Chapter 1: Hotel hopping

Let’s see…Count for yourself in how many hotels (no hostels or another cheap accommodation) you have stayed in your life. I in my case it can surely be counted on fingers of one hand. But thank to last three weeks this number at least doubled. Two weeks in Spar Hotel in Gőteborg, one night in NH Hotel in Vienna, three nights in Premier Inn in Dubai and finally yet undetermined amount of days in Howard Johnson Diplomat Hotel in Abu Dhabi. 

The last one is certainly the best one. 15^th floor with a great view, spacious two-bed room with kitchen and bath. More than enough. Only disadvantage is everyday party 17^th floor dance club, but I am fine because during an excursion to pipe bending workshop in Gothenburg they provided us with ear plugs J But on the other hand the breakfast is very very poor and a ride to work takes almost same time as from Dubai.

Yes, the Arabian traffic. I had to deal with it sooner than I wanted to. Right on the second day I picked my “sport” car at the Dubai office and had to drive to Yas island site office. I was not scared, only a bit worried. But I was there once in July and I had a map, so no problem. And I missed a turn right on a first highway multilevel crossroad.

But before I continue, I let you solve this puzzle. Try to count how many kilometers I have to drive from A to B? The fastest correct answer receives a special reward that can be picked up here, means here in UAE :)  P.S. Be fair and do not read further until you solve this puzzle :) 

Here is a link for the bigger image

It was just for a small illustration of how is the driving here. So I missed a turn. But nothing was lost. At the next crossroad I proved some knowledge of Arabic driving habbits, made a U-turn and hooray to the highway to Abu Dhabi. The Sheikh Zayed road or The Sheikh Rashid bin Maktoum road is a main 4-6 lane arterial UAE highway. I don’t know where it actually begins or ends, because either Sheikh, Zayed or Maktoum is every second structure here. Everything that I know is that it connects Dubai and Abu Dhabi, that in Dubai is almost always jammed, that it has no curves, that the speed limit which nobody cares about is 120 km/h and that it changes shape and parameters because of road works that often like Czech government its heads.

But this basically I described every road here. Everything is huge, magnificent, but usually kind of hasty. The road system is a bright example and I think you will hear about it a lot here!!

Anyway…I made it on a first try to the site office, picked up a Singaporean colleague Kamil and at the evening we drove back to our hotel in Dubai. It was dark already and few kilometers before Dubai the traffic was denser and denser. I was driving slowly and looking for a right exit which I remembered was somewhere near a main port highway. I saw a lot of signs indicating an exit to Jebel Ali free port zone, but I wasn’t still sure so I kept driving. Suddenly I saw a right sign and shining highway bridge in front of us told me that I had to exit. I was in the lane most on the right so next to me on the right was only the exiting lane and it was almost at its end. Fast indicator light, and before I could have looked to the mirror and turned as a lightning passed on my right in the exiting lane a car and returned back to the highway directly in front of me!!! Shit!!! Dammed bastards!!!

In here is completely normal to overtake cars from the right, because the roads have so many lanes and everybody is driving in whichever one of them. It is not rare to be overtaking from exit lanes or emergency stopping lane. But this was caused probably with a law, that if a local Arab driver has an accident with a non-Arab driver, it’s always the non-Arab’s fault whatever happened!!!

Never mind…I made to the other highway and was approaching the eye of the storm. Imagine two frequented multi lane highways crossing each other. What is the worst thing you do to make a crossroad? Yes, correct….a roundabout!! And because they are big highways we need even bigger roundabout. This one has a diameter about 500 meters and is actually elliptic. And what happens when you built a roundabout connecting two roads 24 hours full of trucks? Yes, correct… you create 24 hours long traffic jam. And if you want to redone the error you’ve made? Yes, correct…you put traffic lights there!! And what happens if you put traffic light on a roundabout? Congratulations…you’ve just created the worst crossroad ever :D

Terrifying view. From miles away we could have seen lines of blinking orange truck lights going to infinity on all sides. We joined the show about three kilometers from the eye and started to watch a light play of AWDs, which were like a chaotic cloud of fire-flies trying to find a shortcut through the desert. Hospoda hořela hodinu. No, seriously, we were there like an hour. And if you think that I was stupid and didn’t take another way, be sure that there is really no other way and everybody has to go through the eye.

Fortunately I drove there only two times so the theater didn’t get that boring. On Friday, which is along with Saturday a weekend here, I packed my things, said goodbye to Dubai and did my hopefully last hotel hop.