Dichotomy City

October 10th 2016

With context-free interjections by Nils

28729.
That's how many steps I walked today, my all-time record. But let's start in the morning.

It's just past 10 am. I feel something touching my leg. Panicked, I get the sleep mask off my face just to realize that it's just Nils trying to signal that it's probably time to get up.
We depart from our hostel and make our way through the morning heat. Emerging from our fairly run-down neighbourhood, we enter a well air-conditioned shopping mall that is covered in marble everywhere you look. Just yesterday we strayed endlessly through dirty neighbourhoods, now we are standing in some squeaky-clean mall just a stone's throw away.
We wonder how such stark differences are possible, but don't find a satisfying answer. We get some breakfast in a well-stocked and reasonably priced supermarket.

I interrupt for a quick question: How much juice can you comfortably carry around Dubai an entire day? Answer: Not 3 Litres.

Afterwards, we head on to the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa. The journey with the metro isn't too complicated (there's a grand total of three different lines), as long as you avoid the rush hours. On our way from the station to the mall, we catch a glimpse of the skyline and notice that many buildings (like every second one) are still in construction.
(Who is supposed to inhabit all these residential and office towers is still beyond us)

The Dubai Mall is a huge building complex hard to surpass in pomp and splendour. There are all sorts of stores, ranging from clothing to jewellery, toy stores and cinemas. But there are a few oddities, too.

An exit sign shows us the way to the tallest building in the world — the Burj Khalifa.
It's hard to convey with pictures how impressive this building is. Still, you might get an impression.

We take a walk along the promenade — keeping in the shade, of course, it's about 40°C in the mid-day sun.

Our hunger leads us into the huge food court of the mall, where we find some tasty sandwiches.
Yeah, not quite Arabic, we know.

Well-fed and happy, we check off another item from our bucket list by asking a local a question from our book of 1000 questions. They choose a number from 1 to 1000 and we ask them the corresponding question from our book. The Arab man we find decides on question 30 — "What do you dislike about yourself?".
His answer is "Summer", leading us to believe that only the "What do you dislike?" part made it through translation. It's strange to us, anyway, that someone living in the desert their entire life would complain about the heat.

As the last stop for today, we admire the water fountains in front of the Burj Khalifa — gorgeous, really.

Because just one world record at one place doesn't cut it in Dubai, these fountains are also the world's largest...

Exhausted and tired, we head back to the hostel in a hopelessly overcrowded metro. In the next few days, we plan to head to the beach and take a look at the "old town" — the part where not everything is completely artificial, in other words.
See you then!