A day in my life: always getting lost

So I figure I should tell the epic story of how lost I got one day and how I got inspired to name this blog (all thanks to Liz Rig, of course). My sense of direction is less than sub-par.

A fellow Fulbrighter invited me to meet some other ex-pats in Baku on Friday night. He told me to meet at this big bank next to Heydar Aliyev park at 6:30. I knew what this park was and I had even walked around it the night before, so I figured hey, I can get there right? I wasn’t quite sure of the location so I googled it and it turns out I can just take the bus down and then walk a couple blocks and it should be right there. I even consulted a map and there were little pictures of fountains so I was really quite pleased with myself for figuring out where this bank was after 4 days. I should have listened to the little nagging voice in the back of my mind because I could have sworn the bank was northwest of my apartment, not completely north. I should have also realized that this town has an obsession with fountains and there’s more than one park with fountains and a bank. I also should I have realized that there were many possible locations to pop up on google when you type in “central bank”.

So I board the bus and give myself 30 minutes to get there because of the insufferable Baku traffic and my general tendency to get lost. So I’m bopping along down the sidewalks and I turn where I think I’m supposed to and then as I continue walking I start to realize with a sinking feeling… that this not where I’m supposed to be. Wherever I am now I can see the Caspian Sea and from the Merkez Bank the sea is not even remotely visible. So it’s about 6:35 now so I send my friend this apologetic text saying I got super confused and I’m now lost. So I decide the best thing to do is stay put and wait for him to text me back.

I’m looking around for landmarks to try to figure out where I am not I’m on some nameless, looks-like-every-other-street-in-Baku street with tons of construction. The only thing I do seem to see is the Ministry of Internal Affairs with scowling guards carrying around guns. Perfect. The worst possible place I have decided to plant myself is outside and Azerbaijani Ministry with guards with guns.

I throw in the towel and eventually call the guy I’m trying to meet up with and I end up literally doing about 4 180’s on the sidewalk since I’m so confused in trying to tell him where I am. I tell him I’m near ‘the big government building’ (descriptive, Anna) so he says ‘ok, walk away from it, toward the Hilton’. Then I realize I’m past the Hilton so I start walking toward it. So he tells me ‘no, continue on away from the Promenade’ so I walk back the other way. This goes on for 10 minutes. He says he’ll start walking to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to find me. Turns out there’s two. Oops. So then he tells me to just hop on my trusty bus 288 since that will bring me to the bank. By the way- the bus 288 runs past my house so I could have just avoided this whole mess in the first place. Yikes.

So I walk down to the Promenade to attempt to find bus 288. I see about 5 since they run every 30 seconds but then I notice that the traffic on the Promenade is at a dead stop. So I start to walk up to see if there’s a reason. Oh right, the President is going somewhere so all the traffic was stopped. Then I start to quasi get my bearings and I realize if I just walk up this street (that’s completely closed to traffic) I can catch bus 288 since it will eventually come down this way. So I start to power walk up the street and a caravan of black SUV’s drive past me. My first glimpse of the President! Apparently they use black Suburbans in every country, not just the United States. Once the President is through this means traffic can resume again, however my plan is foiled. I was counting on just waving down the bus but since they had all been stopped in traffic so long no one wanted to stop. So at this point I have to double back and go BACK to the Promenade about 4 blocks and then go to another bus stop where I know the buses are actually stopping and get on one. I finally do this, it’s about 7:30, an hour after I was supposed to meet my friend, and it’s one of those hot Baku days where everyone is just miserably hot and I’m even more so in a black dress with my hair down. Woof.

I finally get on the damn bus, and then realize the kicker… if I had just continued up the street I was on when the President had drove past, I was about 3 blocks from the bank where I was originally trying to get the whole time. I nearly gouged my eyes out after this realization.

I’m sure this will happen again. And soon. But an upside to all this is that I’ve finally figured out that area of town. And I will never get lost trying to get the Merkez bank/ Aliyev park again.