2/22/09
Set out very early this morning to apply for a visa for India, first Marta (who I met in October 2008, when Coby and I visited the UAE the first time) and I took a taxi all the way out of town, to learn the visas and passports are handled in a special place in town – in fact one of my favorite places: the mall with the internet café. Another taxi took us back through rush hour to the right place, only to find out, that – after filling out the application – we need, beside passport pictures (of course!!) to hand over our passports for the duration of a week, while our citizenships are confirmed. Another interesting part of the picture was, that both – Marta and my visa for the UAE was expiring in a few days (they only allow 4 weeks for a tourist visa) and needed to be renewed which is handled here typically by driving across the nearest border. So, we couldn’t hand over our passports after all.
Sitting in a café in the mall, Marta and I didn’t know quite what to do, but Marta (seemingly the brave one) jumped up and said: Let’s rent a car now and go over to Oman (the closest country east from the UAE, a 3 hour trip by car, one way). I was game – always ready for something crazy. Next thing I knew we were trying (really hard) to find our way through this maze of construction work – dead end roads, detours and such in our rented car. We circled around a few times, but were finally on our way out of town in the right direction (so it seemed – you never know around here).
A word about driving: this is something to get used to. Once you realize that rules are just there to be broken, or maybe it would be better to ask: What are the traffic rules? Coby asked a taxi driver if he had to learn any traffic rules, or if there is even a hand out book – the driver denied, which didn’t surprise me one bit. So, under those circumstances, you drive and just hope for the best or use common sense or something like that! The good part about it is, that everybody is very forgiving. You can actually almost do anything and not get in trouble – believe me, I tried that out in a hurry! I mean people honk constantly – that’s a given, but you get to actually push your way in a busy five lane road, all the way from the right to the left – or the other way around -(because you have to turn, you just found out too late, and if you don’t – who knows when your next chance will be – maybe never………..) They forgive you and let you go unharmed – physically and emotionally. Get yourself detached from rules and you go…………….generally speaking, that could be hard for a German, but I just didn’t take much time to adjust, let me tell you. Riding my bike around here was a good appetizer. Negotiable and flexible – those are the words for the local traffic and – I guess it fits in general, when talking about getting things done around here.
We got it all done that day. We made it to the border – after asking direction a gazillion times or more. One nice Arab actually drove us out of the town Al Ain and didn’t just gesture wildly with his hand saying: No problem, no problem. The people at the border were another story. One very impatient Immigration official started yelling at us, and that surely didn’t help to understand what he was saying. I was determent enough to just – rudely – bypass him and walked straight to another desk with a kinder looking face: It worked! As it turned out, we had to drive another 40 km to get our stamp in our pass ports for Oman and turn around back to the UAE to get our new entrance stamp for another 4 weeks (let’s hope it doesn’t take that long…..).
Oman could be mistaken for the moon – driving through the twilight helped that image!
We made it back by 9:30pm (the Indian consulate is open until 10pm) and applied for our visa the same day!
