Travelling Around Britain and the World

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

Baku (2), The Qobustan Petroglyphs and the Old City: Part 2 of From the Caspian to the Black Sea

Baku

Baku to Qobustan

Azerbaijan

After a restful night and a good breakfast we set off with Yassim and a new driver who introduced himself as Togrul on an hour's journey south from Baku along the Caspian coast towards the small town of Qobustan.

The Azerbaijan Parliament, Baku

Northern Baku is the city’s industrial area (‘the Black City’). In the south is the almost circular Old Town and above that, on a low hill, is the nation’s modern administrative centre. Having rounded the hill we soon left the city, but that did not mean we were in for a scenic drive.

We did see a fine new mosque built over an earlier shrine destroyed in Soviet times, but after that we passed a shipyard assembling derricks for the off-shore oil industry, a concrete factory spreading its chalky unpleasantness across the countryside and a large facility owned by Halliburton. The flat, arid scrubland itself is ugly, and everything done to it or on it leaves a scar visible for miles.

With no desire to linger, we moved quickly through this landscape on a well-made and well maintained six lane highway.

The arid plane stretches away to the Caspian Sea

Looking inland as we approached Qobustan we could see two flat topped hills and a third conical one with apparently deeply eroded sides. Yassim called them mountains, though none were much more than 50 metres high - the Caspian Sea is 27 metres below sea level so the 'summits' were barely above sea level.

The conical mound is a mud volcano formed when methane under pressure forces its way to the surface through a layer containing water. The eruption throws up mud rather than lava and what I had taken for erosion were actually streams of mud. Azerbaijan has some 400 mud volcanoes, roughly half the world’s total.

The other two mountains are steep-sided, flat-topped benches about a kilometre long. They, and a third hidden behind them, make up the Qobustan archaeological site.

The Qobustan Museum and the Petroglyphs

Turning off before we reached the town we headed for the new museum at the base of the southernmost 'mountain'. Stepping out of our air-conditioned car into the growing heat of the morning, we were hit by a wind as hot as a hair dryer howling across the scrubby plain.

The Qobustan Museum

The 'mountains' are covered by 6000 petroglyphs and the little museum did an excellent job explaining when they were put there (between 5 and 40 thousand years ago), what they represent, what the area was like at the time, and how to see them - scratches in the rock tens of thousands of years old can be easily overlooked.

Group of men, Qobustan Petroglyphs

A touch screen allowed us to whiz the tortoise of time through the last fifty thousand years and watch the landscape changing. Today’s arid plain has sometimes been green savannah while at other times the waters of the Caspian have lapped the base of the mountains; at the end of the ice-age the hills briefly became islands.

Deer - or mountain goat - Qobustan petroglyphs

The petroglyphs are of men and women, boats and animals - foxes, deer, aurochs and later bulls, which were of great significance to them. The most recent carvings, dating from the Bronze Age, show domesticated horses and cattle - at least that is the interpretation of what appear to be ropes round their necks.

Pork scratchings, Qobustan Petroglyphs

The museum was well organised, the exhibits thoughtfully laid out and the route through clearly marked. Technology was cleverly used either to give a greater depth of understanding or to catch a child’s imagination. It was a model of what such museums should be, though it was not overwhelmed with custom – Azerbaijan sees far fewer tourists than it deserves.

Equipped with the means to interpret what we saw, we took the road up the 'mountain'. The summit is a chaotic landscape of windswept, shattered rocks and collapsed caves.

Chaotic landscape of shattered rocks, Qobustan

The path is well marked and Yassim knew where to direct our eyes. We saw groups of men, goats and a boat that Thor Hayerdahl (whose name will crop up again) thought looked so much like Viking boats that he conjectured that the proto-Norsemen had found their way to Scandinavia from the Caspian. There were carvings of women, too, reduced to their basics, breasts, pregnant bellies and wide hips, apparently heads, arms and legs are not important. Lynne pointed out that as interpreting these petroglyphs involved a measure of guesswork - none of those who made the carvings had been consulted - perhaps they were not representations of women at all. Fair point, I thought. [In a Georgian restaurant some days later we noticed a small wineskin - no head, truncated limbs, belly swollen. It made us wonder]

One of the boats that so excited Thor Hayerdahl, Qobustan

We saw many dozens of petroglyphs of different ages, some clearly visible, others harder to make out. We also saw holes in the rock thought to have been made for cooking. The holes were filled with water, hot rocks lobbed in and food boiled.

