A Little Attitude Goes A Long Way

Friday morning we awoke early to buy train tickets to the town of Agstafa.  It is a small city located ]ust south of the border with Georgia.  My diplomat friend warned me off of going there, but the draw for this out of the way last stop farm town was just too great.  The train station in Baku is designed after railway centers in mother Russia, and as such I had an inkling of where to go for tickets.  I approached the window waited in the non-line that the Azerbaijanies seem to form anywhere waiting is involved, and finally made my way up to the window to point and grunt my way to Agstafa.  The lady behind the glass looked and snarled like a real Russian, telling me that there were no tickets left to my destination.  So, I asked her about another destination and was shooed away to another window for those particular tickets.  Of course there was another non-line not formed there, but it seemed to churn more quickly than the last one.  When I got to the window, the woman simply closed the talk hole at the bottom of the booth and pulled the curtain shut with me still in mid grunt. Frustrated, I moved a couple of windows down, only to push my way through the un-line and have this woman close her window with me still in mid point.  I hadn't even grunted yet.  At one point another non-line dweller even knocked on the window and pleaded that we were tourist and that she shouldn't treat us this way.  Despite his objections, the window remained closed.  So, I moved back to the line I started in and asked the lady for tickets to Agstafa.  She said no problem, and asked for our passports.  We would leave that night around 8:30 PM.  Having secured our tickets, we then went to secure our bags.