Our walk to work

I've been wanting to take some photos of our walk to work for a while now, and I finally got the chance to go out with the camera this morning. If you've seen the adverts on TV or photos on the internet, what you are seeing is the pretty Baku: the Flame towers, the beautiful plaster cast facades on the buildings, the lights all around the bay. But when you go just a few blocks away from the Boulevard that runs along the harbour, you'll see a different side; no pavements or street lights, curtains for front doors, washing hanging off the power lines. This is the real Baku.

 

When we first moved to our apartment complex I was almost scared of walking outside of the gates - to me, the streets looked like how I imagined a war zone would look.

 

Over the past few months though I've become oblivious to it. I don't notice the piles of rubble or the desks and chairs that old men sit on by the side of the road, or even when the butcher is hosing the blood off the path where he's just slaughtered the cow right in front of us.

 

So I thought I'd photograph it now so that in a few years to come we could look back on the photos and think about how lucky we are to have street lights and pavements and not have to walk past dead cows each day.