Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The first journey of the year was my first trip outside of Europe. So using my passport for the first time. The co-founder of my old company was working in Dubai for half a year. So I promised him that I’ll come to visit. So I did for around 10 days. We lived in the Sofitel hotel in downtown Dubai. Which meant one of the top places you can think of in the city centre. Right next to the biggest tower in the world (Burj Khalifa) and a large shopping mall. And yep, a normal room is not enough. It surely has to be the presidential suite. So I moved in there and enjoyed all the advantages including the club membership with amazing service in the lounge downstairs. There I enjoyed breakfast and dinner.
Because it was right after the new year, they had some shows planned at the biggest building in the world. Normally they have do have a firework show at new years eve. This year they decided to make a laser show and turn the tower into a huge display. Like nothing in Dubai just can be normal this was an amazing show.
I now had a couple of days travel around the city and explore. Visit thinks like: Burj Khalifa, Dubai and Emirates Mall, the Old Town, Dubai Downtown, Dubai Marina, City Walk or The Palm Jumeirah. So much to see in this crazy city. On one day my colleague joined me and on the other, I did it on my own.
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
After exploring this crazy city with its skyscrapers I went south to Abu Dhabi. There I met a girl which I learned to know on my trip last year to Norway. We visited some more place in the city like the biggest mosque, the palace and the newly opened Louvre. All the things I would recommend to also do.
Muscat, Oman
I also wanted to visit another nearby country. And this country was Oman. From Dubai, there’s a direct bus service which crosses the border overnight and arrives within 8 hours in the capital Muscat. Crossing the land border by the ways is a lot of hassle. You have to pay a small fee for the crossing. So everyone on board has to get an entry ticket, step back into the bus and after maybe 1 kilometre we had to stop again to get the visa on arrival in my case as Swiss (but a lot need to apply for a visa in advance). Then our luggage was also checked. And by checked I mean down to every single item in my backpack. I arrived at 4 in the morning a little outside of Muscat. The first thing I did was to rest a little. So I found a lorry car park and climbed on the back of a truck and slept for a couple of hours. After that, I went to explore the city on foot.
Later in the morning, I met my Couchsurfer host in a shisha bar right at the beach. There we spend most of the afternoon. In the evening a friend of him joined us and we did a city tour by car (Mustang). We visited the Royal Opera House Muscat (the biggest in the middle east) and also the Al Alam Palace.
After staying a couple of days inside the capital I decided to rent a car on my last day and drive a little bit south to see the landscape a little more. Oman has a lot of very nice landscape to visit. Desert, mountains, wadis and beach. But going into the desert or mountain by myself is very risky and with just a normal car not doable. So I took a ride alongside the coast.
Istanbul, Turkey
My flight back home had a one-day layover in Istanbul. I like that type of journey because I can visit one more city on my travel. To sum up my Couchsurfing success story I also did that in Istanbul. I was able to stay at a very friendly Turkish guy (Omer) which joined me on a tour through the city and told me stuff about the history.