Part 2 Mali hostages / negotiation locations

In the morning I had to leave the consulate in a hurry, just like yesterday, because Special Ambassador Anton Prohaska had announced his visit again. I understood that Peter didn't want to accommodate a journalist. He was sporadically involved in the negotiations. But I was tired of having to flee over and over again. So I checked myself into the "Le Relais", a three-star hotel.
For today's edition, I had sent a report on the Tuaregs to the KURIER and today they requested a photo of the negotiation location, the French Embassy.
Now I was at a loss - where was the embassy? I couldn't reach Klein and so I called my nephew in Austria and asked him to find the address on the internet and send it to me via SMS.
With the SMS in hand, I went to my friends and asked them to take me there. Now the next problem arose - there was no car. But one of my friends grabbed a moped and we drove to the embassy. Time was of the essence because the photo had to be in Vienna by 2 p.m. (3 p.m. CET), and it was already 11 a.m. At the embassy, I took my photos and I was on time. And then the next surprise awaited me: in a phone call, Klein informed me that the negotiation location was not the embassy, but the "Sofitel" hotel.
When I informed the KURIER, they were completely surprised because they had already planned the photo on the front page.
As I thought about it, I remembered that in the background of the photo of the embassy, there was a gigantic hotel. When I was able to read "Sofitel" on the enlarged photo, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. But even at the KURIER, they had already noticed the hotel. So the "front page" operation ended with success after all. I had both negotiation locations in one photo.
My advantage was that I already knew the city and the country a little bit, and the locals have a good eye for whether someone is a tourist or working there. The first time I was in Mali was in 2005. Back then, we drove almost to Kidal and visited the Dogon country in the Sahel zone. I also got to know the World Heritage Site "Djenne", an island in the Niger where there are only mud buildings, and the port city of Mopti with the fishing nomads.