Neolithic cooking pots, Qobustan

The trip back might have been tedious but neither of us had fully recovered from the flight so we both nodded off.

Martyr's Alley, Baku

Back in Baku we drove up the hill and stopped by Martyr’s Alley. The events of the 19th/20th of January 1990 are not well known in the UK but in the dying days of its empire the Soviet Union declared a state of emergency in Azerbaijan. The Popular Front responded by imposing roadblocks around Baku which Soviet troops broke through, killing some 130 unarmed protestors. The Russians claim the first shots came from the Azerbaijan side, but this is hotly disputed. What Yassim did not tell us was that the state of emergency was declared to stop a pogrom against Baku’s Armenian residents which had already killed 90. What the Armenians forgot to mention when we were there in 2003, was that the pogrom was provoked by Armenia granting citizenship to ethnic Armenian residents in the Azeri district of Nagorno Karabakh. What the Azeris forget to mention..... and so on in a time honoured chicken and egg argument. The resulting Azerbaijan-Armenia war ended in 1994 with Karabakh a de facto independent state (recognised only by fellow unrecognised breakaways South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria), and left Azerbaijan with the feeling that it had been hard done by. Negotiations – and occasional shootings - continue.

Some in Azerbaijan believe that Armenia only exists because Russia wanted a buffer between the Azeris and their Turkish cousins. Some in Armenia believe that most of western Turkey should be theirs. Having enjoyed the hospitality of both countries, I have no wish to take sides.

Martyr's Alley, Baku

The 130 who died in Black January are commemorated with names and photographs in black marble. Martyr’s Alley ends at an eternal flame commemorating the Azeris who died in two world wars as well as in the Armenian war.

Eternal Flame, Martyr's Alley, Baku

The Flame Towers and the Eurovision Song Contest, Baku

Less controversially, the memorial has excellent views up to the ‘flame towers’ (in the Land of Fire what else should buildings portray?) at the highest point of the city,.....

Flame Towers, Baku

... and down to the almost circular old city and right across the modern city curling round its bay.

The Old City (the surrounded circle of low-rise buildings, left of photo)
and the green Boulevard Park beside the water

At the southern end, on an artificial peninsula, is the Crystal Hall, built to stage the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. The event maybe more a festival of tosh than a cultural highlight but to Azerbaijan, not long independent and a relative newcomer to the community of nations, winning in 2011 and being the host in 2012 gave a welcome feeling of belonging.

The Crystal Hall, Baku, Venue of the 2012 Eurovision song contest

As at Qobustan, the view was accompanied by a strong wind. Not for nothing is Baku known as the Windy City. If I ever visit Chicago (and currently it is not a priority) I will be able to comment on their relative windiness.

Lynne and Yassim in the pedestrian area near Fountain Square

Lunch on Fountain Square, Baku

Walking down the hill to Fountain Square which is considered the centre of modern Baku, we lunched in a basement restaurant amid traditional Azeri decor. Wanting something light I went for 'sweet dolmas’ with chestnuts and walnuts chopped into the minced beef, while Lynne opted for a ‘dolma selection with aubergine and peppers’. We think of dolmas as being something wrapped in vine leaves, so suspected this might be a vegetarian option, the Azeri view is that dolmas are minced beef with a wrapping, usually vine leaves, but in this case peppers and aubergines. Vegetarian option? In Azerbaijan? What were we dreaming of? With them we drank draft Xirdalan beer, which had the virtues of being cheap and brewed locally, if not much else.

Eating dolmas, Baku

Baku is a city of fountains and those now in Fountain Square are minor compared with several other squares and parks – it was different in Soviet times.

Fountain Square, Baku

Baku Old City

It is a short trip from Fountain Square to the old city gate. Baku retains a kilometre or so of its medieval city wall, half encircling the town.

