ANN’s Rustam Gasimov has interviewed Teresa Malek, a Polish tourist who shared her impressions of Azerbaijan and its culture.

- Please, tell us a little bit about yourself.

- I am Teresa Malek, and I am from eastern Poland from the beautiful town of Lublin. My husband Henning Leeske is from western Germany from Verden an der Aller, but we live and work in Austria. I am a Business Development Manager at an Austrian Telecommunication Company. I am a linguist by profession, I studied languages, first in Poland at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in the western part of Poland and then I moved to Vienna and graduated from The University of Vienna at the Department of English and American Studies and the Department of Slavic Studies with specialization on the Russian language. I fluently speak and write 4 languages: Polish, Russian, English and German and I understand all Slavic languages to some extent.

My husband Henning is a financial analyst. We are both great opera fans and love classical music in its vast diversity but among all musical instruments the human voice is for us the most beautiful and most powerful instrument.

-When did you visit Azerbaijan for the first time? 

- I visited Azerbaijan for the first time in 2012 when I came to Baku for a business trip visiting Azerbaijani mobile network operators:  Azercell, Bakcell and Azerphone. It happened that my business trip was exactly during the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku and it was not only my fist trip to Azerbaijan but also it was the first Eurovision Song Contest for me as well. To tell you the truth, at this time I had no idea about Azerbaijan and Baku, I also had no idea how important the Eurovision Song Contest was, until I came to Baku and I was enchanted by the beautiful City of Baku and its great atmosphere. However, people have always been on the first place for me. I met beautiful curious open-minded warm-hearted people who fascinated me most and who gave me a feeling of being welcome in their city.  Yes, Azerbaijani people made a deep impression on me and they were for me the reason why after my return to Austria I started to read everything about Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani people, its culture and all kinds of connections between Azerbaijan and my home land Poland. I would read “Вести Кавказа” everyday and I found a lot of interesting information there. Last year at the end of September I read an Article there in which it was stated that the University of Warsaw offered in cooperation with the Azerbaijani Embassy in Warsaw Azerbaijani classes for beginners and any person wishing to learn Azerbaijani language can do so at the University of Warsaw or at classes offered by Mrs. Shahla Kazimova, the director of the Azerbaijani Cultural Center in Warsaw. The classes were supported by the Azerbaijani Embassy. I met Shahla last year and we became friends ever since. It was great news for me for two reasons. Firstly, I was proud of our Warsaw University and thankful to the Azerbaijani Embassy in Warsaw for that wonderful idea and giving people wishing to learn Azerbaijani language such a possibility and secondly, I thought that if it is possible to learn Azerbaijani language in Warsaw than it must be possible to learn it in Vienna where I lived.I immediately googled this and I was more than happy to find out that in Vienna there was a newly founded Azerbaijani Cultural Center opened in May 2012 by the President of the Azerbaijani Republic Mr. Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mrs. Mehriban Aliyeva. On the web page of the Center I found the information about an Azerbaijani language course just about to start on the next day! Without losing time, I sent an e-mail to the Center to ask if it was still possible to register and I got a prompt answer from Mrs. Yagut Abdallah-Mamedova, a translator and the Azerbaijani language trainer welcoming me to come and take part in the first language class organized by the Center on the next day! I was more than happy to hear that and I took Henning with me as well. As a linguist I was fascinated by the idea of learning a new language and I had no knowledge of any Turk language at all. I was curious about the language, its grammatical structure, its lexis and its pronunciation although the melody of the language was not completely new to me after Baku and after I fell in love with Rashid Behbudov’s and Muslim Magomaev’s songs. I have always wanted to understand what they are singing about and I wanted to know the text in the original language. I wanted to know how thoughts are delivered in Azerbaijani language. Ever since that time I learn Azerbaijani language and I have not given up yet. I have analyzed my language difficulties while learning this language for the last 10 months and I came to the following conclusions.On the other side, Azerbaijani langue is a very mathematical language economizing in it structure by using a defined number of suffixes. On the other hand, Azerbaijani language is driven by only one most powerful law, the harmony of vowels. Learning Azerbaijani language is like learning mathematics (putting logical elements in the right order) and harmony (learning which elements suit together from the musical point of view). So I found out that it is actually music which I am learning.After I had analyzed a number of books for teaching Azerbaijani language, I came to the conclusion that I have to write a book for zero beginners myself since none of the books I had in my hands reflected my language learning difficulties. I have worked on such a book and materials facilitating foreign language students learning Azerbaijani language ever since. I still work on it and I am quite proud of myself about the results.

