When you are lost, go find yourself.

A snapshot while waiting for our changeover flight in Dubai, UAE.

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA to DUBAI, U.A.E - November 28/29 2015

I really needed to find myself and this was the kind of adventure to do just that! Feeling free, setting myself challenges, facing fears, learning to trust my own judgement again - this was going to be a huge learning curve and turning point in my life.

I was overflowing with adrenalin by the time I arrived at the Adelaide Airport on the evening of Saturday November 28, 2015. My twenty year-old son had decided to accompany me on my adventure to Europe. He had been to Germany four years earlier on a high school exchange. He had fallen in love with Germany, spoke the language and had many friends he wanted to visit again. Though we would spend lots of the trip together, there would also be much that we would spend apart and it was fun having him travel with me. We learnt much about each other, on a different level, during our two months together.

We flew out of Adelaide at 9.30pm. It was around a twelve hour flight to Dubai. It was totally new to me to experience crossing so many time zones and by the time our flight landed in Dubai and we survived the twenty-minute crowded bus trip from the plane to the terminal, I was completely out of whack regarding time. We arrived in Dubai a few hours before sunrise. That in itself was surreal. It had been a long, long period of darkness even though I had managed to sleep for a lot of the first part of the flight.

Dubai Airport was insanely busy and we only had a three hour stopover and our luggage was already arranged to get automatically put onto our next Emirates flight from our first one, so all we had to worry about was getting our carry-on luggage and ourselves through the gates. That was a relief.

We could afford the time to sit and relax while waiting for our next flight so we looked for somewhere to buy a coffee and hot chocolate, and I looked for somewhere to have a cigarette. The Smoker's Lounge was something to behold! No exhaust fans. I lasted long enough to have one cigarette before needing to get out of the thick cloud of smoke and no air. I had never experienced anything like it but it surely had to be better than trying to find my way outside of the airport to indulge in a cigarette. I had no idea of even where to go for that option. Without a doubt, it was one of those moments when I realised how desperate smokers are to even be able to deal with sitting in a room like that to get a nicotine fix.

My memories of Dubai Airport - a crazy long bus ride, my fastest cigarette ever, and really expensive coffee. Other than that, it wasn't too challenging to get through customs and board the next flight. Before long we were heading to Dusseldorf and both of us were more than happy to be on the final stretch that would see us land in Germany in another eight hours' time.

One of the Smoking Lounges at Dubai International Airport.