The City Walls. Baku Old City

Baku’s founding is lost in the mists of time, but it first came to prominence in 1191 as the capital of Shirvan, a small kingdom comprising most of north eastern Azerbaijan and some of southern Dagestan. Sacked by the Mongols, the city rose again in the 15th century only to be sacked by the Persians in 1501. After Shirvan finally fell Baku underwent an unhappy period, being regularly swapped between Russia and Persia and when Peter the Great took the city in 1723 the population had dwindled to around 7,000. Baku became finally established as Russian in the early 19th century and began to spread beyond its walls. Surface oil had been found and used locally since antiquity, but the sudden growth of world demand in the early twentieth century turned Baku into a boom town. The newly wealthy oil barons built lavish mansions (and the Boulevard Park we walked through yesterday), and changed the face of Baku permanently.

Baku Old City

Old Baku was an important trading post on the Silk Road and two caravansaris survive, though an oil baron’s mansion was built over half of one of them. Both are now restaurants.

Caravansari, Baku Old City

From here we passed a recently excavated ancient graveyard.

Baku's ancient graveyard

Beside it are the remains of the church of St Bartholomew. Local tradition says that the apostle came to evangelise Azerbaijan in the first century but fell foul of the Zoroastrians and was skinned alive and crucified for his pains. The church was his long delayed consolation prize but, adding insult to injury, it was demolished during Soviet times.

The remains of the Church of St Batholomew, Baku

The Maiden's Tower, Baku

Nearby, the Qız Qalası (Maiden’s Tower) is the symbol of old Baku. 29 metres high with immensely thick stone walls, its original date of construction is unknown - though most of the present structure is twelfth century. Its purpose is also a mystery; it may have been a Zoroastrian fire temple, a tower of silence, an observatory or merely defensive. A modern spiral staircase takes you up to the second floor which originally could only be reached by ladder. Above this the staircase winds upwards inside the thick walls. There are exhibitions on the various floors, but the main attraction is the view from the top.

The Maiden Tower, Baku

Here again Baku reminded us why it is known as the Windy City. The name Maiden’s Tower has given rise to any number of fanciful legends, each source favouring a different tale, but the dull truth is that it probably derives from the tower never having been taken by aggressors.

The Flame Towers from the top of the Maiden Tower, Baku

As we left we encountered a couple apparently looking for locations for their wedding photos and they kindly posed for us. Afterwards they popped up everywhere we went and I began to think they were probably models hired by the tourist board.

Must be models, surely. Baku Old City

We wandered through the streets which become narrower as they approach the centre.

The narrow streets of Baku Old City

The Broken Tower Mosque, Baku

The Muhammad Mosque, built in 1079, is the oldest in Baku. It has been known as the ‘Broken Tower' since the minaret was struck during a Russian naval bombardment in 1723. It has recently been repaired.

The formerly broken tower of the Muhammad Mosques, Baku

At the one room Museum of Miniature Books, the enthusiastic owner - who had a box for donations but charged no entry fee - showed us round her collection. She has 6,500 books published in 64 different countries and could name the publisher and date of publication of every one of them. In a case of religious books, tiny Qur’ans, Bibles and Torahs jostled amicably. There were Azeri classics and many more in foreign languages including Russian (Pushkin featuring strongly) French (Dumas, Balzac) and English (including the complete works of Shakespeare in a set of single volumes). There were popular works, too covering subjects like The Beatles and ‘William and Kate’. Most were three or four centimetres tall by one or two wide, but she had some smaller books; the complete works of Jane Austin in a centimetre square edition and her pride and joy, a twenty page book 0.75mm square. Fortunately it was in a glass box inside a glass case, I would hate to have sneezed.

The Palace of the Shirvanshahs, Baku

Nearby is the modest palace of the Shirvanshahs.

The entrance to the Palace of the Shirvanshahs (and that couple again)
Baku Old City

The Shirvanshahs ruled Shirvan, from the 9th to the 16th century. A single dynasty, the Yazidids, clung to power for seven hundred years sometimes ruling an independent state, sometimes as vassals of the Mongols or Timurids. The capital moved to Baku from Samaxi, 50km to the west, in the 12th century after the royal palace was destroyed by an earthquake. In 1538 Shirvan became a province of the Persian Empire and ceased to be a political entity in 1607.

Throne room, Palace of the Shirvanshahs, Baku Old City

Through the almost hidden entrance we wandered round the throne room and the Divan Dana, the small court of a small, if persistent kingdom and, like the rest of the palace, a bit over-restored.

