Flora Hostel - a roof over the head for creative people in Baku

Flora Hostel and the creative youth of Baku

Baku. City center, Dilara Aliyeva Street. 12:00 in the afternoon.

Due to heavy rain the phone screen is all wet, it is very difficult to find the address using GoogleMaps.

“Excuse me, do you know where Flora Hostel is? It seems like it should be around here somewhere,” I ask, stopping a young man walking down the sidewalk.

“You just passed it,” he continues on his way, pointing with his hand in the direction I came from.

I turn around and see the Flora Hostel sign above my head. I enter through the iron door of the two-story building.

Graffiti on the wall and a “tea garden” welcomes visitors

Inside the building, the first thing that catches my eye is the graffiti painted on the wall below the stairs connecting the first and second floors.

I see interesting images – a pensive Indian, an owl looking at me with a keen eye, a young man with his eyes closed, a girl with short hair giving the impression of a peaceful person, two whales swimming to the surface from the depths of the ocean, and children jumping into the water over their heads.

After looking at these images for a few minutes, I move on to the “tea garden”, which is the name of the hostel’s coffee shop. There are about 20 tables in the tea garden.

A group of young girls and guys sitting at a table in the far corner of the café are having a heated discussion. They seem to be talking about the latest local feature film they have seen.

“In my opinion, the director failed to sufficiently reveal the reason for such an abrupt change in his thoughts and direction at the end of the movie. The bad guy suddenly became the defender of all that is good. Why and how is unknown,” the girl excitedly explains to her friends.

Two friends sitting at a neighboring table are discussing about a concert that will be held this evening at the hostel.

“It’s still a long way from tonight anyway. Let’s go to “28 Mall” for now, meet the guys there, and then we’ll all come to the concert together,” the young man suggests to his friend.

“We wanted to bring tourists and local youth together at Flora Hostel”

I walk past them, choose a table and sit down. A little later, Turkay Bayramov, the founder of the hostel, arrives.

Turkay Bayramov, 33, comes from Jebrail district. After his family was forced to leave their native place during the first Karabakh war, they settled in Imishli district. He received his first higher education in Baku at the State University of Economics. Then he continued his education in Turkey – first at Anatolian University, later at Gazi University.

When he returned to Azerbaijan, he got the idea to open a hostel, but different from others.

Turkay Bayramov says that the initial goal of opening a hostel was to create a place where tourists and locals could communicate. Later, the idea grew, and as a result, Flora Hostel was created, where different art directions are neighboring.

“The hostel has been operating since 2019. Initially, the residential part of the building was mainly for tourists and the café was for locals. We also wanted to create a kind of social space where people could exchange ideas with each other. For the first year, the idea worked well. But then the pandemic period started and it didn’t go the way we thought it would.

We will probably reach the result in the coming years. But our idea is expanding. We want to make Flora a kind of art center. Because it’s not just a hostel. It is both a cafe and an art center. On the second floor there is “Theater Zero”. It’s an independent theater, and we support it by providing space for people to do art here. Also, Yellowstone Art Studio is on the same floor,” Türkai said.

The hostel portion of the building is designed to accommodate up to 40 guests. Since part of the hostel is now closed for renovations, that number has been reduced to 16 people. Here, guests share a common kitchen and multi-person bathrooms.

“We don’t sell alcohol here.”

For a day’s stay in a hostel, you have to pay 15 manat [about $9]. Turkay says that this price may go down to 10 manats [about $6] for guests staying longer, such as a week. This is also designed to allow guests to stay more comfortably without worrying about money.

As for the prices in the cafe, they range from 5-10 manat [about $3-6] on average. There are more than 30 varieties of tea and a small number of sweets on the cafe’s menu. There are no alcoholic drinks at all.

“I myself consume alcoholic beverages. So it’s not something caused by a bad attitude towards alcohol. It’s just that if the place has a strategy to be different, it needs to follow a specific concept. We originally envisioned this cafe as a tea garden. It is the only place in the area that doesn’t sell alcohol and that is what sets Flora apart from other places,” says Türkai.

The hostel has a total of eight workshops, an independent piano and violin school. In addition, frequent concerts in the dormitory increase interest in the hostel.

From the announcements in the social networks of “Flora” it follows that these concerts are addressed to listeners who like different musical genres – rock, pop, retro and others. Regular customers of the hostel are mainly young people interested in art or active in this field. That is, the main point of contact between people here is art.

A girl, who is a regular customer of “Flora”, says that almost every day she visits the cafe of the hostel, where she often meets familiar faces.

“I have been a regular customer of the hostel since its opening. It is an interesting place in its concept. In general, the idea of combining a hostel and art in one building attracts people. I feel more comfortable here than in other places. My friends who share common tastes are also regular customers here. Many friends and good acquaintances I met for the first time here,” she says, pointing to her friends.

First event at the hostel

The first social event in “Flora” took place on the eve of Novruz 2019 holiday. The huge interest in this event served as a source of inspiration for the following events organized in the hostel.

“In February, on the third month of the hostel’s existence, we started celebrating Tuesdays – chershenbeh akhshamy, before Novruz. Tuesdays before Novruz were the days we all looked forward to as children. During which everyone in the courtyard would gather around a festive bonfire and share the joy of Novruz with each other.

It’s been a long time since these Tuesdays have been celebrated in such a mass and interesting way, at least in Baku. So I thought we should have a bonfire and tea party in the center of Baku. So we announced our first public event, organized a holiday Tuesday, had a bonfire, treated everyone to free tea, and the entrance was free,” Türkai recalls the first event held here.

According to him, the hostel, which used to attract a maximum of 20-30 people, welcomed 80 guests that day and 180 at the next similar event. Thus, the founders of Flora Hostel decided to continue organizing mass events with different concepts.

“Theater Zero.”

Undoubtedly, one of the most notable activities here is theater. “Theater Zero” has existed under the roof of “Flora” for almost a year now.

Now the theater has two plays in its repertoire – Anton Chekhov’s “Ward No. 6” Anton Chekhov and “Shy Girl” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Anar Bulud, the theater’s founder and actor, said that now their eight-member cast is working on a production of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”.

“Theater is an advocacy medium in itself, and here we are engaged along with art to call for environmental protection. Our theater auditorium seats up to 40 people and all the seats are made of recycled materials,” says Anar.

According to him, the actors of “Theater Zero” hardly use makeup. The plays are mostly interactive.

“In state theaters, actors must play according to the ‘fourth wall’ rule. This means that the actor plays facing the audience, in a stable, traditional way. In this case, the actor makes his movements larger and more pathetic so that his facial expressions and voice reach the person sitting on the last row. This is a beautiful style in itself.

But in Theater Zero we are very close to the audience. Therefore, the actor must speak and act according to the real situation. The slightest artificiality and pathos is immediately felt by the audience. Sometimes when casting in the movie avoid actors who have worked for many years in the theater, fearing that they will play in a theatrical manner. And in our theater actors as if preparing for the movie.

Twice a week master classes in different art forms

After leaving the theater, I want to visit the workshops on the same floor. Since the doors of the Yellowstone Art studio mentioned earlier by Turkay are wide open, I go in.

“We hold workshops here twice a week. People can come and do different kinds of art and make different handicrafts with their own hands,” Türkai said, showing samples of handicrafts in the workshop.

After taking a few pictures from this workshop, I go down to the first floor to leave the building.

“Tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. we’ll be playing ‘Ward 6’. Come, you are invited. We’ll be waiting,” Anar says from the second floor.

I mark the date on my phone and leave the building.