lazily strolling the frankfurt am main, i came across a dead bird crushed against the cobble stone. by wheel or by foot, i’m unsure, but i quickly shot it and continued on. it wasn’t the only picture i took that day, but it does it’s more-than-fair part in summing up the mood i felt while exploring the city; a tiny cog in the big-business, big-building hustle-bustle.
there’s a certain curious charm to traveling halfway around the world and ending up doing such things as eating chinese food in a town that could easily pass for somewhere in illinois.
it rides with me and will hopefully help with my adventuring.
after a coma-like nap post-flight, i pulled myself awake long enough to get a second wind. i spend the next ten minutes trying to decide whether to eat at the hotel or take a walkabout through the neighborhoods to chip away at my fear of new places and, funnily enough, fifteen minutes later i had went all-in and was on the london underground heading towards piccadilly circus. in the interest of full disclosure, i’d like to say that i knew where i was going, but in reality i just recognized the word “piccadilly” (in thinking about it, i was wondering how funny it would be if my recognizing it was me reading that i shouldn’t go there, but alas).
so, piccadilly was exactly where i wanted to go and, after a short, meandering walk through the streets i realized i was at the thames and a block away from parliament; i had succeeded in being a tourist without even trying, what an ego boost.
as a side note, regarding my dubai post, i’ve changed my mind regarding the trick that i thought my mind was playing with foreign currency. rather than the exchange rate making me think i’m not spending a lot, it might be the fact that this money feels so new and unusual that my brain doesn’t immediately make the connection between this pretty paper i’m handing to the lady at the pub and the huge amounts of ugly green notes it’s taking from my bank account.
the best way to describe what it’s like to visit dubai is by likening it to las vegas. surprising, sure, for being a oil-rich port town in the middle east, but it has been westernized to the point where its arabic culture is almost unrecognizable. sure, there is the culture-specific architecture, but it’s mostly such a mishmash of what it was, what it wants to be, and what it needs to appeal to tourists that had you woken up there without knowing, you’d for sure assume you’re in the sin city. the money runs deep where tourists want to go, and is less obvious where they won’t. in itself, buying is an interesting experience with the dirham having a brain-friendly exchange rate at about AED 3.6 to a dollar. this causes a slightly dangerous illusion of spending more than you actually think you are ($27 seems like chump change when broken down from AED 100).
all of dubai is run by the sheiks, whose mansions back the billboard-lined highways — billboards that are forty-plus feet tall and plastered with the faces of george clooney or leonardo dicaprio — and whose low-number (one through however many royal sheikhs there are) license plated lambourghinis and mercedes casually patrol the highways. it’s a silent almost-capitalist city with lavish architecture and even more lavish malls, which, when entered, harken back to a surreal americana of commerce. interesting to note, though, that behind each storefront stands the government waiting to make the final decision on any matter.
more broken down, the city is divided into deira dubai, bur dubai, and rich-rich dubai. deira is the most naturally arabic part of town with the souks, markets, and plentiful shawarma (oh, the shawarma). staying there, as we did, was great for everything except a healthy diet and my wallet. bur dubai is the next step, with the smaller (read: still huge) malls (e.g. burjuman mall). traffic in both of these parts of town is scary to what i would assume is most americans (except those from ny and la). it’s ruthless, i say (an interesting sidenote on the traffic will come later). rich-rich dubai is the dubai from your internet searches. it’s home to such holy-shit-really-that-is-real-no-way’s as the sail hotel, the palm island, the emirates mall (with indoor ski slope), and the world’s tallest building (frankly, you could just say dubai is home to the world’s tallest _____ and insert whatever you’d like.) driving through this part of the city is like a trip through a strange valley of capitalism with borders on each side of either the tallest building you’ve ever seen or the largest billboards you’ve ever seen (seriously, gigantic).
city life is city life like you’d find in any city, really. you’ve got your mcdonald’s, your burger king, your pizza hut, your chili’s, your baskin robbin’s, and your texas (church’s) chicken. it’s almost easier to find an american chain to eat at than it is to get some authentic food, it seems. the crime was explained to me in two ways: one, that no one knows what crime is like because it’s kept hidden, and two, that there is no crime because of the harsh punishments — both seem plausible. i do know that the traffic law system is really interesting in that you reregister your vehicle every year and, during that registration, that’s when you find out whether your plate was photographed/radared speeding or running a red light (with punishments being a fine and, surprisingly, your vehicle impounded for a few months, respectively). don’t fuck around in the middle east.
getting away from the city and traveling into the desert is a really nice way of reality-checking yourself about where in the world you actually are. dunes! camels! middle eastern food! other desert things! deserts! it’s nice to look out and watch the tan dunes roll their way into where the horizon meets the land in an off-tan haze. authentic though it is, the capitalist agenda has not strayed far. even there is the small hut begging you to buy your “authentic” headwear and memorabilia.
lastly, am i going to write about the heat? sure, here it goes: it’s the middle east, it’s really fucking hot.
