Dubai stay with Emirates

The Dubai airport is huge. We walked a long way to get to the transit gates where all my friends said good bye and went into their next plane. I again undertook a very long walk in the airport to get to the counter of Emirates and later outside where we were escorted to a van which dropped passengers at three different hotels. I arrived just in time to catch breakfast. My stay was for about 10 hours. The hotel was very high and outside the window of my room i could see Dubai city port with big ships and endless lines of cars being transported. They gave me a nice double-bed room. Although the airport had muslim showers installed in the toilets, the hotel lacked them, just like in Muscat. Then i went to the tour guide sitting next to the hotel entrance to get some info about the tour options she provided. She gave me a booklet with multiple options out of which i choose one and found out that it was not so expensive. It was a 4 hour personal cab tour of famous places for about 30 euros. I consented and met an Indian Muslim guide who took me in his cab to start the tour. He showed me the beach with the famous 7 star hotel "Burj-ul-Arab" build on a small artificial island near the beach. Entry was allowed only for people who had booked a meal or a room. Then he showed me the newly developing "Marina" area with skyscrapers all over the place. I must have seen about 50 skyscrapers (mostly under construction) at one place. Then we went to this big mall where they had built a skiing slope with snow. Now imagine this: seeing a snow slope in a dessert. How can someone be more luxurious?


Then he took me to the camel feeding grounds where we saw a herd of camels being returned after feeding. These were truly dessert areas. The person steering the animals became furious when my guide took the car near the camels saying that this disturbs the animals and the owner may kill us without getting into any problem. Then we went to the racing arena where a race was to take place that evening. The security guards didn't allow us to enter but the guide told them i was a German tourist here only for 10 minutes. And that's what we did...just took some quick snaps and came back. On my way back I saw a white boy playing with his dangerous looking hawk in the parking area. At the end he took me to a museum which looked very small on the surface but was very long underground. I saw Pakistanis as policemen, security guards, hotel hosts, tour guides, cooks, camel steerers, etc. I even saw some road side signals with Urdu among other languages. Although it was middle December, but the weather was warm. It was drizzling sometimes and the people said that it is a rare event that they have such a pleasant weather because of the clouds.

Trip to Dubai with Emirates Air

In middle December I got an intermediate stop in Dubai during a flight. The stay was to be of 15 hours. I asked my agent to arrange a transit visa and hotel stay from the airline. Five more Pakistanis were traveling with me but they didn't have such a long stay. When we reached Frankfurt airport on the flight day, we got the information that the flight was delayed for 3 hours. We got in the very long check-in line. The other Pakistanis had to catch the next plane in Dubai after just 3 hours. We asked the Emirates guide the reason for delay which she said was that the plane from Dubai was late. We told her about the situation and she went away. After about half an hour, when we finally reached close to the check-in counter, the guide came back; asked us to come out of the line and told us that they are sending us through Lufthansa Air to Munich where we can catch an Emirates plane to Dubai so that we don't miss our next plane.

We hurried to terminal one of the airport. There are two terminals of Frankfurt airport connected by both a skyline train and a bus. We took the bus and walked through the terminal to reach the Lufthansa Air counter. They didn't have a clue about this transfer of passengers. They phoned their supervisors and Emirates counter and finally figured out the situation. Then they started the check-in, only to find that the Emirates staff had written one less name on the paper they gave us. Lufthansa staff said they couldn't check-in that passenger. They tried to figure out some way to resolve this problem, but in the process they found out that the plane flew off. We took the train back to Emirates counter where they checked us in. There was some problem with one of us as two of his suitcases weighed more than 30 kg, the new limit put on every piece of luggage, the resolution being transfer of extra luggage to the boxes they provided us. They gave 15 euro dinner vouchers to all passengers because of flight delay, which we spent in Macdonald's while watching planes take-off and land. The airport had prayer rooms for all religions. The plane took off 3 hours later and we landed in Dubai.

The smallest joke ever

Heard a great joke on TV:

Once there were two Pathans playing chess. (finished)

(Pathan are people of one of the provinces or states of Pakistan. I use them in the joke as i belong to them so they shouldn't feel offended. I have purposely exchanged them for a much more popular joke group of India).

