I came here because the Yerevan - Abu Dhabi - Delhi flight was cheap. The only cheaper option was through Tehran, but that route creates uncertainty in obtaining visas for some countries, so Iran remains only in plans for now. Upon arrival here, you experience two things. The first is scorching heat, and the second, intensifying with each day spent here, is the all-seeing eye of Allah, forgiving the tourist what should not be forgiven.
If you Google what is prohibited in the Emirates, you will get an extensive list of common things. You can’t wear shorts, hug, look at local women, photograph the airport, and much more, which is usually forgiven for tourists.
The first thing that catches your eye in this city is the number of towers. Rows of 20-story buildings look like dwarfs against their skyscraper neighbors. Because of this landscape, the sense of distance blurs. Huge houses don’t become something distant. They simply turn into slightly larger-than-normal houses, and that disrupts the sense of distances. At first, it feels like you’ve entered a silly nightmare where you’re surrounded by Novy Arbat (a famous street in Moscow), and no matter where you turn, you end up on it again.
But one very pleasant thing sets this city apart from Novy Arbat. It seems as though it was created for pedestrians. You never wait long at traffic lights, and if there are none, the cars will stop as soon as you approach the crossing. Crosswalks don’t need to be sought; they magically appear before your eyes as soon as you think of crossing the road.
The second thing is the number of migrants. Wikipedia says the ratio of locals to immigrants is 1:8. If you consider locals to be those who wear a kufi or burqa, there are hardly any of them on the streets. Advertisements for apartment rentals for Indians, Filipinos, and others are hanging on poles. It’s almost like the Moscow “Slavs only” policy, but the opposite. The internet says that migrants here are like economic slaves, but if you look for statistics, that impression doesn’t quite add up. However, such an impression does form when you fly from Abu Dhabi to India. The thing is, all flights to India depart from Terminal 2. But you won’t find out about it. Google snippet will say the departure is from the first terminal. The display in the first terminal will say the departure is from the third. The guard in the third will say the departure is from the first. Well, the guard in the first will say the departure is from the second, and you have to use the transfer to get there (a 20-minute walk).
The second terminal really struck me. Considering the distance, both physical and moral, from the other terminals, it seems like a separate airport. In a country of meaningless show-offs, against the backdrop of two other rich terminals and even a transfer - a brand-new SUV for 4 passengers - this building looks torn out from another world. Only one entrance is open, the farthest from the controls, as the line to them stretches from the entrance itself. Tiny for an airport but enormous for a barn, this terminal seems to be reserved for Indians, as there are no flights to other countries from here. Considering that a large number of migrants in this country are from India, you recall all the theses about economic slavery.
P.S. I’m writing this from an Indian low-cost carrier. And it’s the best low-cost carrier I’ve seen.
Before coming here, I learned that local banks open accounts for non-residents with a minimum balance requirement. Of course, I wanted to open an account here to reduce my dependence on my current bank. The goal didn’t seem easy from the outset as we were only here for a week, so we had only one attempt. After Googling where this could be done, I chose the Abu Dhabi bank as the most reasonable option among all the variants. Upon arrival, we immediately set out to open an account. The first thing to do was to get a local SIM card. Deciding that buying it at the airport is always a bad idea, we decided to do it in the city. However, it turned out that small shops cannot sell SIM cards to non-residents. You need to go to the operator’s office for that. This trip took us half of Friday as Google Maps in Abu Dhabi is not very well-marked. In the end, we just accidentally stumbled upon one of the operator’s offices. Since the first half of the day was spent just arriving, it seemed that there was no chance with the bank, but there was, because banks have weekends on Fridays and Sundays. So, the next day we went to the bank. The clerk was surprised by such a request and sent us to the manager. Here, I had to roll the dice again with charisma. Despite there being two of us, the dice were cast for just one person. The clerk was talking mostly to me all the time. As a result, I didn’t roll the dice successfully, and we were denied in opening accounts.
By the way, the lack of proper markings on the maps made us not search for places on the internet but to enter the first available ones. That’s how we found “Hussein’s Bakery” - a tiny place with three tables, which we liked so much that we ate there four out of seven days of our stay. Besides that, we found an Ethiopian restaurant where they serve food on a huge piece of bread, and you have to use pieces of it instead of cutlery, or a Chinese place where there’s a grill and a pot built into the middle of the table, and you gather ingredients and cook them at your own table.
