Ramadan in Doha is a challenge. At times unbearably hot, wandering around the desolate streets in search of food becomes a difficult task which prompts some sort of desperation to leave the place and keep busy abroad.
As crew, I find some relief in operating a turnaround to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. The flight, which takes over two and a half hours, soars over the Arabian Sea and turns left while on climb, dipping right into the heart of Saudi Arabia.

As Lebanon has a mix of both Christian and Muslim population, half of my passengers sport sour faces, clear faces of fasting right in the middle of the Arabian summer.

      ‘As the sunset came, half of the passengers on the aircraft started to really get impatient and anxious and when the fasting time was finally over we were already on final approach.
Try to explain them that we couldn’t give them anything to eat as we were preparing to land. Almost eating us alive, we had to improvise and shove some edibles on air sickness bags, which we handed almost ten minutes before we touched down at Beirut International Airport.’

I open the aft door and a warm Mediterranean draft enters the galley. The lights of Beirut dot a steep cliff side which seems to both raise towards a clear starred sky and sink against the warm sea. I promise myself to visit this city in the future, before closing the door and prepare for the full return flight.

Shortly after a minimum rest, I return to the airport for an afternoon departure to Munich, which I swapped for a short Ho Chi Minh City layover.
The flight is full and I am assigned a galley for the first time, the six food carts to be loaded adding to the stress of this crew position and finally taking their toll on my back muscles which cramp for the entire six hours we take to reach Bavaria.
Light crosswinds suddenly challenge us on final approach and the aircraft stresses all its weight on the aft undercarriages. Once the shake is felt, the aircraft comes to a complete stop and the crew signs chime:

– Prepare for possible evacuation. Stay put.

Firefighter trucks line next to us and quench the heat. A thick black smoke comes from the overheated undercarriages and the evacuation is called off. We are towed to the main terminal and the return flight is announced as cancelled.

After a long paperwork, we are driven to the hotel and I am assigned a room with a balcony overlooking the Englisch Gartens. I meet some of the crew and we discuss the incident over dishes of Italian food. The night is warm and humid, the park around us is dark and silent.

In the morning, I rush through the Englisch Gartens and follow a straight street into the city centre. Surfers catch a taste of the Isar at the constant wave at Eisbach, office workers catch a taste of coffee at Alexander Platz. The little people announce the hours on the dot from the top of the clock tower at Marienplatz and I buy several packages of Haribo gums just a few streets down the road.

A lineup of naked people accompany my walk through the sunny Englisch Gartens at midday and later, I rest in my hotel room and nap at the sound of the news being announced by the BBC.
On the return flight, polite passengers chat and ask me about the happenings of a cabin crew. At the same time, the aircraft once again enters the hot Middle Eastern night and lands in Doha shortly before midnight, ideal time for some air conditioned dreams in Al Mansoura.

The next day, I meet friends for lunch and return to the apartment to prepare for my London flight. Not popular with the crew, any operations involving the British capital are famous for being extenuating and demanding, a reflection of this becoming obvious in the pale faces of my fellow crew members, all unhappy with the flight assignment.

      ‘Most of my crew were changed and pulled out from Stand-by to operate this flight so they were not enjoying it as much. I realized that it really changes the entire mood in the aircraft. I can’t say they were horrible, but I really didn’t have fun on either of the sectors.
I was assigned a galley again and I just couldn’t bear my back anymore. The cherry on top of the cake was a passenger that was coming back from Bangkok and apparently got food poisoned. Unable to hold it, the vomit all over my galley completed this hellish journey to Gatwick.’

We circle over green patches of farmland and land in Gatwick shortly after sunrise. Conveniently next to the airport, I enter my hotel room and with no rest, I am joined by a Paraguayan crew member before we hit the train right into Victoria Station.
At the busy main concourse, I meet a childhood friend now living in the British capital and we start our Japanese-style tour.

A short walk from Victoria, the high fences of Buckingham Palace divide the orderly royal grounds from the sea of tourists and selfie sticks. There is an enigmatic beauty on the key lime-coloured vegetation of Hyde Park, there is a spike of anxiety at the lights of Picadilly Circus and there is a Wham-induced sugar rush at Covent Garden.

The lion imagery roars silently at the hundreds of tourists in iconic Trafalgar Square, whilst walking down through Scotland Yard brings us to the most famous part of the city at Westminster, the Big Ben a beacon of both timekeeping and location, announcing midday over the murky waters of the Thames.

–‘Mind the Gap’. Station after station, we take advantage of the oldest metro network in the world and emerge at Greenwich Village, where a picnic is a must amidst the steep greenery of the astronomical observatory, the prettiest view of London appreciated from both East and West side of the world.

The sun sets over the high-rise profile of Canary Wharf and, thirty six hours with no sleep finally catch up with me. We say good-bye to our tour guide for the day, once again promising more frequent visits. A bus, a metro ride, another metro ride, a long walk and a train take me back to Crawley, at night the London suburbia looking dark and melancholic through the windows of countless flats.

At hour thirty-nine:

      ‘I grabbed a blueberry muffin and sat on the crew lounge. I logged into MSN for an hour and, when I realized I was mixing Portuguese with Spanish and English when chatting with my brother, I knew it was finally time to sleep.’

We leave in the early morning. The full flight once again hard to bear for everyone. Perhaps both passengers and crew wishing to be somewhere else, perhaps away from the buzz of London, or the quietness of Doha.

Time for a snack and some shisha at the Souq. My Eurotrips now concluding for the month.