May 2010 - Dubai

This is the story of one of the most annoying nights of my life.
My flight home from Singapore to Dubai had a scheduled stopover in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Everything seemed normal until shortly before we reached Sri Lanka, the Captain informed everybody that the current weather in Sri Lanka made landing impossible. Thus we were to circle for another ten minutes. After those had passed, he called again to inform us that we were diverting to Trivandrum in southern India. At 2am there is nothing I was looking forward more than being stranded in India.
We spent about one and a half hour on the tarmac of Thiruvananthapuram airport before taking off again, ready to circle for more than two hours. At this point of time the worst I could imagine was circling over Sri Lanka in the middle of the night. Hence I was quite happy that we got to land right away. Now finally, everything was back on track. New passengers joined and just like us they just wanted to finally go to Dubai. But the weather worsened again, making a departure impossible. Through the window I watched planes come and go, I watched the sun rise, clouds pass by and the day begin. On the screen in front of me I saw movies passing by, episodes of The Simpsons and other shows come and go again. The waiting seemed endless, and finally, a new message: the crew had exceeded their flight time and were not allowed to continue the flight to Dubai. Instead, another crew was brought in from their hotel - luckily they were available. Originally, they were scheduled to fly another plane to Dubai, one that had parked next to us meanwhile. What ever happened to that plane and the people inside will remain a mystery to me. I was just happy that they chose to fly us home. After about five hours of waiting we could take off again and head for Dubai where we arrived about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, about eight hours late. My connecting flight to Hamburg had already left at 9am. Now the task was to find our what was to happen next.

This is the story of one of the most exciting nights of my life.
The people at the Emirates service desk inside the terminal were busy handling a few hundred passengers who all shared the same problem. Apparently, similar weather problems had messed up flight schedules in parts of India as well. While leaving the aircraft I had started talking to a fellow passenger. He was from Indonesia and bound for Hamburg as well, where he was to work at a hotel during summer. We stayed together and I explained to him my idea of asking for a flight to another German city and then taking the train to Hamburg. At the desk a female passenger told me in German that she had tried the same, but all flights were full. The two women had been on the same flight and were scheduled to Hamburg just like us.
Thanks to the great service of Emirates everything was not as bad after all: we were handed a hotel voucher, a visa for the UAE and a boarding pass for the next day's flight to Hamburg. A shuttle bus was to take us to the Millennium Airport Hotel for free and also pick us up the next morning. At the bus stop we met another passenger who had come from Singapore and wanted to connect to Hamburg, thus was in the very same situation as us.
Having arrived at the hotel we were checked in, provided with washing and shaving materials as well as vouchers for three meals. We sat down outside to take a look at our situation: we had a free night in Dubai, no fresh clothes and hardly any money. In my case, no money at all despite some Singapore Dollars which could not be exchanged at the front desk. At dinner we decided to take the chance of touring the city anyway.

At the front door we found a clever taxi driver who offered to take us around the city for a fixed price. We were to go to the Burj al-Arab, on the Palm Jumeirah, to the Burj Chalifa and to the old city core. And so we set off to drive through one of the most fascinating cities on earth where we had ended up without even planning to.
We gazed at the infamous Burj al-Arab, which is not even as big as it always looks on pictures and TV. We visited the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm where we felt displaced in our outworn clothes. Finally, we stood at the feet of the world's tallest building, Burj Chalifa. It's dimensions exceed every possible description and it was actually hard to get all of it into one picture. It tured out we had arrived just at the right time to watch a fountain show which makes that of the Bellagio in Las Vegas look like a kindergarten. Our last stop was the old city, called 'souk', where we ended the evening with a stroll through the bazaar-like shopping streets.

In the end the bad weather of Sri Lanka had done us good. For practically no extra money we got to stay at an exquisite hotel in the sun city and I had met a hand full of great people who made the stay really enjoyable. Of course it would have been even better with some clothes to change or at least cash but why complain. It was for free and it adds up to a great travel story to tell people.
I slept well and deep until the wake up call introduced the end of the Dubai episode. We had breakfast together and drove back to the airport. When we finally sat in the plane bound for Hamburg, we were relieved but each of us had enjoyed the stay as good as possible. We were even more relieved when we found out that even our baggage had found its way to the right destination.