Hello, my dear readers, how are you today? I hope you are well or on the mend and have all the support you need.

What’s Happening in Bee’s Life

All is well here, even though I still get exhausted quite easily. But we are stocking up our larder since 2019, and the best husband (Jeremy Clarkson voice) in the world was just at the farm shop on Sunday, so we are not worried about all this virus-France-has-closed-the border issue. We only go every two weeks to the farm shop and we order the rest of our food on a monthly basis when I get paid. Which was last week, so we are settled for four weeks. I have to admit that is quite a relief, as well as, knowing I can stay here too.

You might wonder, why I have moved this post to Wednesday. Well, it is the 1. anniversary of “Come Away With Me” and I wanted to celebrate it on the day. The first few posts were not named like that. This feature started as “Music Monday Travel the World“. These were rather short posts that concentrated on one artist from the visited country. Please check them out here:

Finnland

Russia

Canada

Greenland

Iceland

and Lithuania.

However, in March I felt I should add some information about the country too. So I put an introductory video of the country as well as an artist. However, by November I felt it is such a shame not to hear more artists or learn more about the country we are visiting with “Come Away With Me” and so I developed the current format. Check out where we have been this year:

March 2020	April 2020	May 2020
2. Norway	6. Mongolia	4. Ireland
9. Sweden	13. China	11. United Kingdom
16. Estonia	20. Japan	18. Denmark
23. Belarus	27. United States of America	25. Latvia
30. Kazakhstan
June 2020	July 2020	August 2020
1. Netherlands	6. Slovakia	3. Cuba
8. Belgium	13. Moldova	10. France
15. Germany	20. South Korea	17. Switzerland
22. Poland	27. Mexico	24. Lichtenstein
29. Czech Republic		31. Hungary
September 2020	October 2020	November 2020
7. Romania	5. Slovenia	2. Bulgaria
14. Uzbekistan	12. Croatia	9. Montenegro
21. Italy	19. Bosnia & Herz.	16. Albania
28. Austria	26. Serbia	23. Macedonia
		30. Greece
December 2020
7. Turkey
14. Armenia
23. Azerbaijan

I am quite impressed with myself because I so often start a series and then don’t keep it up. This one is here to stay, I feel. And so is “Love Is In Da Blog” for which “Come Away With Me” will pause in February. Am currently starting to plan for it and it will be interesting: The “Love Is In Da Blog 2021” prompts will be for music and for poetry. You can choose to post about one of each or for both but more will be revealed in January.

I have to admit I enjoy researching about all these countries very much. My research doesn’t go deep but gives us a glimpse of a country we might never have heard of. Also, I get a lot of ideas for food and learn more about musicians. It widens my horizon so much and I love that. Makes staying at home so much more fun.

So shall we go on today’s virtual tour?

1. Introduction to Azerbaijan

Woa, what a country! I have heard on and off about Azerbaijan on the news. Of course, there is the conflict with Armenia (I have a video about it in my Armenia post so I won’t go into it here), but there are also some more positive news like the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 and motor racing. However, I was never particularly interested in it. It was just another ex-soviet-Union country trudging along in the East.

Who would have thought they are a modern Muslim country, that doesn’t ask their women to wear the burka, has mud volcanos and glorious country side? Well, please find out more in these videos:

Appologies for the ads in the videos. However, the creators put a lot of work into them and they deserve to be paid for their efforts. Please, follow them if you like their content. After all, we viewers are the one’s they like to seduce 😉

2. An Artist of Azerbaijan

Modern Art doesn’t seem to have arrived in Azerbaijan until the 1990’s when several young students created new art and dared to put on exhibitions. One name is connected with this movement: Leyla Akhundzada. Unfortunately, I could not find out much about her. There are not many articles about her in English. According to Culture & Creativity she is considered a Guru as she helped to bring these young artists forward and even organised the Azerbaijani pavillion at the Vennice Biennale. Here is a video by the AzerbaijanPhotoUnion which shows her and some of her work.

3. A Climate Activist of Azerbaijan

I am sorry, again there is not much information to be found. So I leave you with another video about the climate problems in the country:

4. Food of Azerbaijan

One of the videos in the Introduction described Azerbaijan at the crossroads of the Asian, Arabic and European world and thus it has an interesting cuisine. Watch this beautiful video that introduces you to some of it without words:

Blimey, I’d love to cook with that scenery around me :-). Please find out more about Azerbaijani cuisine in this CultureTrip article. And find some recipes to try out for yourself here at the SBS page.

5. A Poetess of Azerbaijan

We often think that women’s liberation is a Western-World only movement. However, there are several women all over the world who fought the same fight in difficult social environments like Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain from today’s Bangladesh who wrote the feminist sci-fi novel “Sultana’s Dream” at the beginning of the last century.

In Azerbaijan famous poetess Khurshidbanu Natavan wrote poetry about humanism, friendship and kindness but was also active in philanthropy and even horse breeding. She was heiress to the Khan of the Karabakh region which is now fought over by Armenia and Azerbaijan. Find out more about her in this video by the National Museum of Azerbaijan Literature

6. Mental Health in Azerbaijan

I assume that wellbeing isn’t a huge topic in Azerbaijan but unfortunately could not find much information about the situation. But there is an interesting article from an Eastern European think tank called OBC Transeuropa which describes the experiences of people with mental health problems in Azerbaijan much better than I could. Please read: Azerbaijan: Confronting Mental Illness.

And then lets get to the music 🙂

7. Some musicians of Azerbaijan

So to round this post up let’s hear some Azerbaijani music

And where are we going next week?

Come Away With Me 2020 Musical Challenge Country for Monday, December 28th, 2020

I am taking a rather random route around the world, but sometimes it makes sense. Next week we venture further East into Turkmenistan. Please find musicians from Turkmenistan on the Last.FM page.

As for the suggestions to take part:

1. Join in! No matter where, when and with what. No matter if you have cancer or not! You missed the first week? Don’t worry. Just jump in when it suits you.
2. Send us the link! The ping-back option does not always work so please leave a link in the comments of the post on the day you take part. Or leave it at the “Come Away With Me 2020 FB page“
3. Tag your post either with ” Come Away With Me Musical Challenge”/ #CoAwWiMeMuCh” / “Come Away with Me 2020 Musical Challenge” o/“CoAwWiMe2020MuCh” / . You can also use these as hashtags for Twitter and other Social Networks to give your post more exposure. If you add #blog and #music with your hashtags it will get you more readers.
4. No matter which music or country the prompt favours you create with it whatever you please. This is supposed to be a fun challenge and no chore.
5. I post a prompt for the next week with every “Come Away With Me 2020 post” I write.
6. If you like, use this picture for your readers to find the posts.

I am fundraising for McMillan and you can still donate here (UK only until January 2021) and download Bees McMillan Coffee Morning German Christmas Download (PDF file) (no it’s not in German but about German recipes and Christmas  ) You can download it anyway now that the event has ended.

My goal is 200£ and so far you brilliant people have donated 10£. Thanks!

Just one more thing before you go: The hospital that is treating me is fundraising for a dedicated breast cancer unit which would allow some same-day diagnosis and better premises for patients and staff.

Please, if you can spare a little money hop over to their Just Giving Page and give as little or much as you can. Or share the page on your social media. So far the campaign has raised about half the amount needed: £418,648 of £800,000 (October 2020).

Your support means a lot to me! Thank you very much.

Thanks, my dears, for staying with me until the end.

I appreciate your presence.

Please stay safe, stay kind and remember that you rock!