Notes on Baku - part 1.3

Inside of a Baku underground train (from Wikipedia)

See part 1.1 here, and part 1.2 here.

Intro from part 1.1:

Notes on Baku (Bakü Notları) is a blog that I've read some three or four times in its entirety, a blog written by a Turkish guy that seems to have spent some amount of time there due to work. I don't know anything about him except that he has written a surprisingly detailed blog on the city, and so I'd like to bring some more attention to his blog while making the information more widely available. The first post to be translated is here, and it's from November 29, 2005.

See his blog for images of Azerbaijan as well; I won't be posting them here.

As always, I'll try my best but only guarantee 0% accuracy.

This is the last part of the guy's first post. The next few are about the language and culture so I'm thinking of skipping over to the post about the Caspian Sea, since that's more interesting from a geopolitical perspective.

Bakü'nün deprem bölgesi olduğunu duyduğumda, çevrede yükselen bu 15-20 katlı binalara biraz da endişeyle bakarak 1999 yılında yerle yeksan olan Marmara bölgesini hatırlamadım değil. Şahsen görüştüğümüz bazı ilgililer de bu konuda pek iç açıcı olmayan bilgiler verdiler. Maalesef bu ülkede kalite bilinci, kurala, nizama uyma gibi şeyler henüz istenen düzeye çıkmış değil. Dolayısıyla yüksek binalar sadece görüntü kirliliği değil sağlamlıklarıyla da ileride problem oluşturabilir.

When I heard that Baku was located in an earthquake zone I looked with some worry at these growig 15-20 storey buildings increasing in the environment, and couldn't but remember the Marmara region levelled in 1999. (Note: The earthquake at that time was centered on a place called Sakarya.) Some interested parties we met personally gave some very not at all heartwarming information on this. Unfortunately, in this country things like quality consciousness, regulations and organization have still not reached the required level. Due to this the large buildings are not just visual pollution, but can also create problems in the future with their soundness.

Bakü'de ulaşım imkanları şimdilik yeterli denebilir. Şehri boydan boya çaprazlama geçen iki büyük metro hattı mevcut. Günde yarım milyona yakın insan metroyla taşınıyor. Bakü metrosu 1960'ların sonunda tamamlanmış.

The communications here in Baku at present can be said to be sufficient. There are two large metro lines crossing from one end of the city to the other. Each day almost half a million people are carried about by the metro. The Baku metro was apparently finished near the end of the 1960s.


Edit: Whoops, it's getting late. I'm going to have to do the rest in part 1.4 tomorrow.