge range of fabric, accent details, and reasonably priced tailors, so I stocked on curtains, furniture covers and some interesting decor items. Add to this wise advise of my friend who was an interior decorator by trade and I can say that I am more or less prepared for that challenge, which in no way means that I sail through it with bells and whistles.

This house is unusually big. The first floor consists of a storage room, a laundry room, a foyer and a garage, the second - has a kitchen, a guest room, and a dining room, and the third - four bedrooms. The kids were so unnerved by its grandeur, they requested to share a room. With weeks trickling by and arrival of our HHE the size worked out in our favour - the kids got to have an additional room adjoined to their bedroom, where they can play to their heart content and which can be easily converted to a guest room; my husband had his office; we transferred a big landing on the second floor into a library, and I acquired a wonderful, light lit room where I can write, meditate or just day dream. (Most importantly, I can just close the door and enjoy piece and quiet)

The dinning room caused me the most headache. Its size is around 100 square meters and the ceiling runs up to three meters. As a result what you had is a vast white space, especially disconcerting on the south wall (25 square metres) where it wasn't punctuated by any furniture. In short, the room that was meant to be the heart of the activities - study/dinning/entertaining area- looked cold and hostile.

I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it again and came to the conclusion that the south wall had to be painted. (Ok, I like painting. I think that there is nothing like painting to make the house your own; I even put rollers and trays in our air shipment, so there is a slight chance that I would have found the reason to paint something around here sooner or later.) Anyway, off to the pursuit of paint I went. Hm, it made me sound more adventurous and decisive than I am, let me rephrase - I went with our driver. This is a very important bit because though being originally from Moscow I speak Russian, in Azeri I know only greetings and a bit of numbers, which isn't enough for discussing merits of paint and negotiating prices. And mind you, those prices are definitely lower when you converse in Azeri.)

In the first two stores the choices of paint were limited and the mixing of the paint had to be done by me; not something I was ready to undertake. In the third store choices were much better but three males (two clerks and my driver) got very involved into the process of selecting the colour for me, to the point of trying to sway me into completely different colour family. I aimed for warm yellow tones, they were amoured by something closer to dusty pink. I had to politely disengage myself from the heated debate and strolled around the shop to clear my head. There in a corner I found my colour - calm yellow, exactly what I wanted.

To make the long story short I spent around five hours the next day going up and down the ladder with a roller in my hand (they didn't have an extension rodes that fitted my instruments) but the results are well worth it. The colour warmed up the room, created an illusion of smaller space, and made it looked much more inviting.

Now, what can I paint next?

What do you think?

Do you have any tricks to transform rental quarters into home? Do share.

Maiden Tower (Qiz Qalasi).

So, Maiden Tower.

If you ever Google Baku, the Maiden Tower will be mentioned for sure- it became a symbol of the city. It is dated back to the 12th century and once upon a time stood on the bank of the Caspian Sea, which isn’t the case now. It looks very massive as it should considering that its walls are up to five meters thick. What you should be aware of is that the stairs leading to the top are highly polished by thousands feet and are slippery, you have to be careful there. Despite of this you will notice plenty of ladies braving the steps on high heels. It is very impressive sight, almost as impressive as the tower itself.

I like the legends that surround the Maiden Tower. One of them tells a story about a shah and his son who happened to fall in love with the same fair maiden. Unable to decide who should marry her, they solved their argument by throwing the maiden from the top of the tower. Very macho decision indeed.

The most popular of the legends concerns a shah who developed a love interest in his own daughter. The daughter properly disgusted but being a proper daughter as well, asked him to build a tower and promised to marry him after the tower’s completion. Eagerly the shah agreed. The tower grew higher and higher; the girl grew sadder and sadder. In order to delay the inevitable she kept asking to add one storey after another until the shah got impatience and demanded to set up the date of the marriage. What is the girl to do? She asked to climb the top of the tower to enjoy the view ...looked around at her beloved city and threw herself down in the Caspian Sea.

The legend is so popular that the tower remains the favourite place of romantic souls to say farewell to cruel life.

P.S. I know it is odd - I am doing postings backward: it is September now and the dates of the posts are from August. I haven't found my rhythm yet, which I lost somewhere in the midst of our transition.

Icheri Sheher - The Walled City

The oldest part of Baku is called Icheri – Shekher or the Walled City and that is where we went for our first family outing. Icheri – Shekher was built on a hill and its compact layout has remained essentially unchanged since its construction during 11th to 17th century. The walls started to enclose the city in the 12th century. They protected the city from the enemies and biting winds and also marked territorial boundaries of the community they embraced.

The houses there are situated remarkably close to each other – if you stand in the middle of the street and spread your arms, you can easily touch the walls of the houses on its both side. I imagine that such closeness reinforces the sense of community, everybody knows what is going at the neighbors’ house even if they try not to.



