The beauty of travelling

I'm back in Brisvegas. After a very long and painful flight. I left Switzerland Sunday night and shortly after getting into Dubai early Monday morning, they decided that it would be a jolly good idea to close down the whole airport and let us wait around for hours. Some Air Bangladesch plane had found it necessary to damage the only runway and subsequently mess up the whole flight schedule for the day. Not that I'm trying to insinuate Air Bangladesch did it purposly to annoy us. But it was still rather inconsiderate of them. If they really need to damage any runways, they could have at least chosen one of their own.

But anyway. I got into Dubai at 6.30am and was meant to fly out at 8.40am. Communciation at the airport was rather poor. Actually, it was virtually non-existant. I had no clue what was going on but couldn't help noticing that my flight was late, and so was every other flight on the departure board. After a while, airport management kindly informed us that there were some delays. Which was nice to know, as we hadn't noticed yet. Apparently we were going to get an update at 10am. Which consisted of me queing at the information desk with a bunch of hyperventilating fellow travellers and finding out that I should come back in a couple of hours. Thank you m'am. Next!

At this stage, the airport had turned into a big pyjama party. Whole families were sleeping in piles on the floor, business men slept sitting on chairs with their mouth open and the most unlikely people befriended each other. It was quite funny. I made friends with three people about my parents' age and met a guy from Nigeria who wanted to marry me. I did realise we all got quite close because we were all in the same boat, but I thought that was going a bit too far.

Throughout the whole day, I was calm as a rock (yeah, rocks ARE calm. Don't be like that). Seriously, I just couldn't be bothered getting pissed off, it's not worth it. I actually thought it was kind of comical, although also very tiring. I never allowed myself to sleep, as I didn't want to miss my call.

They started cancelling flights. After a while, we were told our flight would leave at 4.40pm. Which was a nice idea, only it didn't happen. Please come back later. When they informed us that we were now due to depart at 9pm, I only had a husky laugh left. Sure. Whatever you say. We did end up getting out of there, which I appreciated enormously. At 11.30pm.

I ended up getting into Brisbane at about 10pm (local time) the next day, where Dan was kind enough to pick me up and buy me a beer on the way home. When I got up the next morning to go to work (yes, I am THAT committed. It's sad.), I actually thought for about half an hour that I had slept the whole day and it was 6.30pm instead of 6.30am. My flatmates laughed their ass off when they found out. But I think I bloody have the right to be delirious after all that.