Divan Dana, Palace of the Shirvanshahs
Baku Old City

That finished a full and very hot day's sightseeing.

Dinner in Fountain Square

In the evening we made the lengthy walk back to Fountain Square because we failed to find any better options on the way. This time we wanted to stay above ground, preferably on the square itself and this left us with the choice of Pizza House (so much better than a mere Hut, but still it failed to tempt me) or an Italian Restaurant/Sushi Bar - not a combination I am familiar with. My chicken breast covered in tomato and cheese was fine, as was Lynne's fettuccini with ham and mushrooms, but it was only as she was finishing that we realised she has been eating pork in a majority Muslim (if constitutionally secular) country. 'That's odd,' we agreed and had another sip of beer - Efes, brewed in majority Muslim (though constitutionally secular) Turkey.

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Location: Baku, Azerbaijan

Monday, 11 August 2014

Baku (1): City of Fire: Part 1 of From The Caspian to the Black Sea

A Burning Hill in the Absheron Peninsula and a Cold Beer in Boulevard Park

Arriving in Baku

Azerbaijan
Baku

Arriving before dawn at Baku’s Heydǝr Əliyev airport, we taxied past the new terminal, a glittering crystal palace studded with unexpected angles and slopes like a melting snowflake, and disembarked at the ‘Old’ Terminal, completed in 1999. Baku wants you to know it is a city on the move.

We were met by Yassim and drove into town along Heydǝr Əliyev Avenue, which offered more of the same. Some buildings, like the 65,000-seater football stadium* (and I have no idea how they intend to fill it) are under construction, while others like the magnificent Heydǝr Əliyev Centre (designed without a single straight line by Dame Zaha Hadid**) are complete.

The Heydǝr Əliyev Centre, Baku 

Anyone reading this far with even the slightest concentration will have noticed that the name ‘Heydǝr Əliyev’ appears three times in the first two paragraphs, and that it involves a strange letter - twice.

The new National Stadium, Baku

Taking the second issue first: Azerbaijani (or Azeri) is similar to Turkish (Togrul, our multilingual driver claimed ‘all our grammar and 70% of our vocabulary is Turkish’). It is spoken by 9 million people in Azerbaijan, 15 million in northern Iran and several million more over the border in Russia. Traditionally written in Arabic script, as it still is in Iran, Azeri, like Turkish, changed to a modified Latin script in the 1920s. In 1939 Stalin, wishing to break Azeri links with Turkey, decreed that the language should be written in Cyrillic. It still is in Russia, but Azerbaijan reverted to Latin after independence in 1991. As with Turkish, a host of accents are used to modify pronunciation, but they have one letter all of their own. Ə is the commonest letter in Azeri and, according to the Lonely Planet, is pronounced like the a in 'apple' to distinguish it from dotless ı, which is the a in 'ago'. This may be very important, but I have tried several times, and I think I pronounce them the same.

And Heydǝr Əliyev? Once the leader of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic he later became effectively vice-president of the USSR. After falling out with Mikhail Gorbachev he returned to provincial Azerbaijan and re-invented himself as a moderate nationalist just in time to step into the turmoil which followed independence. In 1993 he became the third President of independent Azerbaijan. Neither of his predecessors had lasted long but Heydǝr Əliyev was Presdent until his death in 2003, at which point his son Ilham, the current president, took over. Elections are held regularly, their conduct being described by international observers as ‘well below the expected standard.’

Heydǝr Əliyev, 3rd President of Azerbaijan

So we were in a land with a dead president whose name – and photograph – were ubiquitous. He had been succeeded by his son and we were driving on largely empty roads past monumental architecture. Were we back in North Korea?

We were taken to a small hotel in a street shaded by old and dusty plane trees. Yassim departed, saying he would return after lunch for our tour of the Absheron Peninsula.

Our hotel in a street shaded by old and dusty plane trees, Baku

After an overnight flight, politics felt less important than a cup of tea, a shower and a nap. Our room was modest but clean, and had all the expected offices - though a kettle without teabag or cups would be of limited use to less well-prepared travellers.

Baku, an Exploratory Stroll

Later, partly refreshed, we took a stroll. Venturing out on our own was a definite no-no in North Korea, but it seemed acceptable here. Also unlike North Korea we had a pocketful of local currency – Yassim’s first act had been to guide us to the airport ATM (1 Manat is worth roughly 75p).