So what are my difficulties? I found out that the biggest and the only difficulty in Azerbaijani language for a foreigner without knowledge of any other Turk language, Persian or Arabic language were the words themselves. All “European” languages: Germanic, Romanic and Slavic languages are full of Latin loan words which make learning or remembering a language for them easier than it is in case of Azerbaijani language. Azerbaijani language has, on the other hand, also many loan words, but they come from the Turkish, the Persian and the Arab language. Yes, there are a few Russian loan words, but if a student has no such background, learning of Azerbaijani words seems like learning to recognize abstract pictures which do not seem to have anything in common. Just to give you an example, you learn to see a difference in Picasso, Miro and other abstract pictures. With time I found a really good method to learn words, I still have to repeat them very often but I can assume that it is possible to learn them at all.

- What impressions did you have of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest?  

- In Baku, I understood how important such events are. If you have never visited such an event live and if you just watched it on TV, you have no idea about its importance. Why was it important? People from all over Europe came to Baku and Baku showed its most beautiful face. The city was welcoming, full of wonderful green areas and flowers at the Boulevard. Azerbaijani people who would not know you would talk to you and welcome you and give you support and help at any time. They were happy to have guests from other countries and they were curious about them. During the day and in the evening the Boulevard was full with people and once I was sitting on a bank and watching people passing by I noticed that the majority of people on the Boulevard were young people between 18 and 30 years old and my impression was that there were more young men than women among them. I guess in Austria, the majority of people would be over 50 or 60 years old, a completely different picture. I saw a young society in Baku which was something refreshing and joyful. I saw their happy faces that fascinated me.

-What made you to visit Azerbaijan for the second time?

- In September I and my husband decided to go to Baku for a holiday. My husband wanted to see all those things about which I kept telling him about Azerbaijan. We wanted to experience the Azerbaijani culture which we had eagerly leaned here in Vienna thanks to The Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan and its outstanding Azerbaijani Cultural Center. I have to admit that the Director of the Azerbaijani Cultural Center here in Vienna Dr. Layla Gasimova offered us great events presenting Azerbaijani Culture and its Music by inviting remarkable  Azerbaijani people representatives from different spheres of culture: artists, singers, musicians, painters, linguists and translators just to mention a few. You can visit the site of our cultural center in Vienna and read about all organized events and see photos from those events. For me, I also wanted to go to Gobustan for the second time to see the 5000 year old on-wall drawings/carvings. I find this place fascinating and very powerful. Sometimes I like to imagine myself there 5000 years ago drawing those pictures. Who knows, maybe I am originally from Gobustan.

As big opera fans we finally wanted to watch and experience at least one Azerbaijani opera in Azerbaijani language live. We know Uzeyir Gadzhibejov and its operas and it was one of our wishes to see his operas. Maybe you know that here in Vienna there is a beautiful monument of Uzeyir Gadzhibejov in Donau Park. I visited him already last year and standing there and looking at his face I made a wish. I guess Uzeyir heard me there and my wish came true.

- What cultural events have you visited while in Azerbaijan?

