Baku. Capital of Azerbaijan. Paris of the East

hey guys salaam welcome to cool vision hey guys where am i is this paris it looks like it but it's not we are in baku it's the capital of azerbaijan azerbaijan used to be one of the republics of the exusar but now it's been a sovereign country for over 30 years what is baku known for it's beautiful architecture it's got a lot of cats and it's a windy city baku's located on the southern shore of the abseron peninsula and it's on the caspian sea it's the largest city in the caucasus with a population of 2.3 million people in one of the most ancient cities in the east the core of the present-day baku is the old town known as cherisheher which literally means the inner city the old town is very nice with a maze of narrow alleys foreign embassies souvenir shops and restaurants the main attraction of the old city is the maiden tower a 12th century monument it's surrounded by different legends and it's still unclear what its purpose was inside there's a museum a collection of worms and a gift shop and of course you'll get a great view from the roof another significant structure is the sherwin-shark's palace a 15th century palace of the sherman shack dynasty one of the longest existing dynasties in the islamic world the cherisher is basically a city within a city in 2007 the old city had a population of about 3 000 people it was a popular location for filming many soviet movies during the soviet era as you walk around you'll see a lot of tea houses carpet merchants and bear in mind that the prices in the inner city are higher but there's so many nice restaurants here i think the most is here by johnny meal you can have it many of them are off the beaten path so you got to know how to find them let me show you one of them club restaurant live music great service and delicious cuisine action baku is located 28 meters below sea level how's that even possible it's possible because the caspian sea is also below sea level azerbaijan is an oil country digging for oil in baku began in 1846 around this time many businessmen from europe and the us including the noble brothers and the raw shields came here to get rich but they also brought with them european style and architecture thus the city earned the reputation as the paris of the east by the beginning of the 20th century half the oil sold in international markets was extracted in baku today petroleum is still the largest industry there are lots of international oil field service companies like haliburton baku is also a major seaport that is capable of handling 2 million tons of general and dry ball cargos per year there are many universities in the city including the big ones like baku state university and azerbaijan state economic university and around 5 000 international students tourism is growing and the city has hosted a lot of international events like the eurovision the european games and the number of formula one events baku city circuit around the old city has been in the formula one calendar since its 2016 debut let's take a look at some of the popular spots in the city fountain square fountain square is a popular place it's a public square where they have many public festivals shows and celebrations you'll find live music lots of restaurants and fountains of course it is always crowded in the evening nizami street or targova street meaning merchant street in russian is a large pedestrian and shopping street that runs through the city's downtown from west to east it's home to 19th century buildings street musicians and various outlets from banks to fashion stores the city of baku began reinventing itself as an ultra modern metropolis starting from the early 2000s and now the city has a lot of impressive architecture like the haider aliyah cultural center it's a museum of modern art designed by iraqi british architect zachar hadid inside you'll find various exhibitions about the history of azerbaijan as well as an automobile exhibition with cars driven by the former president hater aliyev it's the center of azerbaijani culture history music instruments and more noted for its distinctive architecture and flow and curved style that avoids sharp angles in front of the museum there are numerous green lawns where people can kick back play some sports and enjoy a great view of the city another unique structure is azerbaijan carpet museum in the shape of a folded carpet the museum was established in 1967 and it was initially located in the juma mosque in the inner city the collection of the museum includes over ten thousand items of ceramics metalworks jewelry and the largest collection of azerbaijani carpets of various weaving techniques and materials from different time periods the crescent hotel is definitely a structure that's getting a lot of attention it's part of a skyscraper complex that's been under construction for 12 years dennis mall is a mall that reminds me of sydney opera as you can tell the city of baku is pretty hilly there's a lot of nice real estate and like residential and commercial and there's also some iconic buildings like the flame towers behind me those are architectural masterpieces and of course the flame towers some of the most iconic structures of baku they represent flames of fire because this region is known as the land of facades of the three flame towers function as large display screens with the use of more than ten thousand high-power led luminaries but surprisingly there's not much to do here for tourists unless you're staying at fairmont hotel tower because the other two towers are nothing but offices and condominiums the tallest structure in azerbaijan is the baku tv tower its height is 310 meters and it has a restaurant on top if you want to eat with a good view baku has a lot of incredible architecture from different time periods look at the palace of happiness previously known as mukhtar of palace the 12th century romano tower built during the sherwin shocks reign the city hall building built in the baroque style in 1904 nizami museum of azerbaijan literature a hundoff national library azerbaijan state philharmonic hall and armenian church built in 1869 it's probably the only standing armenian monument left in baku and of course baku has a lot of beautiful mosques like hater mosque tazzapir mosque and the bibi haybat mosque which is a recreation of the 13th century mosque that was destroyed by the bolsheviks let's visit tazapir mosque there's a number of ancient hamams in