Dubai - Beijing

After 4 h of waiting at Dubai Airport, I finally boarded the new Airbus A380 – I was a bit disappointed. The plane was below my expectations. Yes it is big, and it is new – but that’s it! Again I was welcomed with a hot and moist towel which I accepted this time since I felt rather dirty by then. 

My watch told me that it was 4 o’clock in the morning, so I tried to sleep a little bit … unsuccessfully. So I started to watch another movie. My decision fell on Sherlock Holmes. After a while breakfast was served: a rather dry but warm croissant, a delicious muffin, fruit salad and an orange juice. I tried to sleep again, but I failed. No reason why, as I was actually pretty tired, maybe the thoughts of my upcoming adventure prevented me from sleeping. I continued to watch Sherlock Holmes.

After a few hours the next meal was served, in the menu it said that I can choose between chicken and beef, I would have preferred the beef, but it was “out” so I had to eat the chicken … which was not as good as it looked like. I did not care about it as I was not very hungry anyway.

I did not even start any further attempts to fall asleep as it would be wasted time. So I checked the TV channel. I watched several episodes of Family Guy, The Simpsons and Two and a Half Men. In between I regularly checked the on board cameras – not very thrilling, but astonishing pictures! We flew so high, that it seemed that we are at the very edge of the atmosphere as the horizon was pitch black and the earth had a mesmerizing “glow” around it. 

We had actually been rather on time, but 100km before Beijing we started to fly in a holding pattern, which I recognized because the distance to Beijing increased again. In the end, we landed with a delay of about 50 min. Just when the plane had reached the gate, I got a call from Mario who asked me where I am. About 1 hour later (immigration queue, train to baggage convey belt, fighting through masses at the belt, searching for exit) I was able to shake his hand. Mario is a great guy, I am so happy that he picked me up by taxi and introduced me into this very alien country.