A Cup of Tea in Baku

On my blogsite I have covered the sublime, the ridiculous, the dangerous. I have not at any time concentrated on the trivial, however, that is until the now. Well, you could call it trivial but there is an underlying message in this blog.

Now for any of you who follows this blog, you will know that I have been living and working in Baku since November 2010, nearly 15 months, and I have tried to keep the few posts that I have written meaningful and entertaining. I am going to continue in a similar vein. So, there we were yesterday, Saturday, and had decided to go out for lunch. I had suggested we go to Finnegans, the famous Irish bar in the city. However, it was absolutely freezing - it had snowed overnight - and the pavements were treacherous to negotiate. Added to this was a swirling, stormy wind that made walking any distance unbearable, never mind unthinkable. So we opted for a small Italian restaurant just a two-minute walk from our apartment.

So, there was me, the wife and my daughter, braving the icy blast and eventually reaching the restaurant which, by the way, wasn't what one would call warm and cosy inside. Anyway, we were ready for something to eat. As my wife and daughter began to scan the menu for food, I was thinking about what we were going to drink. Even althought it was cold enough outside to freeze the knackers of 100 brass monkeys, I certainly could have downed a beer. So that was what I decided on. It was what happened next that shook me up a bit. My wife said, “I'll have a black tea”. Daughter opted for a cappuccino.

We eventually chose our lunch items and I was about to wave over the waitress when my eye caught sight of the drinks prices. I couldn't believe my eyes. My beer, an Efes, which is Turkey's Number One lager, was priced at 3.25 Manats (£2.65) but it was when I checked the price of my wife's cup of tea: 5.0 Manats (£4.07)!!!! Can you believe that? The tea was more expensive than the beer!! So I decided to work out how much the teabag would have cost. Based on ASDA prices for a single teabag, this comes to a maximum of five pence (£0.05). So if we add to this the overheads for making the cup of tea; wages, utility bills, taxes, etc, I reckon that cup of tea cost the restaurant owner about the equivalent of £0.20 - a 1935% net profit! Now I don't know how much it cost to produce and serve the beer, other than the cup of tea cost nearly double the cost of the beer. So, for me, that was a first; the first time in my life that I have paid more money for a cup of tea than a glass of beer anywhere in the world!

Yes, folks, it could only happen in Baku! And the underlying message? If you come to Baku to live, always expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to crazy prices!!