  - I and my husband like to experience the world and its people through music, especially through opera. Music is a powerful and a magical thing and if you just want you can learn almost about anything by a thorough study of music. You can learn about things you would have never expected and I am not just talking about the musical history, the composers, I am talking about the real live and everyday things which you might have noticed but you have never expected they come from music. By your study of music you may also learn about, e.g. developments of the oil industry in Azerbaijan – just to mention the Nabucco Pipeline.  (“The name Nabucco comes from the same famous opera of Giuseppe Verdi, that the five partners had listened to at the Vienna State Opera after this meeting.”) Actually I started learning about Azerbaijani history by learning about the history of you Philharmonic Hall. At the time when I had no idea about Azerbaijani history, I just thought that there is, for sure, a Philharmonic Hall in Baku. I looked for it in Wikipedia and I read all about it. I was shocked by the fact how strongly the history of Azerbaijan and Baku was connected to this particular building and place. I read everything about The March Happenings of 1918, about Hacı Zeynalabdin Tagiyev and his Polish architect Yuzef Qoslavski and around 500 houses in Baku designed or built by Polish architects or people.  I learned about Polish people in Baku, Polish marries of Baku and our common Polish-Azerbaijani history and heroes, just to mention a few things. I learned that Mahamad Emin Rasulzada lived in Poland for 10 years in Warsaw and cooperated with the Prometheus Club (among other Azerbaijani people) and his second wife Wanda was Polish. In one of the interviews which Muslim Magomaev gave he was telling about the woman who brought him up, the Polish wife of his uncle - Maria. Muslim smiled when he mentioned her so I guess he was a good aunt to him. I could continue here but it could be a topic of another interview (smiling).  Ever since I came back from Baku to Vienna, I kept looking at the web page of the State Opera and Ballet Theater in Baku and searching for the program. I was eager to see which operas were shown on the stage, especially the Azerbaijani operas. Since I was not really able to find the exact program during our planned stay in September and I wanted to visit the theater so much, I decided to write to the Director of the theater and ask him for help concerning information about the program during the 7 days which we stayed in Baku in September and the information how to buy a ticket for the coming operas so I and my husband can visit this tremendous house for sure when we are in Baku.  So I wrote a letter to the director of the theater Mr. Akif Malikov and introduced myself to him and kindly asked for support in that matter. I was more than happy when I promptly received a kind answer form the theater with the program and the information that we are exactly during the International Uzeyir Hacibayli Festival in Baku and on the program there were two Uzeyir’s operas: Leyli va Majnun and Koroglu (which actually staged just once a year!) and the beautiful ballet of Gara Garayev – The Seven Beauties. We were happy and excited already and when we read that we were invited by the director to watch these operas, we were speechless! We are still speechless how kind welcome we got from the director and his employees. I can hardly put in words, we met wonderful people, the people, I have always dreamt to meet!We loved this theater at first glance! We loved the operas and the ballet since they expressed the depth of Azerbaijani soul and we watched how the audience was taken into the story and was enchanted by the Mugam singers and their own ‘home’ story of the libretto.When I watched Leyli va Majnun I saw that is a universal story and I actually imagined the modern version of this story. In the first act Geys meets Leyli on your beautiful boulevard, the flame towers and the Cristal Hall, Azerbaijani flag in the background, Geys wearing jeans and a cool T-shirt, Leyli a mini rock and a stylish blouse, high heels and they talk in front of the beautiful Caspian Sea and they realize that they love each other! Wow! This story is not a 12th century story; it is a story which could happen today, don’t you think so? When watching Korogru I was asking myself if the role of Nigar would be sang by a foreign singer, would you - Azerbaijani audience still take it as authentic or not? I asked Henning about it and he said the if Anna Netrebko would sing Nigar and the role of Rovshan would be sang by her husband Yusif Eyvazov, this opera has the potential to be celebrated internationally on the stages of different opera houses around the world. Why Anna and Yusif, I guess they would be able to attract enough attention to this beautiful opera and we believe that it would be a great success! I have to admit I was waiting for my favorite arias in those operas and here I mean: Hasan khan aria – “Sharab doldurun!” and Koroglu’s Aria: “I loved you, my Nigar”! Great music!The Seven Beauties ballet was absolutely excellent and I recognized the combination of the classical ballet dancing and the classical national Azerbaijani dance. This ballet could be staged anywhere around the world and everybody would love it!

