First of all, what concerns me the most was the flight I'd missed. In fact, I had a previous experience of missing a flight with a discount ticket and at the time the ticket became invalid. (I've sworn it would never happen again!) What would happen in case of the award flight? Plus, the checked in luggage made me uneasy too. Had it been loaded and left me to Cairo, it must be very difficult to retrieve the backpack. Besides, I had to cancel the airport pick up service from the accommodation in Cairo.

I asked the first two questions to the staff in the counter and regarding the award flight they didn't know the details but they said my agency should handle it. What was the agency anyway? I organised this trip by myself but she repeated "the agency is the agency." About the luggage, Frankfurt Airport has a system which tracks the passengers and unless a passenger is on board his luggage won't be loaded too. The staff secured my luggage and arranged to send it to the carousel. Anyway I felt quite assured as the financial damage will be minimum.

I managed to send an urgent cancelation email to the accommodation with Kindle during the waiting time in front of the carousel. It was positively surprising that Kindle's internet function was finally made full use of. After retrieving the luggage, I joined the queue again at the ticket office to solve the question of 'the agency'. This time, I repeated the question patiently and the staff said "It's the agency which you book the flight." Oh, well it must be ANA.

Well it was Frankfurt airport. I dashed for the ANA counter. However, the answer at the counter was that award flights were not their area and I had to make a phone call to their service centre. Anyway, I got the phone number from them and connected to Skype by airport's paid wi-fi.

According to the operator, if I waited for 8 days, they can arrange an alternative flight at business even though it was a part of award flights. What's more, it was actually possible to book at first class with 10 days waiting. Oh, I couldn't be happier with this result as I'd actually resigned myself to the worst case that whole trip become void. The dream of Lufthansa first class terminal become feasible again.

Besides, the Cairo's accommodation gave me a kind reply which said that they didn't mind as long as I inform about the alternative flight. What amazing consequences they were! Almost no financial damage occurred even though I missed a flight.

The last thing I had to consider was how to spend these 10 days in Europe. I'd once thought of visiting friends in Germany and Switzerland but after careful consideration, I noticed that FITC (a big flash conference) was going to be held on the next day at Amsterdam. I must've been guided by the god of designing.

Once I decided what the next action is, I moved very quickly. Thanks to "Last Minutes Ticket Center", I secured a flight to Amsterdam. Also, during the waiting time at the gate, I booked the accommodation and contacted some Japanese people who were going to join the conference. Only 4 hours later since I called ANA, I arrived at Amsterdam airport. I would like to applaud myself for this recovery.

Nevertheless at the carousel something wrong happened again. The checked-in luggage didn’t appear at all and finally the carousel stopped completely. How come this knockabout? This is my first time of the lost baggage. Since I had almost all valuable things such as the camera and laptop with me and wore warm clothes, I could survive without the luggage. But not having a backpack, I felt quite insecure in the unfamiliar city. "Probably, we can find your bag in a few days", said the lady at the desk and tried to trust her, I headed to the accommodation.

It was already after midnight when I arrived the hostel. Phew, such a long day it was.

That's because this Lufthansa's first class inspired my funny idea of flying on first class. The dream was born when I was working on a web site development project for Lufthansa in Tokyo some years ago and astonished with their facility called "First Class Terminal".

Lufthansa has a special terminal exclusively used for the first class passengers at Frankfurt Airport which is their home ground airport. At the terminal, what the passengers need to do are only two things; checking in the luggage and passing their passport to the personal assistants. After these easy procedures, they can enjoy delicious meals at the real restaurant and a luxurious limousine sends them to the airplane for the boarding. When I was developing the web site for Lufthansa, I simply wished to taste this kind of service and started saving up Star Alliance mileages. And at length I managed to accumulate an enough amount of the mileages for the first class flights.

However, just a month ago of the flight, when I was in Melbourne, ANA called me regarding this flight. According to them, only my flight was going to be operated without first class due to an aircraft issue. In other words, my flight was automatically downgraded to business. What a bummer! Besides, there would be no refunds since the flight is a part of a reward flight series and I have another flight on first class. Although I sent a sort of petition to Lufthansa asking to let me use only the terminal, they coldly turned it down for this was the rule. The only possibility to use the first class flight was changing my schedule but I had to wait 10 days at Dubai. No way, I can't help it. I reluctantly accepted the downgrade.

Anyway, I flew to London from Dubai by British Airways' first class. Yet the flight was in the middle of the night and I went to bed straight away. Well, I hope to enjoy BA's first class meals the next time when I'm going to North America from London in September.

After moving to Frankfurt from Heathrow, I had to wait more than 20 hours at the airport. Since I'd anticipated using the first class lounge and terminal, I intentionally set the long hour transit. I'd never imagined such a consequence. Nevertheless, Lufthansa's business lounge was quite spacious and very well equipped for it's their basement airport. It was a reasonably nice place to stay as long as I could stand the paid wi-fi system and big crowds.

I'd had a little sleep at terminal for the lounge was closed at the midnight and at length the boarding time came. Confirming the time written on the ticket, I arrived the gate but somehow no people were there. I asked the staff nearby why and she answered 'the airplane has gone already.'

WHAT!?

Well, I arrived at Dubai but as always had no ideas what to do there. Questioned to the front desk about any interesting places around the area, they suggested going to Dubai Mall and I made a go for it. Though Dubai's prices are as high as Japan's, the taxi fare was not too bad. It cost about 20 AED (6 USD approx.) for 20 minutes driving. The buildings seen through the taxi's window looked like the world from Sim City.

Dubai Mall is the biggest shopping mall in Dubai and it seemed to me looking similar to some Japanese top level shopping complex like Roppongi Hills. However the scale of Dubai Mall is much grander than the Japanese ones. Walking through the whole complex in a day would be very challenging as it has movie theatres, an ice skating rink and even an aquarium. Although "Dubai Shock" is a buzz word in these days, the economic situation in the mall looked good and there are so many visitors from all over the world as well as local Arabic people.

Once I went out from the mall, an astoundingly high building appeared in my sight. Burj Khalifa (which used to called Burj Dubai during the construction) is by far the tallest building of the world. Though it has been completed the main construction, the working at outskirts were still in progress. The building has more than 800 meter height with 200 floors and in other words it is three times higher than Tokyo Midtown which is the highest building in Tokyo. My iPhone camera finally couldn't capture the whole building. However, I really enjoyed photo shooting since I'd expected this situation and brought a tripod with wide angle lenses. Although I had to concentrate hard not to accidentally capture any passersby, I suppose I did take some nice ones.

By the way, I was actually thinking about the politics in Dubai. Dubai is the one of United Arab Emirates; namely it is a country of Arabian Kings. I had to rethink about autocracy even though I studied at Japanese education system which worships democracy. In a way, autocracy actually has its merit.

The kings at Middle East are born as super rich and brought up with kingcraft educations. As they are always thinking about how to make their countries, which are literary owned by the kings, more prosperous, their visions towards the future of the countries are very clear. Dubai is making a big airport and office complexes in order to be a centre of the international business and Abu Dhabi the chief of UAE has been investing an astronomical amount of money into clean energy technologies for the post oil era. They are totally different from the politicians selected by popularity polls, holding back each other and ending up with cheap lavishing politics. It is said that too many cooks spoil the broth and maybe a strong leadership could make things better.

I know these aggressive investments of the Middle East countries are based on the rich oil money but maybe we can still learn a lot of things from them.