Day 8 Back to Azerbaijan

Day 8 June 4, 2007

Tbilisi-Qazax-Ganja

Our train rolled into Tbilisi around 8:00. It had been a very long night and we were still tired, hungry and in need of a restroom. We decided to head to the Old City and find an Irish pub that we thought also served breakfast. After taking many wrong turns and wandering around the city we found it-but it was closed. We opted to go back to the main commercial street and go to the old stand-by with convenient operating hours, predictable menu choices and clean bathrooms, McDonalds. However my bladder was screaming, and luckily on our way we found an open café serving breakfast so we stopped in there for the first course of the day and the toilet facilities.
We continued on to McDonalds for more of the same- and an even nicer restroom where after eating again we could actually ‘freshen up’ which meant brushing our teeth!
We had a bit of time to kill and neither of us wanted our vacation to end. We walked back down the main drag and went into an English Bookstore where we wiled away a couple of hours browsing the over-priced literary selections. We left empty-handed not wanting to pay the prices or weigh down our packs anymore. We finally decided we should start our trek back into Azerbaijan. Wiser this time around, we simply reversed our entrance procedure. We found a mini-bus going to Rustavi- where, despite a slight wrong turn, we ended up at the Red Bridge mini-bus stop in the city center. We claimed the front two seats and in half an hour we were on our way to the border. The border crossing was uneventful. Back in Azerbaijan we found a mini-bus going to Qazax and in no time we were on another mini-bus from Qazax to Ganja. We had claimed the front seat in this mini-bus as well, which was a quite risque because women are unofficially not allowed to sit in the front seat in Azerbaijan. We didn't care and we spent the majority of the ride fighting with the passengers in the back who wanted us to close our window because they were afraid the wind it caused would kill them all. It was over 80 degrees outside, we were NOT shutting the window! Welcome back to Azerbaijan!And to make our welcome home even better, about halfway into the ride the mini-bus broke down and we had to wait for a half an hour or so for a new one to come and take us the rest of the way.

At about 6:30 we finally arrived in Ganja. On our way to my apartment we ran across two of my students. Much as I like them it had been nice to be anonymous for a week. The break from the constant ‘fame’ we have here had been really, really nice and to be plunged back into it was a bit of a shock. We wanted to savor our adventure for just a little longer. Back at my apartment we downloaded the travel pictures and went off to our friend Carol’s for dinner and a recount of our adventures. Our vacation was really over.