This is not the way home.

So much has happened over the last few days, but I'm going to try to pare it down to the salient points...yeah right. First stop was Abu Dhabi International Airport.

Arriving into Abu Dhabi at 6:30am after a 14 hour flight with a layover of about 6 hours ahead of me was not the most exciting prospect of my trip I can tell you. The outside temperature at that time of the morning was already 28 C. The airport was very clean and modern and all of the staff spoke English. The tiolets were or a familiar layout with an addition I have never seen before - inside each cubicle, next to the toilet was a hose with a trigger nozzle attachment. I had no idea what these were used for, but guessed it may have something to do with washing the feet. How wrong I was. It turns out that this hose is used for the same purpose a bidee is used in French toilets. Also there was an attendant in each toilet who would immediately go in after a parton left to clean up, from what I saw there were often very large puddles of water in the cubicles after someone left. That is definitely not a job I'd ever want to be doing.

After a mix up with our gate number for departure meant that we had to walk all the way from one end of the terminal to the other, I departed Abu Dhabi on my way to Frankfurt.

I'd like to make a brief side note here to say that even after several negative reviews about Etihad Airways that I have read on the net, I was quite happy with the service and flights that I have been on so far. The attendants are perhaps not as attentive as they could be, but the entertainment system is quite extensive and on-demand, meaning you can pause, rewind, etc Movies or TV shows and the selection is quite broad.

Arriving in Frankfurt airport, I was glad to see that this was also a clean, modern airport and was directed to catch the train to terminal 1 (all this without going out through customs!). Let me say that terminal 1 in Frankfurt airport is like Footscray or Sunshine Train Station. You could easily imagine a zombie movie being filmed in the dingy, spooky looking area where my departure gate was located - by far one of the most depressing areas in an airport I have yet seen. Needless to say, I didn't want to hang around that area for my 3 hour layover so I went upstairs and sat in McDonalds for a bit. Now I'm not sure I want my first meal review on this blog to be about McDonalds, but I have to say I had a very good burger here. It was some kind of special burger called a Beef Ciabatta or something similar, but it had red onions and at least 2 different types of lettuce and tasted really good. They may not be using 100% Australian beef, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

So after getting on the Lufthansa flight for the final leg of my outbound journey, I was very glad this was only a short flight (less than 2 hours). This plane was small and reminded me of a budget airline with no entertainment system at all. I'm glad I had my iPod. Arriving at Belgrade airport was less of a shock than it would have been had I not stopped in Frankfurt and was kind of on par with what I would expect from an eastern european airport, but with less security. Not very modern or particularly clean, it's not horrible either and from what I could see, customs consisted of a single guard who let the majority of people past with barely a glance.

We had previously arranged for a driver and car to pick me up at the airport and he was waiting right near the door from the international area with a card with my name on it. We did this because apparently Serbia has quite a few fake taxis which will rip tourists of as much as they can. The driver was very friendly - and drove me directly to our apartment and I payed him the pre-arranged price of 15 Euro (about $AUD30). This was about 12:30am. After making my way up to the 6th floor in an elevator no larger than your average fridge, I was finally in my home for the next 6 or so days. Quickly checking the view from the blacony and having a quick tour of the rooms, I was very happy with the accomodation and immeditely decided I needed to try out the bed with every expectation of a long sleep in on Saturday morning.