Strolling through the web of narrow streets we came upon the Museum of the Miniature Book that houses an impressive collection of miniature books all over the world, the smallest one of them measured 2x2mm. A very decisive lady insisted on given us a tour in Russian and was a bit dismayed when I didn’t translate everything in details.

Learning through the experience we refused a tour at the Shirvanshahs’ Palace and proceed exploring it by ourselves. Shirvanshah (The Shah of Shirvan) was the title of rulers of a historical province of Azerbaijan, which included Baku.The Shirvanshahs’ Palace was built in 15th century when the Shah of Shirvan decided to transfer his residence to Baku. The ensemble of the palace includes various buildings located on four different levels. The highest one includes the Palace itself and Divan-khane, judicial chamber; the lowest – the remains of the palace bath-house.



I was mesmerized by wood and stone carvings on the doors and walls. Some of them are purely ornamental but in some there are hidden messages.The image below shows the entrance to the burial-vault. One of the inscription there describes to the visitors the purpose of the building, “Khalil-Ullah I, the greatest Soltan, Great Shirvanshah, the namesake of the divine prophet, the defender of the religion ordered to construct this light burial-vault for his mother and son in the year of 839”, the other quotes the Koran. If you look closely you will see two tear- shaped medallions - they hid the architect's name in them, Memar ("architect") Ali. In each medallion name is written twice, in regular manner and in mirrored script. It is quite a courageous act - to leave your own name on the shah's burial-vault, I view it as a claim to immortality. Interestingly, the scientists were able to read/decipher the architect's name only in 1945. It remained unknown for half a century.










We also visited the Maiden Tour (Qiz Qalasi) but I will leave it for another day.

P.S. Many thanks to Window to Baku site and its creator Faig Nasibov for the wonderful information on Baku.

First Impressions

We are at our new destination, the place we will call home for the next two to three years. Where is it? It is located on the western edge of the Caspian Sea and borders Russia on the north, Georgia and Armenia on the west, and Iran on the south. Any ideas? Ok, here is something - it is a birthplace of Garry Kasparov. Still not a clue? Ok then, we are in Baku, Azerbaijan.

What are our first impressions?

The house is humongous – three stories for goodness sake. In almost empty rooms I feel like a Lilliputian in a house meant for giants. We are in an area of mansions, most of them in the process of reconstructions or constructions – the streets are littered with garbage and we have a pack of friendly stray dogs living in the neighboring empty lot.

It is a weird contract – garbage and mansions but something tells me that it is very Bakuvian.

View from our third floor.

Recollection of Summer

In June we closed the door on our Iceland adventure and went for a home leave before going to our next post. What a change it was! From a cool weather of Iceland where we wore sweaters to the heat of Phoenix where we couldn’t shade enough clothing off.

For a month we led a quintessential American life starting with living in a trailer in the RV park and finishing with frequenting fast food places and malls. We visited our families and friends, did necessary shopping, and hoped from goofy golfing places to museums.

Looking back to Phoenix my favourite memories were swimming in the pool, it provided immediate relief from the heat, and traveling to cooler (temperature wise) places like Flagstaff. Ok, we didn’t go to Flagstaff for the sake of lower temperatures, we stopped there on our way to and back from the Grand Canyon, but the town had such a great feel about it and, more importantly, it provided an opportunity for walking, so Grand Canyon paled in comparison. There, at Grand Canyon it is, I overheard the conversation between a father and a daughter:
D: So, we saw Grand Canyon, can we go home already?
F: No, we've seen only a small part of it, there is much more to see.
D: But it is all the same.

The aforementioned Grand Canyon and the boys.

Phoenix Art Museum held some wonderful surprises, among them a statue by Anish Kapoor “Upside Down, Inside Out” and a work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama “Fireflies on the Water”. The later consisted of a darkened room lined with mirrors on all sides and numerous purple lights hanging from the ceiling. It created a dazzling effect of direct and reflected light, feeling of floating in endless cosmos. We returned to this room several times and every time we didn’t want to get out.

"Fireflies on the Water" by Yayoi Kusama

Kapoor’s piece “Upside Down, Inside Out” was equally engaging – black highly polished curved form, in which you can see your reflection horizontally, vertically and upside down depending on what part of the piece you look at. It seemed mysterious to me and I kept circling it transfixed by its smoothness and darkness.

"Upside Down, Inside Out" by Anish Kapoor, 2003

photo by Daniel Greene

The week in Washington flew by way too fast. It was filled to the brim with reunions - some planned, some chanced; as usual it made me happy, as usual it made me long for more.

Last but not least is the sign that captured my attention. My guess is that "standee" was based on relational pairs of antonyms "employer - employee; trainer- trainee; interviewer- interviewee", but what will its mate be?