A block away we found Heydǝr Əliyev Park. His statue waved to us, but unlike those of Kim Il Sun and Kim Jong Il we were not required to bow. The other parallels started to fade. Now the sun was up there was ample traffic, drivers leaning on their horns as soon as the lights changed. There were people, too, either walking with purpose, like they had a job to do, or lazing on the shady park benches; in other words behaving normally, like North Koreans don't.

Lynne and Heydǝr Əliyev, Heydǝr Əliyev Park, Baku

Free to wander, we passed the Heydǝr Əliyev Opera House and found ourselves in Summer Park with its fountains and bonzai trees. It was already hot, but there was a pleasant breeze and the splashing fountains added their cooling effect. Occasionally a gust of wind through the spray produced what is best described as drizzle, though it was pleasant in a way drizzle never is. There were businesses, signs and advertisements, and a clutch of smart looking cafés and restaurants.

Summer Park fountains, Baku

The buildings, unlike those in North Korea, were on a human scale and many looked well designed, even elegant. Most of the old Soviet blocks, we later learned, have either been demolished or refaced with local limestone – I hope as much care was spent on improving the insides, where the people actually live. Baku, it became increasingly obvious, is experiencing a boom and signs of new affluence were everywhere. The ordinary people, too, appear to be sharing in the growing wealth - which is not to say it is evenly distributed or that corruption is not a serious problem.

Soviet blocks in new limestone cladding, Baku

Lunch in Summer Park, Baku

After retreating to our hotel for more sleep we returned to Summer Park for lunch. The restaurants seemed to be open, but were completely empty. We sat and watched for a while and eventually two would be lunchers appeared and chose a restaurant. We followed them in, like sheep.

Bonzai and cafés, Summer Park, Baku

The menu was in Azeri and Russian. We were not particularly hungry and identifying the salads was straightforward enough. Lynne’s choice was dictated by a desire to discover the meaning of the oft recurring word gobelek (mushrooms, apparently). I decided ‘Sezar’ meant Caesar salad but instead selected something which sounded like Mongol Salad and involved an ingredient I thought might be ‘aubergine’ (it was). We have visited Mongolia, and to find a nation less inclined to eat salad you would need to look beyond the Arctic Circle. The salads were small, inexpensive and wholesome, though it probably helps not to have a long list of dislikes when navigating a menu by guesswork. They offered a choice of five beers, though I was slow to spot that all were non-alcoholic.

The Absheron Peninsula

Yassim arrived as arranged and we set off for the Absheron Peninsula, a hook of land jutting 30km into the Caspian Sea just north of the city. Absheron is not a beautiful place, it is an arid plain randomly dotted with dwellings and industry. If you want to buy a truck load of limestone blocks, or a gate for your estate, then Absheron is the place to go.

Azerbaijan means 'land of fire' and it was in Absheron that it earned that name. Oil and natural gas bubble to the surface here and the resulting natural fires have been of great significance to Zoroastrians since antiquity. The modern world finds oil and gas important for different reasons. The deposits in Absheron were easily exploited and in 1905 half the world’s oil came from the peninsula and Baku was experiencing its first boom. The deposits are now largely exhausted but the land is still covered in derricks and nodding donkeys, pumping the last drops from several thousand metres below.

Derricks and nodding donkeys, Absheron

Today, exploration is off-shore where vast gas reserves lurk beneath the Caspian Sea. The recently completed pipeline through Georgia to the Black Sea coast in Turkey is of great strategic importance, being the only major European supply route not involving Russia. The gas is responsible for Baku’s second, current, boom.

In a simpler age spontaneous fires were interpreted as the underground activities of the gods. Zoroastrianism grew from this basis and the area was crowded with fire temples until the medieval expansion of Islam doused the Zoroastrians ardour.

Ateşgah Mǝbǝdi Fire Temple, Absheron Peninsula

Large scale extraction of the oil and gas finally finished off the fire temples. 18th century Ateşgah Mǝbǝdi was the last to be built and is the sole survivor.It has been heavily restored but remains atmospheric though even here the fire is no longer spontaneous, but is artificially fuelled. Around the walls are cells where the pilgrims stayed, most equipped with their own fire pits, so they could pray and meditate in the presence of God. They travelled from the Zoroastrian communities in Iran and India, but they now no longer visit, and those communities are in decline. Only 25,000 Zoroastrian remain in Iran and there are a similar number of Parsees in India – descendants of Zoroastrian Persians who migrated there a thousand years ago.

