If you recall, last blog I had a discussion with myself (well, no-one else is reading these things) regarding on whether people should go to Romania or not. I can tell you one place you definitely don't want to go: Baneasa airport in Bucharest. Quite simply the worst airport I have ever been to. Every part of it is entirely too small for the number of people using it, the gent's toilets were an inch or two underwater, the duty free stores were akin to a corner shop (at which you couldn't spend the local currency! So now I've some particularly colourful kindling...), and the PA announcements were unintelligible - if you dared to ask any of the few staff what exactly had just been announced, or which flight they were personally checking in, we were told to listen harder! :)

I was flying Blue Air again (slogan: "Your Destination. Our Way"), and apparently "their way" was for us all to present our boarding passes, and sit on a sweltering bus that didn't go anywhere for 45 minutes. It so transpired that we were in the midst of some fuel crisis: the airport had run out. Or at least it had run out of petrol for a price Blue Air was willing to pay for it.

A creative solution - the aviation equivalent of circling the block to see if we can get a better deal at the next petrol station - we'd fly to Budapest instead. So jot me down for another country I've visited: 20 minutes in Hungary. I suppose it could've been worse, they might have just thrown their hands in the air and said the flight was cancelled. Which would've left me in a spot of bother since I had every intent of catching a very early flight from Brussels the next morning.

Luckily, despite the crappy terminal, the shaky beginning, and the unplanned diversion we didn't have any oxygen cylinders on board. We just had to hold our breath the whole way. It was a low-cost carrier after all. (For overseas readers: a Qantas aircraft had a hole blown in the side of it by, what is thought to have been, a faulty oxygen cylinder. I don't know whether you've heard of it).

In Brussels, more than 20 degrees cooler than where I'd come from, I stowed my bag in an airport locker, and flush with the enthusiasm that one can only have after you decide you're going to spend the night trying to sleep on an airport terminal floor, I hit the city. It turned out that I'd timed my visit pretty well: it was Belgium's National Day.

I started my tour off with a look at what I considered Brussels' highlight on my last visit here around 5 years ago: Grote Markt. Or Grand Place if you're from Walloon. I can't figure out what language I'm supposed to speak here. I thought it was bilingual, but most people seem to be speaking French. Grote Markt is as spectacular as I remember it: a massive square almost entirely surrounded by a series of medieval, monumental buildings. It's pretty amazing and, as I just discovered, it's also a UNESCO World Heritage site. So go check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Place, if you can't make it in person.

While I was there they had a military aircraft flypast over the square, part of the parade that was going on elsewhere in the city. They seem quite a patriotic folk with the Belgian colours everywhere and crowds flooding the streets. I couldn't even get anywhere near the parade route, there were so many people about. The display of patriotism was at odds with what I'd been hearing a fair bit on my travels: how it was becoming increasingly likely that Belgium might split into two separate countries. Of course, most of what I'd heard was from just the one Walloon (i.e French-speaking) bloke one evening - I couldn't get away from him. But there's plenty about it on the internet too, even prospective maps of corridors joining French-speaking enclaves together!

In any case there was plenty of stuff going on in town and I was easily able to amuse myself 'til the time of the last train to the airport. At one point, in my continuing European experience of bumping into famous people of whom I have no knowledge, I err... bumped into some famous people of whom I had knowledge. I still have no idea who they were, but I imagine they were quite high-up government officials, or royals perhaps. Entirely ringed by police, the quite large group made their way through a crowd that was pretty stoked to see them. Earlier in trip, in The Netherlands, I'd seen "some Dutch TV chick". And in Aachen, I'd seen "some important German politician guy, presumedly". I should've got their autographs....

I found a slightly darker, out of the way place in the airport and managed to snatch an hour's sleep, at best. Check-in for my flight to Abu Dhabi began just after 4, so I figured it wasn't worthwhile getting a hotel. Besides, I'm a cheaparse.

I'd scheduled a one-night stopover for Abu Dhabi since I was quite interested in having a look at the place, and I'd figured it'd leave me in better shape once I eventually arrived home. Unfortunately, due to the schedule change, I now had substantially less time to visit. Leaving, more or less, enough time for a slow wander and dinner before bed.

A slow wander was about all I could manage: from mid-30s in Romania, to 10 degrees in Brussels, to early-40s in the Emirates! It wasn't just the heat though, the humidty was suffocating. I walked along a bit of The Corniche (a landscaped pathway along the waterfront) and I was positively bathing in my own sweat after a few minutes. Amazingly there were people jogging by me - in tracksuit pants!

The place itself is pretty amazing. There's seemingly not a whole lot to look at, unless you like shopping, but it's their attitude which is the most impressive thing. Want to build a cricket stadium in the desert? No problem! Is the grass green enough for you? There seems to be no limit to what they can envision and set about building. And it's all due to the petrodollars (incidentally, petrol here is at a flat rate of around 50c). In a means to diversify the economy, construction is going on everywhere. To give an idea of some of the scale, on the plane home I sat next to an Australian bloke who was working on a housing development: for over 160,000 people!

The planning could do with a bit of work though. Trying to figure out how to get to my hotel I found three separate street addresses for it. The reason being, it's not really on any street. And it's not at all unusual, behind all the skyscrapers for example, you'll find mosques hidden away in parking lots virtually. Speaking of which, they seem a bit more liberal with their religion, in some respects, than we are. I saw a mosque who's minaret was overshadowed by a mobile phone tower - which was actually part of the same complex! Imagine Telstra trying to put a receiver on a church roof, extending above the steeple!

There seemed to be a fair bit of pollution about. Alternatively it was desert that had been kicked up by the wind. Visibility wasn't the best, but it made for a great sunset.

I haven't got the women figured out here. Doubtlessly it's hard to draw conclusions since so many people from so many countries are living and working here, and there's surely many shades of religion and how fervently it's followed. So on one hand you have a woman jogging along the Corniche in a singlet top, and on the other you have the spectacle that I witnessed. I'd staggered my way into a part of the city that specialised in selling dresses. And not just any kind, their windows were filled with backless, plunging, off-the-shoulder, debutante, caberet-style numbers. And as I passed, two women came out the door entirely covered from head-to-toe in black with only their eyes showing. Where on earth would they wear these dresses?!

Anyway, Abu Dhabi is short on attractions (for now) but it's a pretty amazing place. Still, I wasn't unhappy about leaving it for home. In a way. I didn't want my holiday to be over either. Unfortunately, there are too many commitments for it to be otherwise, so to home I was headed.

I got back on Thursday, and have been spending the intervening days sleeping, resting and everything else in between.

This isn't an essay with a nice and tidy summing-up and conclusion at the end, but briefly: despite what I sometimes intimated I did have a very good time, almost all the time. I met some cool people, and hung out with some more whom I already knew were very cool. Regarding photos....I haven't really looked at them yet. I'll probably put some of the "best" on webshots with a final "blog entry" telling you when they're up. And that's about it.

Yay, everybody. Hope you enjoyed the blogs.

seeya :)