QAX

I admit to being a human who is mourning the loss of the familiar. Immersed in a bounty of unusual and exotic, I miss my "usual". I don’t like this  side of me. We are in a city with everything we could need - much we don’t and most we could live without. I'll get over it... but sometimes I close my eyes and dream of breakfast in the sun at Choice City, pizza at Caninos and the smiling faces of friends. I can live without the former, but find no replacement for the latter. Friends - we miss you and your familiar faces!  

 

I spent a few days in the western city of Qax (GOCK), a 6 hour drive from Baku on the way to Georgia. We left the busy city, through the dusty brown flat outer ring and started climbing into the mountains. It felt good…normal....to be heading up where the air is thin.

Discovered a new but familiar food with a name I can't remember – dried mashed fruit, sweet, sour, apple, apricot, cherry, feijoa…and always with happy hawkers trying to get me to purchase just one more thing, lady.

This looks like a table in the middle of nowhere and it is. Its common along the roadways out of town and around the country to find restaurants that are just tables by the side of the road with pretty plastic tablecloths and no one to be seen. But if you sit down at one of these tables, someone eventually comes and brings you a samovar of tea, tandir bread and maybe dushbara, a dumpling soup or gutab filled with meat or cheese that looks alot like a quesadilla. Whether you like it or not, be served fresh tomatoes and cucumbers!

We had time to stop and visit an old Georgian church on the top of a hill near Qax.

Downtown Qax is being revitalized a bit, but original areas remain where old men play dominoes, drink tea and sell watermelons.