Ateşgah Mǝbǝdi, Absheron

Yanar Dag (Fire Mountain), Absheron Peninsula

A fifteen minute drive took us to Yanar Dag, literally ‘Fire Mountain’. 'Mountain' is an overstatement. Rising less than twenty metres above the plain it is barely a hill, but the ‘Knoll of Fire’ lacks the right ring. Along the base, where the land folds upwards, are a series of fissures where methane, forced up under pressure, burns in a line of flames. Such sights were once commonplace but this is the only spontaneous fire left. Probably first ignited by lightening, it has been burning longer than records have been kept, impervious to rain or snow - not that the area (which is classified as semi-desert) has a great deal of either. It is a weird and wonderful sight, and if you stand as close as Lynne is in the picture, quite a hot one, too.

Yanar Dag, Absheron

We returned to Baku and were dropped off near the pedestrian streets below the Old City which lies on a hill at the southern end of the bay. Yassim showed us to a bookshop to buy a city map (hotels give them away everywhere else, but not here) and then left us to our own devices.

The Caspian Sea - The Journey Starts

We were beginning a journey from the Caspian to the Black Sea, so we walked to the water’s edge to establish our starting point. There is no beach at Baku - deep water laps against the rocks alongside the promenade - so we took it in turns to stand on the rocks and stick in a hand.

Dissolving my hand in the polluted Caspian Sea

Whether the Caspian is a sea or the world’s largest lake (at least, by area) is a moot point. Being below sea level the Caspian has no outflow - water is lost only by evaporation – and is, hence, saline. When Alexander the Great's army reached here in the fourth century BC they tasted the waters and decided it was part of the great ocean surrounding the world. Its salinity is, I read, only a third that of the oceans, but the scummy slime on the rocks and the unpleasant odours dissuaded me testing this myself. Inserting a hand felt brave enough, putting the water to my lips seemed suicidal. There were, though, plenty of fish, 10 centimetres long and resembling miniature versions of the Caspian’s best known fish and producer of its best known product, the increasingly rare caviar. Whether they were sturgeon or not I have no idea. Ten metres out a shoal were engaged in a feeding frenzy, the surface of the water a mass of silvery bodies. A local man lobbed a stone into their midst and several thousand fish simultaneously leapt into the air. Then the shoal disappeared.

Boulevard Park, Baku

A park runs along by the shore, a green and shady place boasting plants from all over the world. It was built by the oil barons of the first boom and in this dry climate much watering is required. Baku's soil is an infertile mixture of sand and clay, so the builders even had to import the topsoil.

Lynne and a fountain in the park beside the Caspian Sea, Baku

After seventy years of official atheism as part of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan now acknowledges that ninety per cent of its population are Muslims. The constitution, though, remains secular and Islamic practices are not rigidly followed. Few women wear headscarves, the pop videos shown in almost every café display little modesty and we did not hear any calls to prayer in Baku. On the other hand, we had been reduced to drinking non-alcoholic beer at lunchtime.

We sat outside a café beside the park in the belief that a cold, wet beer would perfectly compliment the hot, dry afternoon. Alcohol is in no way banned, and the Tuborg we were served hit the spot nicely. Many Azeris do not drink - more because it is not part of their culture than out of religious prohibition – but, despite our lunchtime experience, beer is widely available. Azerbaijan also grows wine - though none came our way – and vodka is available in every small grocers (well they were part of the Soviet Union!)

Essential rehydration beside the Caspian Sea, Baku

Our thirst quenched, we continued our long walk, though Lynne fell asleep as soon as we reached the hotel.

Continuing our walk back to the hotel, Baku

Pizza and Pide in Baku

Later we went out to eat. After much wandering and deliberation we ended up in a basic café close to the hotel. Lynne was happy with a pizza and I chose a pide. Not knowing quite what it was and faced with a selection of five different pide I pointed at the first on the list. The café owner had a long think before scraping the word 'beef' from the recesses of his memory. It turned out to be very like a pizza but square and based on the local flat bread with a lot of melted cheese but little tomato sauce. With it we had a cup of tea, which seemed a better idea than the fizzy sweet drinks which were the only alternative. It turned out to be such a good idea we had a second.