baku dating back to the 12th 14th and 18th centuries baku boulevard that's my favorite part of the city it's a pedestrian promenade that was established in 1909 which runs parallel to baku's seafront there's an amusement park a ferris wheel known as the eye of baku a yacht club musical fountains and lots of very nice outdoor restaurants and even a minute venice with gondolas how cool is that let's go for a ride the ticket is actually less than two dollars baku boulevard is a great place to go jogging or cycling or walking your dog i wanted to share my morning jogging routine so peaceful and quiet and right there is the sea they did an impressive job on the landscaping bringing plants from all around the world like these baobobs that they brought all the way from argentina hey guys and welcome to phoenix arizona but in fact we're still in baku and they did a fantastic job decorating the city waterfront promenade by planting a lot of exotic plants like cacti i used to go jogging here a lot and this thing would always freak me out right here on baku boulevard you can also visit the mugam center of azerbaijan we can learn more about mogam genre of azerbaijan music nefchiller avenue which means the avenue of oil workers is the central avenue that runs along the waterfront boulevard and has an abundance of boutiques and high-end stores baku has cool taxi cabs these predominantly black and purple cabs were introduced in 2011. you only find these cabs in two cities in the world that is london and baku you can ride in style but they are more expensive so if you want to save some money you can actually use bolt app to get a ride it's really affordable when it comes to public transportation baku has a network of buses and a subway system that was opened in 1967 and now it has three lines and 25 stations a single ride for metro and buses is just 18 cents there's also the bakufu nicular they can take you to the flame towers and the highland park where you can get some of the best views of the city baku is a large city and traffic gets congested during rush hours parking can be a huge problem also especially around the old town baku has a modern airport that was designed by turkish firm i really enjoyed the famous cocoons that is wooden pods on the top level most common destinations are turkish cities moscow and dubai the official language in the country is azerbaijani but i was surprised that russian is also widely spoken and the younger generation speaks good english we'll see a lot of signs in russian modern ones and from the soviet days like this sign a revolutionary figure that used to live here in 1918 what about crime is baku a safe city before i came here i knew very little and i was under the impression that anything outside of the city center is going to have a lot of crime and it's going to be nothing but slums well let's see if it's true let's visit one of the rundown areas in the city wow i'm in this hilly part of baku and these streets are narrow looks like favelas these are old buildings but i'm pretty sure it's not dangerous um uh this area currently is actually highly demanded by developers so maybe a few years from now it's going to be bought out and replaced by modern condos and hotels and in the distance you see flame towers so they always get a good view before coming to baku i heard a lot of ridiculous information about the city like it's only the facade that is nice the central part but then once you get out of the central part you're going to end up in slums where you can get like robbed it's going to be dirty well i haven't found any slums yet there's some you know some run down houses but you find them in every city right and i'm being serious i have not seen any drunk people i have not seen one single fight on the street so according to nambio baku is much safer than istanbul sydney london or berlin police presence is huge and lots of cctv cameras alcohol consumption is low if you go to a local bar don't be surprised to see people sitting at a table drinking tea and playing chess what are the typical residential areas like there are many nice neighborhoods in the city like this neighborhood around the zoo it has a pond and a lot of green areas this neighborhood is around bilisi avenue and it's a typical congested neighborhood of high rises another popular place to live in the city is around the state statistics committee this is where i ran into an american couple so let's talk to them where do you come from come from the united states st louis missouri good stuff and what are you doing in baku uh i well we just got married this is my wife fidon we met in the united states and she's from here so we've been hanging out with her family just getting to know each other and yeah i'm still so new here so it's really nice just being a tourist in the city walking around you know i want to learn the language so i can communicate with others is there anything that foreigners like need to know before coming here don't don't smile at people you don't know yes seriously in the united states what's gonna happen in the united states we smile at everybody but apparently here people think that's like very bizarre why are you smiling at me yes what's the one food people have to try first they come in all shapes and sizes it can be really big or really small yeah that's that's my favorite food here yes okay so you guys have a great time thanks for answering my question the city is very patriotic you'll see national flags flying everywhere some inner yards can seem a little dilapidated and chaotic sometimes people would extend their balconies in violation of the regulations at the same time there are many new nice residential areas being built like baku white city which kind of reminds me of paris what do you think how much is a one bedroom apartment here it's around eighty four thousand dollars this project has been designed by atkins and foster and partners knows funny thing is he used to be called baku black city because this area was predominantly industrial and oil related but now it's these nice low rise apartment buildings and all together 50 000 people will be living here in azerbaijan people love shopping at the local grocery markets and baku is no exception it has a very nice grocery market called yashil bazar which means green market we can buy anything from meat and veggies to spices in pahlava there's also good choice of desserts like turkish delight or lecum with different ingredients this is