Sylvia's Journal

We left our house in Kabul like we did the last three times, with in the back of our mind the possibility that we cannot come back because something had gone horribly wrong. Hopefully we are lucky again, two weeks from now.

We closed the door behind us, said goodbye to our daytime guard, Rabbani from Badakhshan, piled all the food that needs to be consumed before we come back on trays in the refrigerator for all our staff. We also left them envelopes with, in my best Dari script, the wish ‘Eid Mubarak’ (عید مبارک) written on them, my attempt to spell everyone’s name correctly and some cash inside for the upcoming holydays.

In Kabul the weather may have turned but in Dubai desert temperatures prevailed. When we landed at 8:30 PM it was still 37 degrees Celsius; we know this because we had to leave the terminal and go outside because the baggage systems of Safi airlines and KLM don’t connect.

We had to enter UAE, pick up our baggage and turn around and check our bags and ourselves in again. It was good we had about four and a half hours to do this because the route from arrival back to check in was rather circuitous. The place is not set up for people doing this.

During our last trip we had signed up for UAE e-Gate, an electronic entry and exit system that is supposed to help avoid lines. So far it has come up short on promises. As it turned out that was a good thing. Since the card and fingerprint reader did not recognize me I was manually entered upon arrival (Axel was electronically recognized).

After we had checked in and had to leave the country again I had to be manually exited as well. For Axel there was a problem. You cannot exit electronically within 6 hours of entering electronically. They don’t tell you those things when you apply for the e-gate pass. It is supposed to let you in and out quickly. Axel told me it was a classical example from Jeffrey Moore’s The Chasm, a treatise about the big divide between the nice idea of a new technology and getting it right with the early adopters so that late adopters will be enticed. I am not sure we are early adopters but our experience is unlike to attract any kind of adopters in our circle of friends.

And now we are in Amsterdam after a fairly smooth ride in our economy plus seats – extra leg room (the kind that used to be normal) and in a quiet part of the airplane (except for two screaming children) for about 140 Euro extra. We splurged and congratulated each other on the relative comfort.

In Holland the weather is like fall. We didn’t bring any clothes for that so, instead of going into town (any town) to pass the six hours of our transit time, we settled in the KLM lounge, took a shower and caught up on stuff.