The last trip to Azerbaijan

In the first half of November, just before Thanksgiving, I made another trip to Baku, Azerbaijan. I do not realy know how many I have made in the past, but I have been flying over for the last five years. This trip was a little unexpected but welcome, because it may well be the last and it allowed me to tie up some loose ends. Don't you think it is appropriate that after five years I finally received an official Turkish fez? In case you are curious, all the photos were taken in the new Mobil office building in Baku. It is new, but it is actually fairly old. The building is in the old medieval walled part of town. It was built in 1907 by a rich Azeri cotton merchant for his Jewish wife. If you know the history of the area you realize that the poor gue did not enjoy it for long. Definitely not past 1920 when Baku was "liberated" by the Red Army.





You can imagine ( well maybe only those of you with the "benefit" of having seen the results of communist management) the state the building was in. Mobil spent a considerable amount of money not only on re novating it but actually restoring it to its former shape. All the ceilings had originally intricately painted stuccos. Of course by 1997 most of the color was gone and much of the stucco fell off as well. They made molds from the remaining pieces, made new plaster casts, restored it and then hand painted it. The result is actually quite impressive as you can see from the enclosed photos.

In this setting the fez felt very appropriate, it was like a trip back in time to the end of the last century, when Baku was bubling with international activity and brothers Nobel were busy here making their fortune. Of course, my appearance only confirmed the suspicion many have harboured in Baku for years: "That I am in reality turkish!"

On a more serious note, our meeting with the national oil company went well and I finally motivated myself to do the presentation in Russian. Now I can say that I have a working knowledge of Russian (read War and Peace in the original and made a technical presentation.) By the way, as a result of the Mobil - Exxon merger the building will be vacated and may be available for lease. So if you need office space with a difference give me a call.

On the way back I took my usual "shortcut":Baku-Istanbul-Vienna-Prague- London-Chicago-Dallas with a one day stop-over in Prague. While shopping for gifts and talking to the clerks in the stores (by the way these days they are very polite!) I found out that most of the gift shops around the Old Town Square are owned by Turks! So it occured to me that if I ever were to retire here and open a souvenir store, people would say: "Look at that Turk, he speaks Czech so well!"



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