I warned you I would write a recap. And here it is.
As I already "spoiled" in my previous entry, we got Dubai the 4th of January in the middle of the night.
I unfortunately do not have any pictures from the airport but it was awesome. For the first time in 12 years I could smell and feel humid, warm air the way it only smells and feels in countries that are much, much closer to the equator than Sweden. I was ecstatic, to say the least.
We spent the first three days in a very comfortable hotel with an incredible breakfast. So incredible that I broke my principles and enjoyed some salmon and Egg Benedict in the mornings. What principles you might ask yourself? I have started to eat only plant-based food well over a year ago and am intending to keep on doing so. But the Eggs Benedict were just too perfect and I am a former lover of soft cook breakfast eggs and .... well, I land only once for the first time in Dubai in a nice hotel, so the moment had to be seized. Now I am back to plant-based.
Jetlag hit us much harder than I had expected and so did the change in weather. During the first days I was constantly very tiered and very dizzy. I could have sworn that the floor under my feet was rocking gently like a ship in a calm sea. The days flew by in a haze and we were soon busy trying to find a first apartment. We had originally planed to get here before Christmas which was not possible due to organisational matters and by now a constant stream of tourists from Europe had found it's way to Dubai, causing a raise in prices and grazing the housing market empty.
This was not making us happier, also because we had hoped to come here and find relative "safety" regarding the pandemic but with the influx of tourists the case numbers in the UAE are also on the rise. Abu Dhabi for example has harder restrictions than Dubai, but is also not as dependent on tourism as Dubai. Dubai on the other hand, with the duty to wear masks, to keep a certain distance and staff that is constantly disinfecting all kinds of surfaces, a high rate in vaccination being rolled out for all citizens and residents ( I think right now second after Israel) as well as the fact that all staff is quite regularly tested for Covid, feels still safer than Sweden. But it remains to be seen how the opening to tourism will effect Dubai during the next weeks.
But by searching for a place to live we made our first friends here, two real estate agents from Uzbekistan who did everything to get us a four bedroom apartment that was not overpriced. We in the end chose a three bedroom from somebody else but have still good contact with them.
Our apartment is now in the second highest residential building in the world - on the 75th and the 76th floor. The views are amazing, looking right over the Jumeirah Palm, the JBR beach to the left and towards Burj Al Arab to the right. The apartment is spacious and comfortable with a fully equipped kitchen, three bathrooms, a nice dinning and living area and will be more than all right for the first two months here. During this time we will have to fix paper work to really establish us here and look for an apartment with one more bedroom so that our two oldest can have some more privacy.
In the meantime we are enjoying something that resembles half a vacation, half trying to establish our lives and navigating day-to-day live while my husband is already working (albeit from home for the moment). We spent some time at the beach and some time exploring the city, getting used on how to move around, what to do, what to avoid. The children love it so far and soak up the new surrounding with a calm and joyful curiosity. Everybody is enjoying the light and the warmth and the comfort of our temporal home that offers - as do all residential buildings here - an indoor and outdoor pool.
A real shock were the food prices at the supermarket I thought I was used to sometimes hefty food prices from Sweden but Dubai beats this easily. During the first trips to the supermarket I actually did not want to buy anything at all, everything seemed ridiculously overpriced with each item costing around 3 times more than in Sweden. Now I found better supermarkets that are somewhat "cheaper" and am also slowly getting used to it.
In contrary to Sweden there are people ready to do every kind of work. People who pack your groceries at the cash register, somebody to weigh your fruits and veggies, somebody to carry the groceries to the car and then - this was a real shocker to me - somebody at your residential building who will load your groceries on a hotel-style baggage cart and drive them up to your apartment and even unload them there INTO your apartment (the rest one has to do oneself of course). In short, coming from an egalitarian country like Sweden this is a culture shock. And I will probably get into that at one point or the other.
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