Staring death into the eyes

I described earlier our trip to Oslo Norway. We traveled there with a cheap airline called Ryan Air. The next night we took our return journey which was delayed an hour. The pilot taxied the plane to the runway and then took it off to a side lane saying ice needs to be cleaned from the wings. This was unusual. They cleaned the ice for a half hour. Then we took off from the airport. The pilot asked us to expect a bumpy ride because of bad weather. After about 15 minutes of smooth flying, the seat-belt signs went on and the plane starting jerking vertically. After another 15 minutes, the pilot asked the cabin crew to take seats and fasten seat-belts!!! And then the plane shook violently. I saw an air-hostess grab a seat trying half-heartedly to smile at the passengers. With one big bounce the women gave out screams. But after half an hour it became ok and we forgot the event for the next hour.

Half an hour before landing in Germany, the pilot again put on the seat-belt signs and later asked the cabin crew to take seats. We again started experiencing the bumpy ride. This time around, the plan was not shaking up and down, rather swinging left and right. We could easily see the spin of the craft. The pilot began descending the plane and we started praying. There was pin-drop silence in the plane. The pilot took the plane below much before the usual time. I could see the runway a few feet below the plane and still the plane was swinging. The plane touched the runway, bounced up and again landed on ground. The pilot finally stopped the plane and we sighed with relief. Despite the bad weather, the pilot had made a very smooth landing. As we got out of the plane, the wind was so strong that our jackets ought to being blown off. Two of our frequently flying friends exclaimed that they had experienced many bad flights but none like this; and others said that this flight brought God closer to them than ever before.

Trip to Oslo, Norway

A few days back we 5 friends made a trip to Oslo, the capital of Norway. We bought return tickets of the cheapest airline "Ryan Air" for only 15 euros each. A combined room in a hostel in the center of the city was booked for about 20 euros per person. It was just a two day trip with one night stay. The airline Ryan Air offers such cheap tickets across Europe as it operates from non-regular airports far from big cities. The airport we were to fly from laid about a two hour drive from Frankfurt main airport. So we traveled there in a friend's car. We then took about a two hour flight to an airport in Norway from which it was a two hour bus to the Oslo city. This bus costs 40 euros for a return trip to Oslo.

Temperature in Oslo was not much below that in Germany, but strangely we felt extremely cold there. We reported at the "Anker" hostel at 11 am as required but they told us that check-in starts at 3 pm. Since we had the accommodation in city center, we didn't have to travel on bus or tram. We could go to the tourist places by foot. There were lots of Pakistanis on the streets. You could hardly walk for ten minutes without seeing a Pakistani. They were employed everywhere, from restaurants to security. The day was very short as Maghrib (evening) started at 3:15 pm. It is a city of just 500,000 people but it looked much more than that during the day (Wednesday). We saw the king's palace, Nobel peace prize building (where the ceremony was to be held on the coming weekend) and the (small) port. We also elevated to the 34th floor of a hotel to see the city. There were zebra-crossings on the road, but with traffic signals :) People were frequently breaking those signals and traffic had to stop even on green signals because of that.

One pleasing thing was that everybody could speak English, even on the streets and in shops. The old people could also communicate in English. We met only one old women and a couple of forigners who couldn't speak English. The most disturbing thing were the prices there. We were happy to receive about 5 Kronas but were startled by the prices even in the super market. A mere sandwich bread costed about 2-3 euros; 5-6 times more than in Germany. A small bag of chocolates candies costed about 10 euros.

An amazingly cute and emotional animation

Ramadhan and Eid in Germany

This Ramadhan was like the last one. We had Iftaar (ending the fast) every evening in the mosque. It is a totally different culture we have not experienced in Pakistan. Most of the bachelors do Iftaar in the mosque. There are about 70-90 people there daily. We also arranged two Iftaars. On both occasions we had more than normal attendance, thanks to the impression of South Asian food we left on the people last year. On the first occasion, we served chicken korma and sawayyan. As a drink, we served doodh soda (carbonated sweet milk). It was the first time in the mosque that the people couldn't fit in the eating hall and about 20 of them were seated in the praying hall. The second time, we prepared biryani and zarda (sweet rice). This time too people liked the food but they went crazy over zarda. It was unbelievably tasty and peopl searched to eat it aftwards till early morning.

On Eid, we prayed in the mosque, which as usual was over-crowded. It was a rainy day so we couldn't expand to the open area of the mosque. Had the Eid been one day earlier, we would have prayed in a conference hall at the university reserved for us. This was usually the case before the mosque was started. After the prayer, we decided to have a party at a Bar-B-Que spot in the university. At first the coals were not burning. Then when they burnt (after an hour of effort), it started to drizzle. We found a big piece of foam from the construction site nearby and used it as a cover for the Grill. It took us a lot of time to cook, but all-in-all it was fun.