saffron and pomegranate in the vicinity of the city there are lots of places to visit like mud volcanoes salt lakes and natural gas fires like yen or doug which literally means a burning mountain i'm at a place called yanner doug and it's a natural gas fire that's been here for who knows how long but it was only discovered in 1950 by a shepherd who accidentally lit it atashka of baku or a fire temple of baku is a castle-like religious temple that was used as a hindu sikh and zoroastrian place of worship baku was a focal point for traders from all across the world during the early modern period indian traders built their tesco baku during the 17th and 18th centuries while baku is the capital of an oil country the typical salaries are probably not going to impress you they range from 300 to 500 a month what are the best paying jobs in baku they are in the oil and gas sector government and foreign companies a taxi driver told me that he makes around 30 bucks a day and around 50 a day in the summertime but you can tell by the average salary and the cars that you see on the streets that there's an obvious income disparity there are a lot of nice cars on the streets but the ultimate dream car for baku seems to be the mercedes g wagon i've seen a wedding where they rented around 20 wide g wagons to impress the crowd baku is a large city but it has a lot of parks where you can get away from the summer heat one of my favorites is philharmonic garden this park was established in 1830 and this old-fashioned fountain was designed by a french company tourism is growing and i met a lot of visitors from india pakistan and russia let's see what they have to say hey guys how are you doing yeah i'm good how are you doing doing good where are you from i'm from pakistan well that's cool yeah are you here on vacation yeah actually i came here for a business but now i'm returning to pakistan yeah yeah what do you think about bhakto people are very hospital they love visitors especially the pakistanis don't mind but they don't like russia that much food is amazing here a lot of you can say places seashore here you can go on a cruise baku is love just pakis love overall you can say for many countries azerbaijan offers a visa-free stay for up to three months very convenient baku is not chicago but they call it the win the city also you wonder why well let me show you i nearly had my car blown off the road once scary this car just got turned over sometimes too much money can make you do crazy things when the oil prices were skyrocketing baku wanted to get into the race of building the tallest skyscraper in the world azerbaijan tower and also the hazar islands a 100 billion dollar city of 41 artificial islands 25 kilometers south of baku but these plants were put in hold for now baku is impressive no doubt but every city is its people first and foremost so let's talk to some of my friends and see what they have to say about living here so i've made some friends in baku and ihan is one of them hello hey han what are some pros and cons of living in baku probably one of the cons is the weather but for me it's a pro because i love the weather we have here it's cold and windy uh also i can say that people here it's like it goes for pros for people who come here because there's a word uh gonar pervert we like guests to meet new people from different countries but honestly for me as a i live in baku i don't see that much towards myself we don't have too much entertainment we have like main places as malls and parks and every it's like small amount of them around 510 and everyone know them and you will go there and see same people because no other places to go but we have uh use that tries to go for like now it's season summer comes and they will uh they're doing festivals it's like literally gathering people from the city and going to a countryside for example guba shamaha how widespread is russian and english in the city when i was studying in university my bachelor degree i got it in english like it's french has orbited university and they uh they told us uh in english everything besides french language it was in french but now for example i study in uh baku engineering university and they pretend to teach in english but most of lessons are in other originally because our teachers are not that good that goes for cons now let me ask you about your favorite places in the city um i used to have a lot of them like bars pubs rock concert and i like them but now the only safe place i have is this place it's called salam cinema so i'm cinema they have workshops here places to do art and it's absolutely free you just come and do stuff here okay hun take me to your co-working place the whole place is a big co-working place but every room is a little co-working place for wow group of people this building is about to collapse oh that's your poor wow what is it about it's about how freedom is a woman i'll teach you man this building was about to be demolished it actually officially doesn't exist they have three counters throughout the whole building wow and whoever once comes and plays we have one guy who comes and over you know how to play plus no i don't like this right now i'm doing poetry evenings because culture in baku for use and it's in really bad situation and as a hero i came and declared myself poet and started doing these events we we started like in december and we already gathered around 80 people for one event that's like really good for us do you see yourself living in baku for the rest of your life do you have other plans i plan to leave this country sadly i i'm really disappointed in people here like this people who are the same age with me who for two years is like literally the whole process of disappointment i've got from people and also i have a obligatory military service that's why i plan to leave this concert until i can return probably 36 that's when you're you're not uh hello hello what's your name my name is are you a student yes i am student and and what are you studying i study in economics economics and when you graduate what do you want to be i want actually i want to be a videographer studying economics to be a videographer yes what do you like about living in baku uh i like uh to discover new places and i should vibe videos for them oh that's cool that's cool okay thanks for watching this video guys i hope you enjoyed it tell me what you think about baku in the comment section i'll see you in my next one you