Of course, the habits of the audience in Baku differ to the once in the theaters in other parts of Europe. What I mean is in Vienna after the light is turned off and before the conductor enters, you get an announcement in German, English and Japanese that everybody is kindly asked to switch off their mobile phones and that taking pictures or audio or video recording is prohibited. Also all guests who are not on time are not let inside until the light break or the real break comes. No late comers are admitted inside during the overture or during the first act since it would be unacceptable for the audience who came in time and it would disturb them and it would disturb the director and the orchestra. After the director enters the room and it is applauded, the public is silent and eager to hear the music and see the opera. If your neighbor would start talking aloud or calling or if his mobile would start to ring your neighbor would strongly disapprove to this behavior since music is a holy thing.     

- Would you like to attend an international music festival held in the Azerbaijani city of Gabala once a year?

- We have heard about the international musical festival in Gabala and we know its organizers – Mr. Farhad Badalbayli and Mr. Dmitry Yablonsky since they visited us in Vienna with concerts twice. Yes, we would love to go there and we hope this dream will also come true in the near future.

- What can you say about modern and ancient architecture of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku?

- “Город мой родной Баку” – I guess this four words describe most precisely what is Baku. Let me explain, you know I am not from Baku and I am not an Azerbaijani but still when I came to Baku for the first time and without knowing anything about this city I was overwhelmed by a feeling that somehow I am at home. Baku has a very positive, hospitable and friendly aura. I was very much fascinated by this feeling. It does not matter if the historical city or the modern parts of Baku or your beautiful boulevard. Baku and its Baku people are simply very beautiful. The scenery of the Caspian Sea is unique – your Blue Eternity – “Синяя вечность” – as Muslim Magomaev sings. One look at the sea and you feel good and relaxed and you find a solution to any question which you might have. The sea is your enormous source of positive energy and I do not mean oil or gas, I mean the vital life energy for your body and your soul which renews and vitalizes your body and thoughts.

 I like Baku architecture and I when I read about the Polish architects and engineers who together with Azerbaijani people worked here for the wellbeing of Baku I understood there was also something Polish in this city which fit and harmonized so well with Azerbaijani culture. I also like the modernity in Baku and I think you can see it not only in architecture but in all spheres of life. 

- You have travelled a lot and visited many different countries. Does Baku have any similarities with any of European cities you visited?

- When I came to Baku I did not ask myself this question. I guess there is no point in comparing Baku with other cities since buildings by themselves, even if they were built according to some European fashions, they still have Azerbaijani touch and reflect the local taste and needs. When I came here I did not see Paris or London or Vienna. I only saw the most beautiful city I have ever seen - Baku! I have visited 40 countries in my life and in none of the above cities I felt as good as I feel here. Baku is a unique beauty of its own!

- Will you share your impression of Azerbaijan after your second visit to the country?

- Did our country meet your expectations? What did you like and dislike in our capital, do you remember any interesting incidents happed with you in Baku? We had so many impressions that I could write the most interesting book after seven days only. We went to Gobustan where we saw the beautiful paintings / carvings on the rocks and the mud volcanoes which we have dreamed to see. This was a real highlight for us. The scenery there is amazing! We simply love Gobustan! On the next day we went to Atashgah – the temple of fire which is a very spiritual and unique place. It was renovated so greatly that is a real pleasure to visit this place and learn from the expert of Atashgah Museum and Heritage Center about this place. We also visited the ancient city of Gala which again is another fascinating place and so well prepared for tourists. I (Teresa) was pleasantly surprised to find there a few objects – old scales from my home city Lublin. We also went to Yanar Dar, the burning mounting. Again, the only word I find is UNIQUE and overwhelming. In Baku itself we visited the Shirvanshahlar Palace which offers the most modern audio guides. You get a tablet and a head phones and you can hear and read and experience the palace virtually with examples of literature and music in any place of the palace. We always take an audio guide when we visit museums since it is more interesting but this audio guide was the best one we were ever offered in all other countries with very interesting information and materials and a greatly chosen professional German speaker. You can choose among a few languages as a tourist.  We also visited the National Museum the home of Hacı Zeynalabdin Tagiyev. I have always wanted to visit this place since Hacı fascinated me most as a person. I read everything I could find about him – he was the most modern person and actually his ideas are still followed nowadays. Through our friend we visited both conservatories in Baku - Uzeyir Hacıbayli Conservatory and the newly opened beautiful National Conservatory for National instruments. We touched the door of Uzeyir Hacıbayli’s and Prof. Bul Bul’s former offices. It was unbelievable. We met there most beautiful and interesting people. We met, among others, Mr. Yegana Akhundova, the Professor of the Conservatory, the Pianist-composer and the National Artist of Azerbaijan Republic. She told us about her latest composition Mea Memoria written for her parents – a wonderful piece of music. We visited a lesson of classical singing with a wonderful professor and a great pedagogue. I was learning classical singing for two years so it was really enriching for me.

