Baku, Day 5

[It's actually my 7th day in Baku today, so this is a delayed post.]

Spent most of the day billeted in my hotel room. Usually I take a cab to my colleague’s office across town (AZN 5), but today he said he was still busy cleaning the data so I just did my work in the hotel.

For lunch I had a sandwich of sliced beef, cucumbers, onions, and fries in Azeri bread (yes, the fries were inside the bread). It’s basically a shawarma, but much better than the ones we have at home—nothing like eating food in the region where it was born. I also bought 1.5 litres of water. All in all, lunch cost me AZN 1.40—not a bad deal at all. Btw, in Azerbaijan 100 kapik = 1 manat. Note the similarity of kapik to kopeck (in Russia, 100 kopecks = 1 rouble) and manat to monat (монат is Russian for “money”).

Still on money, Azerbaijan replaced the old manats (currency code of AZM) with the new manat (AZN) in January 2005. After years of hyperinflation the AZM finally stabilised in the early 2000’s; however, by this time the exchange rate was around USD 1 = AZM 5,000 and local prices were followed by numerous zeros (not good for business perception). To reflect the manat’s stability, the government replaced AZM with AZN and set USD 1 = AZN 1, or AZN 1 = AZM 5,000. Why am I telling you this? Because some people in Baku still quote prices in AZM rather than AZN. So when you’re asked for 4,000 manats for a piece of bread, don’t be shocked and clarify what currency they’re using.

Took a brief stroll outside my hotel. Not exactly the right weather for a walk-- there were gale-force winds and a temperature around 6C to 10C. The pine trees were bending like they had duckpins for Christmas balls. It was actually hard for me to walk and I had to hold on to my cap lest it gets blown away. All in all, not a bad stroll.