Back at the hotel we were both snoring by nine - we had a sleep deficit to deal with.

* The current National Stadium is named after Tofiq Bahramov, once general secretary of the Azerbaijan Football Association but better known in England as The Soviet Linesman (or more often, if erroneously, The Russian Linesman), the man who awarded Geoff Hurst's dodgy second goal in the 1966 World Cup Final

** Zaha Hadid, a British -Iraqi architect, also designed the aquacentre for the London Olympics among much else [Died 31/03/2015]

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Location: Baku, Azerbaijan

Monday, 4 August 2014

Ypres, Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate

How World War 1 Started

The First World War started a hundred years ago today, or three days ago, or four, or last week, depending on your point of view. On the 28th of June 1914, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip gave up on his attempt to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and went into a bakery (now a museum) beside Sarajevo’s Latin Bridge. When he came out he found himself standing beside Franz Ferdinand’s stalled car. It was an opportunity too good to miss.

The Latin Bridge and assassination site, Sarajevo, May 2012

A month later, to the day, Austria declared war on Serbia, the next day Russia mobilised, followed by Germany on the 30th of July and France on the 1st of August. On the 4th of August Great Britain declared war on Germany, so we are commemorating today as the anniversary of the start of the Great War, partly out of British bias, and partly because on that date all the major players in the disasters of the next four years had placed their pieces on the board.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was important at the time, and the murder of the heir to the throne was a major event, but the death of 9 million combatants and about the same number of civilians seems a serious over-reaction. The truth was that Europe was spoiling for a fight and everybody was up for it. Across the continent declarations of war were greeted with celebrations in the streets.

From ‘England to her Sons’

Sons of mine, I hear you thrilling
To the trumpet call of war;
Gird ye then, I give you freely
As I gave your sires before,
All the noblest of the children I in love and anguish bore.

‘England to her Sons’ was written by W. N. Hodgson in August 1914. He was killed in July 1916 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele

War is a failure of diplomacy. It is also a business, and one that specialises in the bulk production of corpses. Tyne Cot Cemetery stands as an antidote to Hodgson's jingoism. It lies on a hillside a few miles outside the Belgian town we usually call by its French name of Ypres, though the Flemish speaking locals call it Ieper. The British troops called it Wipers.

Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele

It is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery of this, or any other, war. 11,954 soldiers are buried here and on 8,367 of the headstones the only words are

A Soldier of the Great War,
Known unto God.

On the memorial wall are the names of 34,959 more who have no known grave. Some may be in the anonymous graves but many more simply disappeared into the muddy morass that this gently sloping hillside became.

Tyne Cot Cemetery with the memorial wall at rear

The grave of Second Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young bears the words

Sacrificed to the fallacy
That war can end war.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Like much of Kipling's work it is deceptively simple. He was a fervent supporter of the war though a trenchant critic of the way it was fought. His only son, John, was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. John Kipling had been rejected first by the Royal Navy and then by the Army because of his extreme short-sightedness, but his father pulled strings to gain him a commission in the Irish Guards. ‘Our fathers lied’ can be interpreted in a broad sense, but for Kipling it had a personal meaning, too, a meaning he had to live with until his own death in 1936.

Just above Tyne Cot, on the top of the ridge, is the village of Passchendaele. It is not a huge ridge; you can drive from bottom to top without changing gear, though no doubt it looked a lot bigger to those slogging up it in knee deep mud through barbed wire entanglements into a hail of machine gun bullets.

There is little remarkable about the village of Passchendaele except that it still exists. It is perhaps a measure of the futility of WW1 that there were not one but two battles of Passchendaele, both actions within the five month long Third Battle of Ypres - and there were five of them.

The low ridge stretches south for several miles before curving west round to Messines, part encircling Ypres and giving fine views over the town - which is why it was so important.

Ypres

It was at Ypres that the British stopped the German advance in October 1914 and they held the town for the rest of the war, despite the Germans occupying the high ground on three sides, putting Ypres near the tip of a dangerous salient. The subsequent Battles of Ypres (1915, 1917 and two in 1918) involved the Germans trying to take the town, or the British attempting to break out.