In the National Conservatory for National instruments we were shown this beautiful new building which has no concurrency also in Europe. We visited there a class of tar and got to know that the professor would go to Vienna on the next day for a concert. We met the rector and two vice rectors and other professors and everybody was so kind and hospitable to us. Musicians are the most powerful ambassadors of the world. We were happy to meet so many of them and we were happy to see how talented and focused your students are.

- What interesting experiences have you had while in Azerbaijan?

- When we went out of the Theater after Korogru we went with our friends down the Nizami Street. We were talking merrily and stopping from time to time. Suddenly, one elderly man came to me (Teresa) and he said that I reminded him his wife who unfortunately passed away. He asked me where I am from and I said that I am Polish. The first thing I heard from him was a poem in most beautiful Polish language. I asked how comes and he said that he is an engineer, a poet and a Polish Jew and an inhabitant of Baku. He was happy to speak Polish with me and I was happy to meet someone speaking Polish which I had never expected out of the sudden in the middle of the night in Baku. I could see that our encounter woke many emotions in him. Down the street, he showed us the windows of his former flat in Nizami Street and the gate next door where Muslim Magomaev used to live. Actually, this is not the first time that people come to me. This way I have learned many interesting people.

- What can you say about the Azeri people?

- Azerbaijani people are the most hospitable people we have ever met and their hospitality comes from the middle of their hearts. You like guests a lot and you would like them to feel good and at home.Here I would like to thanks to all our Azerbaijani friends. Thank you for your heart, your warm welcome and your helpful hands. Thank you for telling us about Azerbaijan and Baku and thank you for showing it to us through your eyes. Without you our stay would not have been so beautiful and full of amazing impressions and memories. Thank you friends! We hope to see you soon, also those of you whom we have not managed to meet this time!

- Did you like the Azerbaijani cuisine?

- We absolutely love Azerbaijani cuisine! When I (Teresa) was in Azerbaijan for the first time I was very much fascinated by great diversity of dishes and the fact how healthy you eat. Your food is light and everything we have tried so far was excellent in taste and presentation! You draw a lot of attention that the food is beautifully and colorfully arranged on the plate and on the table. In Baku restaurants I got from the waiters the best service I have ever got! Here the saying that the guest is a king got a completely new meaning to me. In Baku you really very much care for your guests.

My (Teresa’s) favorite food is, however, definitely pilaf. During the 7 days in Baku I ate it 4 times in different variations. It is simply delicious and I think the best pilaf we got at the beautiful wedding party. My husband Henning liked your meat a lot, lam in different variations, wonderful!

- What are your wishes for Azerbaijan?

- Actually, one of my dreams is that the Azerbaijani state orders, as a special state cultural project, an opera about the Azerbaijani oil workers during the Second World War.  I think that the fact that 80% of all oil used by the Soviet Army for combating the fascism in Europe came from Azerbaijan is ground enough to pay honor to those Azerbaijani people who had worked and died under terrible conditions to ensure oil provisioning. I am convinced that you have young talented poets and composers who would write a tremendous libretto and most powerful music to it and we would like to sit in the first row of the newly renovated State Opera and Ballet Theater in Baku and watch it.

I can imagine that in many Azerbaijani families you find at least one story from that time telling how hard life and work was for your family members, how they tried to survive, how they tried to support their families.

- Thank you for the interesting interview!

- Thanks! Bakudaily.Az