Kazakhstan - feels like home

I've already been many times in Kazakhstan and for me it feels already somehow like coming home. So this time we were not exploring together, I became his tour guide.
The people here are very friendly and offering great hospitality. They still have good old traditions we sadly lost in the western countries. It would be great if we would remember some traditions and bring back to live.
Not only the people making it so good being here. Also the landscape and delicious food.
First thing we did in Almaty was leaving the town and go to the mountain area which is very close by.
We went to a place for fishing trout, after fishing you can dine at the restaurant and get your fresh caught fish without the dirty work.

Bernds fishing skills have been so bad so we decided to go to another restaurant and get some local dishes. Maybe that was much better than just having fish.

After filling up our stomach we decided to go to a museum to learn something about the Kazakh history and nature.
Bernd started arguing with the birds there which turned out not to be such a good idea since the eagle living there threatened him with his sharp claws and beak.

Luckily for Bernd he could run away quick enough and hide in a small house, he later on declared as his own.

After the museum I lead Bernd to some religious places, we keep up visiting them. First we arrived at the big mosque which was currently closed for tourism due to prayers. Also we were not lucky at the Ascension Cathedral, which was closed due to renovations. Bernd was very curious about the church since I told him that it has been built without any nails. He wanted to try to blow it away as the well known big bad wolf in the fable.

Next I lead him to the war memorial place for the soldiers who had to fight in world war one and two. I was quick enough to take a picture of Bernd in front of the ever burning torch before he did run away from a group of soldiers. It was very funny since he ran away from a statue.

Next we did was going up to Kok Tobe from where we had a great few above the town and it was even better with the blue sky and the warm sun.

Close by we met some old friends and had some good chats and started jamming. Bernd should not have tried singing, he was lucky that in real there are not always people around throwing right away rotten tomatoes at you.

Hear by I asked Bernd to make a hand stand and it took me a while to get him to do so. I only asked him so he could look at a special house there which turns the world upside down.

It feels like we did a lot of things in Almaty and actually it is true, we did not get many breaks and not much sleep but it was all the time amazing.

The next day we went to a park where almost all people of Almaty come at least once in a lifetime. No it is not the cemetery guys, it was the park of the first president and the people love to go there to take wedding pictures. There was also a couple around, but Bernd did not see them since he was in a long conversation with the president.

I hope I managed to make you curious about this wonderful place and you may also one day visit Kazakhstan especially Almaty.

We would have went to many more places and would have loved to show them to you but we wanted to keep them for now as a secret so you would come as well.

There is only one small thing I wanted to show you. It is a special squirrel living here. I had to guard Bernd when we met it so it won't eat him.

Baku - night and day

Late at the afternoon we came up with the idea to leave Ganja and go to our next destination. We decided this time to take the train. New experience of travelling around here. The train was very modern and the staff working there very friendly and guiding us to our seat, not easy when you have a train ticket in a language you do not understand at all. They even provided WiFi and train was running on time. Something we almost never experience in Germany. We always had the feeling that the trains in Germany are the worst ones in the world. Still we did not find a worse one.
Before midnight we finally arrived in Baku and after settling up at our place for the next day we went out to explore the town at night. We came up with the idea to go to some places twice so we could experience the difference.
Our steps first lead us to the old city hall of Baku, rather much is still left and also some towers are still standing.

As you can see at the first picture it was a really nice night. Clear sky with some clouds and even the clouds seemed to brighten up the sky.
From the old wall our way did lead to a nice fountain in the philharmonic park.

It was very surprising for us how close everything was, only a short way away from the fountain we for the first time in our lives did see the sea. Well to be more precise the Caspian sea, of course we have been at many oceans and will see many more.

At the promenade Bernd found a pond with swans and he wanted to make fun with them and scare them away, when he got closer he realized that it is just a fountain with stones having the appearance to swans. It was much fun seeing his surprised face.

During the day around the same area we found a big chess board and were up for a match. Bernds skills at playing chess are really bad, he lost every time and was no challenge at all. Lucky for me that the chess figures were too big and heavy for him, so he wasn't able to throw them in anger on me.

Further down the promenade we saw a building reminding us to the world famous opera in Sidney. We also thought that it might be an opera or similar but it turned out to be a shopping center. At least the building looks still interesting.

A few steps more and we ended up in Venice. It feels like more and more towns having their own little Venice. For example Erfurt a beautiful town in the heart of Germany were we used to live for many years. Bernd became very home sick and I also got lost in good memories. I did have a great time in this town, much fun and awesome people. Never forgotten.

We also took a picture of the carpet museum next to mini Venice but the picture quality is not good enough. The building looks like a big carpet and was quite interesting to look at. Well and we also got more attracted by the flaming towers to which we had a great as well.

We also decided to take a short video on the phone to show the changing of the lights on the towers. We both did like the flames most. This is also the first time that we are sharing a video in this blog. Don't know if we should do this more often.

During the day we went inside the old town through the well known old town wall and found there a room full of books. A museum with very tiny books, perfectly suiting Bernds small hands. Unfortunately this books were not for sale. Only presented in the museum. Too bad that we could not open and read the books, they also had lots of the rings in there.

Inside the town we wanted to enter the old mosque unfortunately it was closed so we could not take a look inside. At least we did walk around the old streets and enjoyed the time there. Also we took some pictures.

From Armenia to Ganja in Azerbaijan

Our reunion journey did already have a good start. We did see many great places in Georgia and Armenia, also made new friends from around the world. Because of the people we meet we always feel some sadness, but on the other side we can hopefully meet again. And also make new friends.
Next after Yerevan we decided to go to Azerbaijan, unfortunately Armenia and Azerbaijan are at war so we could not directly cross the boarder. Stupid humans. Why they have to keep on fighting each other because of some territory. I hate this.
To find our way to Azerbaijan we had to go back to Tbilisi and from there get across.
When we got to the boarder Bernd did fear that they won't let us through. From other travellers we did hear that even when having a visa people may not get the allowance to get across when they have been in Armenia.
With Bernds passport everything went well and when it was my turn they did saw the stamps from Armenia and started to ask questions. We both thought for a moment that they won't let me through, but at the end they only wanted to see some pictures.
So everything went good and we also had a short chat with the boarder control.

Late at night we did arrive in Ganja. And after a few minutes of walking and searching we found a place for the night. 

Also met some people, some of then were enjoying Ganja in Ganja.

Next day we did quite too early wake up from music and did check what was going on, close to our place there were some musicians playing and Bernd took the chance to join them, which was not a good idea at all.

I always thought that I'm a bad singer, but after listening to Bernds skills I would sound like a super star.
The guys got mad at him and were shouting at him and about to beat him. So he ran away, they did follow him for a rather long time and the place we ended up was not much better than this guys. We did arrive at at the puppet museum and Bernd was even more scared and kept on running.

Later I found him totally exhausted at the flag square. I was able to raise his mood by making some stupid jokes about the flagpole not having any flag. If we did have one in our bags we would have put a special and new one up there.

After getting back some energy we went to a local church. Which was quite different from the churches we have seen the last days. It was much more colourful in there.

A while later back in the city center we did buy something to eat and drink and did take a break in the sun. Here it is so much warmer than in Yerevan. 

Later on we had the idea to go to the cinema, but when we arrived there it seemed to be closed so we kept walking around and found a nice park to chill out.