Hello!
It’s a funny word, "cocoon", don't you think?
I ask that because I’m sitting in one now.
Today is one of those brutal travelling days that your mother warned you about ... or at least, she would've done if she'd been a hippie backpacker in the 60s, who'd spent several years trekking through Asia and Africa and possibly some time on a kibbutz. If not, then she probably focused her warnings on other stuff like running with scissors.
But anyway, it is (brutal, I mean).
But anyway, it is (brutal, I mean).
I only managed about two hours' sleep last night, and the journey started at 6:15 this morning when I left my flat in Almaty. There’s a hotel room in Athens with my name on it, but that room (and more importantly, the bed it hopefully contains) is still more than ten hours away – four and a half of flying, an hour on the Athens metro, and about five hours of sitting around in airports like this one in Baku, Azerbaijan.
So far, my five-hour transit stop at Heydar Aliyev airport has been about as much fun as a transit stop can be – which is to say “not that much, really, but there have at least been a few entertaining moments to leaven the boredom”.
The first of those moments happened shortly after we landed, while I was unloading my pockets to walk through the security screening thingie. Inspecting my minutiae, one of the staff there noticed with some delight that I had a zvjozdochka in amongst my keys and loose change.
The word zvjozdochka translates as sth like ‘tiny little star’. Ex-Soviet peoples use it to refer to a miniature tin of kampfa (a.k.a. 'tiger balm'), which comes emblazoned with a bright yellow Communist star on the front.
When she saw it, the security guard let out a little gasp, grabbed the tin and opened it. She held it up to her nose and inhaled, savouring the kampfa smell. And I got the distinct sense that this was a nostalgic moment – as if the zvjozdochka was something she remembered from her childhood but hadn’t seen for a long time, and taking in its aroma was sending her back in time.
That in itself fascinated me, because the zvjozdochka is one of those things that’s absolutely ubiquitous in the ex-Soviet countries I’m familiar with – especially in Ukraine, where babushkas sell them in the street. In my mind, it almost qualifies as a symbol of those countries.
But Azerbaijan, since it frantically boarded the escape pod and jettisoned itself out of the imploding USSR in 1991, has turned more towards the Turkic world. It was a natural move – both Turkey and Azerbaijan are Eurasian Muslim nations, and their languages are closely related (the Azeris speak a language often called ‘Azeri Turkish’, and just reading signs in the airport was enough to see the striking similarities). I suspect there may also be a kind of ‘enemy of my enemy’ type bond between them, given that both countries have what you might euphemistically call a 'rocky relationship' with neighbouring Armenia.
It's also done better economically than most of its former ‘sister republics’. To an extent, I imagine this has made it possible for the Azeris to throw off the old trappings of Soviethood – and perhaps the poor zvjozdochka has been a casualty of that process.
Anyway ... I offered the little star as a gift to the security guard, but she declined with a smile, even after my second attempt.
I guess her unwillingness to accept gifts from passengers in the security screening area could be seen as a good sign for Azerbaijan, too :-)
I then arrived in the transit lounge, where my first concern was to find the smoking area. After that, I took a wander to acquaint myself with the space where I was going to be spending the next four hours. It was then that I spotted the words “cocoon area” on a sign, right under “toilets” and “worship room”, with an arrow pointing diagonally left.
Obviously, this was a sign that I had to follow.
A minute later, I was surrounded by these rather unusual things:
Basically, what you've got here is a bunch of two-storey oversized cubby houses, a couple of them with cafes or shops inside and most with seating upstairs and downstairs. They're in a rather large hall with an ornate patterned skylight, a few scattered trees and some songbirds.
Now, I'm not going to say this is the greatest architectural masterpiece of our age, but I do think it's quite nifty. When you've got an airport building, you can either make it a series of bland rectangular halls, or you can, y'know, do something interesting.
Obviously the second one is preferable. And the cocoons are kinda cool – they're playful, 'organic' in style, and interestingly, slightly Islamic-looking at the same time.
As it happens, I've had several conversations this year with people who wanted to attack modern art, architecture etc. etc. I always find this a tiresome thing to talk about, because I'm a fan of both classical and modern architectural styles. I get tired of defending the latter from this weird belief that a building can only be 'beautiful' if it was built (or looks like it was built) more than 100 years ago.
When it comes to visual art, the conversation is even worse; here I'm a committed modernist, with zero love for, say, classical painting, or impressionism, or pretty much anything that came before the surrealist movement. None of it speaks to me, or ever has.
In fact, if you want to have an argument with me, here's a tip: just repeat the line which appears in nearly every media story about modern art. You know, the one about how today's artists are talentless wankers, incapable of doing anything apart from painting a few black squares on a canvas, writing some meaningless nonsense about it and selling it for a million dollars.
I'll tell you, in turn, that you're doing the work of the Dark Side by encouraging people to remain relentlessly conservative and literalist in how they view the world. I'll then go on to explain that I find Monet less interesting than most traffic signs, that I simply could not care less about van Gogh's use of light and shade, and that looking at a Cezanne painting reminds me of that moment when the hypnotist clicks his fingers and you immediately fall into a deep sleep*.
Mission Accomplished: the argument is on ;-)
But I don't feel argumentative today. More than anything, I feel sleepy! So I'm just going to quietly appreciate Baku airport's modest example of the joys of modern design, meditating on the fact that when you let a modern architect off the leash, you don't always get the functional concrete monstrosities that people complain about. Sometimes you get big fun coccoons :-)
Btw, the other cool thing about today is that it's the first of 58. I'll be visiting half a dozen countries, working in two of them, staying with friends in another, and no doubt collecting some tales to tell along the way. So in all likelihood, I'll be ranting wildly over the next 7-8 weeks.