Grote Markt, Ypres

Today it is a pleasant little town with some 30,000 inhabitants, much the same as in 1914. The central Grote Markt is dominated by the magnificent bulk of the thirteenth century Cloth Hall just as it was in 1914, though it is not quite the same Cloth Hall - how could it be?

The Cloth Hall, Ypres, Feb 2008

The painstaking business of putting the bits back together started in 1933, was interrupted by the second bout of unpleasantness and completed in 1967. It now houses an exhibition/museum called 'In Flanders Field'. It is long on the horrors of war and short on the glory of victory (how different to North Korea’s Fatherland Liberation War Museum!) and should be a compulsory part of any visit to Ypres


Australian artillerymen outside the Cloth Hall, Ypres, Sept 1919
Borrowed, with thanks, from Australians on the Western Front 1914-18

The Menin Gate, Ypres

A short walk from the Grote Markt is the Menin Gate. The memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, was unveiled in 1927, the marble walls bearing the names of 54,896 British and Commonwealth servicemen who perished in the Ypres salient and have no known graves.

At 8pm every day since 1927 buglers of the Ypres Fire Brigade have played the Last Post at the Menin Gate. (or, after the German invasion in 1940 at the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, returning to the Menin Gate on the day Ypres was liberated in 1944). I have attended on three occasions, on a warm summer evening and on crisp February nights. Anyone who leaves without a lump in their throat does not understand what they have witnessed.

The Last Post at the Menin Gate, Ypres, Feb 2008

There are however, problems with the Menin Gate. Firstly it was too small for its purpose. 90,000 soldiers have no known graves, but the gate has space for less than 60,000, which is why those who died after the 15th of August 1917 are commemorated on the wall of Tyne Cot Cemetery.

Names on the Menin Gate, Ypres

Secondly, although the gate faces towards the front line, they did not use it - it was too exposed to artillery fire, and thirdly although the design had some critical success, it was not universally loved. Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and professional soldier who was decorated for bravery in the war that so disillusioned him wrote:

On Passing the New Menin Gate.

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,-
Those doomed,conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.
Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Vauban and the Ramparts Cemetery

Sir Reginald Blomfield’s gate replaced Ypres’ original Menin Gate, part of the fortifications designed by Vauban in the late 17th century. Vauban was an innovative military architect but his ramparts and moat, though state of the art for their time, were irrelevant when the First World War arrived.

Vauban's rampart and moat, Ypres

Much of Ypres still lies within these defences and although they are no longer complete you can walk half way round the town on the ramparts. It is a pleasant stroll, but like everywhere else on the front line that stretched from the channel to the borders of Switzerland, you cannot go far without meeting a military cemetery. The Ramparts (Lille Gate) Cemetery is small, containing the graves of 128 men, 127 of them British and the other unidentified and unidentifiable.

Ramparts Cemetery, Ypres

Kipling, Sassoon, Owen and 'The Old Lie'

Rudyard Kipling became the literary advisor to the War Graves Commission. He suggested the biblical ‘Their name liveth for evermore’ which adorns the Stone of Remembrance that stands in every military cemetery and so upset Siegfried Sassoon. He also coined the phrases ‘Known unto God’ for the graves of unidentified soldiers (the French use the uncompromising ‘Inconnu’) and ‘The Glorious Dead’ which appears on either end of the cenotaph in London. Kipling was not there, though, and Sassoon was. I would like to think the human race has matured and no longer finds glory in war, but that is probably wishful thinking. There was precious little glory in the events around the Ypres salient.

The 90,000 men commemorated at the Menin Gate and at Tyne Cot represent a quarter of 400,000 Commonwealth servicemen who died holding the Ypres salient. They may have been heroes, but they were also victims. Nor should we forget the similar number of Germans who died here, nor the several thousand French and Belgian soldiers.

The Kipling couplet quoted earlier may have had personal connotations, but hints at wider lies told by one generation to the next. Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est about a gas attack does not go in for subtle hints. It may be one of the best known poems in the English language, but I make no apology for including the last verse here.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum Est
Pro patria Mori.

Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori (it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country) is the title of one of the Odes of Horace first published in 23BC. It was a lie then, it is a lie now.

American readers might already know that the same lie adorns the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

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Location: Ypres, Belgium
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