Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey

The predominant color of our travels through Azerbaijan and Georgia was green. It had been a while since we had spent so much time out in the open, hiking along rivers and through opulent chains of mountains, discovering far off villages and some surprinsingly exciting cities. After spending most of our time in Iran with the people we met along the way, this part of the trip was mostly reserverd for the two of us. Except for the last part of course when we met our peers from Hamburg who flew in for one of my oldest and best friend's wedding in Istanbul.

Leaving Iran wasn't easy for us. First of all we had grown fond of this country and its people in a way which we would never have expected. Secondly, it really wasn't easy to cross the border to Azerbaijan. After getting ripped off by some fat dude who realized that we didn't have a choice but to accept his shitty rate for exchanging our leftover Rials to Laris, we found ourselves in a room with a hundred Azeris and their oversized bags of Iranian products pushing through the narrowest of doors. It was then that we realized that up until now our backpacking experience had been nothing but smooth sailing.

We knew it would be hard for the people in Azerbaijan to match the tremendous friendliness of the average Iranian. And after some time in the country we got the impression that the Azeris were fully aware of this situation and therefore didn't even bother to compete. We received little to no help and we got a strange look on numerous occasions. To be honest, we did not really feel too welcome there. This impression was underlined when we were told that after ten days we needed to register with the authorities - despite having applied for and received a visa before the trip. They wanted us and our hosts (private and commercial) to provide all sorts of sensitive information and made us jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops. All of this led to us making sure that we left for Georgia on our tenth day in Azerbaijan.

Luckily we were hosted by Alexander in Baku. He was born in Ukraine and had only lived in Azerbaijan for little more than a year. This made him the perfect person to discuss our impressions with. His girlfirend Gulia was Azeri and one of the warmest people we had met up until that point. The both of them made us feel at home and utterly welcome - a thoroughly good first impressions that we feeded on for the rest of our stay. Plus they persuaded us to stay with them even when I came down with a pretty bad flew and conterminated Alexander's entire apartment. When I was better we set out to discover Baku, a wierdly polished and cleaned up city for the upper classes and the tourists. Compared to the capital, the mountain village of Lahic and the second largest city Sheki looked like they were located in a second-world-country.

When crossing the border into Georgia the first thing the policeman said was: "Herzlich Willkommen!". And a warm welcome it was indeed. Georgia is an amazing country with its mountain regions and national parks, its buzzling capital and relaxing sea side, with its friendly people and great food (if you like coriander). We spent almost four weeks there making our way from the wine capital Telawi to the actual capital Tblisi and over to Batumi and Gonio right on the coast passing through the mountain villages of Kazbeghi and Mestia (Svaneti).

Like Lahic in Azerbaijan the Georgian countryside is almost rediculously green and peaceful. We spent about ten days in the mountains to discover some far-off villages and get re-attached with nature on a bunch of hikes. Getting there, however, was an adventure in itself: There wasn't a single car ride without a near-death experience. Next to the drivers, some of whom were obviously insane, the greatest danger were the herds of cows standing in the middle of the road, chewing, looking at the cars approaching them at full-speed with carelessness and stupidity.

In between traveling through villages and mountain valleys we felt like we needed to pay civilization a visit. Originally we wnated to spent three nights in Tblisi but we got drawn into the city's atmosphere and ended up staying five. Of all the cities I have ever visited Tblisi was the first one I could have seen myslef living in - even after only seeing it for a couple of days. The city was crammed full of tiny hispsteresque shops, restaurants, underground clubs, live music bars and galleries. Everything was croocked, crumbling and in decay, everything had a unique appeal.

Still, after seven weeks of constantly beeing on the road, after the many people we met and after the huge amount of diverse impressions we had to wrap our heads around, we were in desperate need for a vacation from traveling. We skipped ahead and went to Georgia's coast to just lie down for about a week. We found this little hostel and bar operated by Raggae fanatic (his words, not mine) Simon and his girlfriend Carolina. We dropped our backpacks at the reception and lied down in one the hammocks suspended right on the beach.

Originally Turkey hadn't made it onto our llist of travel destinations. We had traveled there before, both together as well as seperately, and even though we had loved our times there we saw Turkey as an option for a fututre vacation rather than a destination on our transpacific route. Things took a turn when one of my oldest and best friends invited us to his wedding in Instanbul in the beginning of July. We sat down and changed our plans, moving our original starting point, the trip with the Transiberean Railway, to the time right after the wedding. As the start date for our travels was still set to mid-May we needed to fill two months with a route close to Turkey, ending in Istanbul. This is how the backpacking trip through Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia came to be.

The time we spent in Turkey was overshadowed by the terrorist attack on Istanbul's Attatürk Airport one week before our flight and about two weeks before the wedding ceremony. Right after the attacks several wedding guetsts pulled out and cancelled their trips. We were still In Gonio, Georgia at the time and I remember spending half a day on the phone with the groom and several of our friends talking about the dangers of such an attack happening again the next week. When we arrived in Istanbul the city was empty, completey drained of Western tourists altogether. The streets in the touristic areas of Sultan Ahmet looked like a ghost town. The owner of the hostel we stayed at for the last three nights said that bookings went down by 75% all over Istanbul. Looking at how desperate people were trying to get us into their restaurants, souvenir shops and hotels, we couldn't even begin to imagine the pressure the owners of all these little businesses were starting to feel. After the failed military coup which took place just a few days after we had left for Moscow, the situation probably got worse.

Regardless of this situation and the uneasy feeling that came with it we had the best time in the city. We stayed at a private appartment for the first three nights, mostly chilling out and getting fixed up. The washing machine was running for two days straight, laundering all contents of our backpacks. The roof terrace with regular visits from the neighbor's cat and the huge bed overlooking the city's skyline were additional perks. The couple renting out the flat had decorated the walls with all sorts of hippiesque items and as they were musicians as well, the place was packed with instruments. This seemed to be the upside of tourism going down in Instanbul: prices were at an all-time low and even people traveling on a shoestring budget could afford staying at the most amazing places. For me endulding in the luxury of having our own place meant finally doing some recordings for "The World Is Mine" - all tracks of the song "Chains" were captured in this appartment.

For the fourth night we moved to Sultan Ahmed to meet our friends from Hamburg and, most of all, to go to our firends' wedding. For us it was a real time-out from backpacking. On the first night we went to a fancy restaurant in a dress and shirt, with make-up and with leather boots. What a weird feeling that was! On the second night we got picked up by a boat along with the other guests. The wedding took place in the garden of the bride's aunt located right on the Bosporus. And what can we say about the ceremony and the after party. It was perfect. The scenery and the weather, the dresses and the suits, the smiles on the newlywed's faces (and on those of their parents), the drinks, the band, the party. Thank you so much for having us there. And congratulations! You guys have succesfully ruined all of those future weddings that will never be as marvelous as yours!