There was a movie named, “If it’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium,” which kind of explains how these past couple days have felt. In the span of two days, I’ve been in four different countries and covered 12 time zones. Except for brief stops and relatively short layovers, it has been continuous travel. And I’m back to the office tomorrow morning…

Sunday morning started at the ridiculous (when compared to the preceding week) hour of seven, which was necessary for us to get up, get ready, get a bite of breakfast, and get to our airport transfer bus by 8:30. Then it was a ride almost the full length of Dubai through rush hour traffic, and about 15 minutes out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere; all told, about an hour to get to the airport.  If you have the option, you’d want to fly to the much closer DXB Dubai International, not DWC Al Mahktoum.

The two-hour wait at the airport was cut a little short by my explanation of what a “duty-free” shop was, and my wife picked up that souvenir booze that she just had to have, plus a couple other curiosities for the folks back home.  (Of the combined weight of our baggage, mine accounted for only about a third. I was getting worried about how she’d get it all to Mariupol.) Our wait was followed by a five-hour flight  back to Kiev.

(A quick word about the temperatures in Dubai.  I didn’t know how warm things were most days — other than “too hot” — but I was able to see the temps on the day we left.  When we boarded the transfer bus at 8:30 it was already 34 C — 93 F.  It was at 37 C when we got to the airport — 98 F.  The expected high for the day was 39 C — 102 F.)

We got into Kiev no problem, and got through customs and passport control no problem.  (Zhulyany is a dinky airport compared to every other one I saw on this trip, but at least now I can say I’ve been out of both the Kiev airports.) The shuttles between Zhulyany and the train station don’t run on Sundays, so we had to grab a taxi.  Between Dubai and Kiev, I have to go with Kiev for which city has the most nerve-wracking taxi service.  But we got to the station in one piece.

my wife’s train back to Mariupol was not until the next evening, so we got a room at the passenger hotel.  We had some dinner at the nearby (and apparently, new since last November) Pozhata Hata cafeteria, and then had a couple hours of rest before I had to catch the shuttle bus to the Boryspil airport.  So my first and last evenings in Kiev and with my wife were the same — separate twin beds in the passenger hotel.  Oy.

The airport shuttle doesn’t run as often in the middle of the night, so I had to go earlier than I would have wanted.  (But that meant that my wife could get a good night’s sleep before her day in Kiev, so there was a small upside.)  I had a couple hours to wait before I could check-in for my flight, and then a couple more hours before the flight took off.  I was pretty tired by that point, so even though I had an aisle seat for the flight to Amsterdam, I was already dozing off by the time we took off.  I think that may have been the first time I ever slept through a take-off.

The flight was OK and we got into Amsterdam a little early.  I only had two hours between flights, so I was able to get checked in almost immediately.  A little more waiting, and then it was an uneventful 10-hour flight back to Portland.  The real disappointment was that, yet again, my bag was not in the first 10 that got to the baggage carousel.  If my bag is ever number 1, I’ll have to do something to celebrate.

After traveling for about a day and a half, the thing I have to do now is try to stay awake.  I’ve jumped across 12 time zones, so this time it might be a little more difficult to get back into the right rhythms.  This is one of the times I wish I still drank caffeine…

I’ll do my usual wrap up and get the photos up in the next couple days.  (One of the nice things about the extra time in Kiev was that I was able to see the photos my wife took while in Abu Dhabi.  She had said that the camera stopped working, but she still managed to get some very nice images.  I hope I can describe them appropriately.)