Hope you'll join me for some, if not all, of the journey :-)
Bye!
(* Notice, though, that I didn't say any of those people were bad. They clearly weren't. I only said that I don't like them, which is a key difference between me and most 'anti-modernist' folk.)
So far, my five-hour transit stop at Heydar Aliyev airport has been about as much fun as a transit stop can be – which is to say “not that much, really, but there have at least been a few entertaining moments to leaven the boredom”.
 |
Zvjozdochka
(larger than actual size)
|
The word zvjozdochka translates as sth like ‘tiny little star’. Ex-Soviet peoples use it to refer to a miniature tin of kampfa (a.k.a. 'tiger balm'), which comes emblazoned with a bright yellow Communist star on the front.
When she saw it, the security guard let out a little gasp, grabbed the tin and opened it. She held it up to her nose and inhaled, savouring the kampfa smell. And I got the distinct sense that this was a nostalgic moment – as if the zvjozdochka was something she remembered from her childhood but hadn’t seen for a long time, and taking in its aroma was sending her back in time.
That in itself fascinated me, because the zvjozdochka is one of those things that’s absolutely ubiquitous in the ex-Soviet countries I’m familiar with – especially in Ukraine, where babushkas sell them in the street. In my mind, it almost qualifies as a symbol of those countries.
But Azerbaijan, since it frantically boarded the escape pod and jettisoned itself out of the imploding USSR in 1991, has turned more towards the Turkic world. It was a natural move – both Turkey and Azerbaijan are Eurasian Muslim nations, and their languages are closely related (the Azeris speak a language often called ‘Azeri Turkish’, and just reading signs in the airport was enough to see the striking similarities). I suspect there may also be a kind of ‘enemy of my enemy’ type bond between them, given that both countries have what you might euphemistically call a 'rocky relationship' with neighbouring Armenia.
It's also done better economically than most of its former ‘sister republics’. To an extent, I imagine this has made it possible for the Azeris to throw off the old trappings of Soviethood – and perhaps the poor zvjozdochka has been a casualty of that process.
Anyway ... I offered the little star as a gift to the security guard, but she declined with a smile, even after my second attempt.
I guess her unwillingness to accept gifts from passengers in the security screening area could be seen as a good sign for Azerbaijan, too :-)
I then arrived in the transit lounge, where my first concern was to find the smoking area. After that, I took a wander to acquaint myself with the space where I was going to be spending the next four hours. It was then that I spotted the words “cocoon area” on a sign, right under “toilets” and “worship room”, with an arrow pointing diagonally left.
Obviously, this was a sign that I had to follow.
A minute later, I was surrounded by these rather unusual things:
 |
Cocoon Cafe
Heydar Aliyev Airport. Baku Azerbaijan, 20.06.16
|
Basically, what you've got here is a bunch of two-storey oversized cubby houses, a couple of them with cafes or shops inside and most with seating upstairs and downstairs. They're in a rather large hall with an ornate patterned skylight, a few scattered trees and some songbirds.
Now, I'm not going to say this is the greatest architectural masterpiece of our age, but I do think it's quite nifty. When you've got an airport building, you can either make it a series of bland rectangular halls, or you can, y'know, do something interesting.
Obviously the second one is preferable. And the cocoons are kinda cool – they're playful, 'organic' in style, and interestingly, slightly Islamic-looking at the same time.
As it happens, I've had several conversations this year with people who wanted to attack modern art, architecture etc. etc. I always find this a tiresome thing to talk about, because I'm a fan of both classical and modern architectural styles. I get tired of defending the latter from this weird belief that a building can only be 'beautiful' if it was built (or looks like it was built) more than 100 years ago.
When it comes to visual art, the conversation is even worse; here I'm a committed modernist, with zero love for, say, classical painting, or impressionism, or pretty much anything that came before the surrealist movement. None of it speaks to me, or ever has.
In fact, if you want to have an argument with me, here's a tip: just repeat the line which appears in nearly every media story about modern art. You know, the one about how today's artists are talentless wankers, incapable of doing anything apart from painting a few black squares on a canvas, writing some meaningless nonsense about it and selling it for a million dollars.
I'll tell you, in turn, that you're doing the work of the Dark Side by encouraging people to remain relentlessly conservative and literalist in how they view the world. I'll then go on to explain that I find Monet less interesting than most traffic signs, that I simply could not care less about van Gogh's use of light and shade, and that looking at a Cezanne painting reminds me of that moment when the hypnotist clicks his fingers and you immediately fall into a deep sleep*.
Mission Accomplished: the argument is on ;-)
 |
Empty Nest
Heydar Aliyev Airport. Baku Azerbaijan, 20.06.16
|
But I don't feel argumentative today. More than anything, I feel sleepy! So I'm just going to quietly appreciate Baku airport's modest example of the joys of modern design, meditating on the fact that when you let a modern architect off the leash, you don't always get the functional concrete monstrosities that people complain about. Sometimes you get big fun coccoons :-)
Btw, the other cool thing about today is that it's the first of 58. I'll be visiting half a dozen countries, working in two of them, staying with friends in another, and no doubt collecting some tales to tell along the way. So in all likelihood, I'll be ranting wildly over the next 7-8 weeks.
Hope you'll join me for some, if not all, of the journey :-)
Bye!
(* Notice, though, that I didn't say any of those people were bad. They clearly weren't. I only said that I don't like them, which is a key difference between me and most 'anti-modernist' folk.)
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