At 5am the alarm went off. We packed up and left 'Canub' only to find that the metro doesn't open until 6am. With no other option we haggled with a bunch of taxi drivers, finally settling on 8 AZN for a ride to the new bus station. The driver was full of information about random stuff around Baku, chatting away until we arrived. At the station we found everything closed until 7am when the sun came up and the station came to life. The semblance of order and modernisation soon gave way to a chaos of shouting men and rumbling engines. We found a bus to Quba, stuffed our packs into the boot and boarded whilst the driver embarked on a blazing row with one of his counterparts.
The Baku suburbs faded to a barren hillscape, dotted with industrial installations and half-built dwellings. We passed Beshmardag and dozed with our knees squashed up behind the seats in front. More people boarded - a soldier, some elderly folk and as the hours passed, the landscape turned greener. Approaching Quba we passed several points along the roadside where men hung sheep carcasses from the trees in order to butcher them and sell bits and pieces to passing motorists. Some were actively being hacked apart. Others were just hanging, pink and headless, with dust blown over from the passing traffic and the Caspian winds. At Quba we disembarked and wandered around for a fair while before some guy pointed us in the right direction towards Şahdağ hotel. We checked into Şahdağ, paying 10 AZN for one night in a crumbling room bearing two singed electric sockets, two tiny beds and a dribbling tap. The shared squat toilets were fetid, fly-ridden beauties.
We dropped off our gear and set off to visit Krasnaya Sloboda - the only entirely Jewish town outside of Israel. The town is reached over an un-kempt footbridge to the north of Quba. Krasnaya Sloboda is a pretty town, with lots of overhanging wooden balconies. It is also very quiet. Very few people were outside and we saw just two small shops, selling kefir and bread. We stopped to take photos of some of the beautiful carved-wood doorways and eventually we were stopped by the local policeman who insisted on seeing our passports and papers. He didn't like the idea of us just wandering around with nothing documenting our identity and the purpose of our being there. We presented papers and passports, which he thumbed through in silence, before handing them back and wishing us a good day.
We took the 'athletic ascent' back to Quba - a once glorious staircase lined with statues of athletes, which leads up the bank and into the Nizami Park in the North end of the town. On the far side of the park is a chess academy, where we met a bunch of men in their sixties, who were keen to exchange some words of English. We went inside and looked at all the chess boards laid out in preparation for a big competition on the 15th August, in which kids from around Azerbaijan will compete to become the next Kasparov. We chatted for a long time. One of the men knew the name of every player in the 1966 England football team, then later in the afternoon (and presumably after a sneaky re-cap) he was able to reel out half of the Chelsea squad as well. We sat with the guys in the tea gardens alongside the chess club. There we chatted about all kinds of things, asking each other questions and sharing curiosities about Engish, or Azeri life. It was here that 'Dzavid' offered to take us to the Bazaar where we could negotiate a 4WD for our drive to Xınalıq tomrrow.
In the evening, Matt and I went to buy some food, then stopped in a tiny venue serving beer. We sat with an old man from Krasnaya Sloboda. He build a house there and had lived in it for the last 32 years. He got rather drunk and discussed some political stuff, which had me confused for a while. His Russian was very patchy, but we were able to agree on the principal that there is only one God, no matter what your beliefs. I assimilated that into the mantra 'Один мир, один Бог' (one world, one god) he grabbed my hand and kissed me like a brother, then sat back down to his chickpeas and beer. As the evening progressed, he kissed me no fewer than six times until the boss kicked him out and sent him home. We paid for his beer and chickpeas and said thank you to the 'landlord' before wandering back to Şahdağ to play chess and drink Baltika beer to mark Matt's birthday.