24 hours at the Doha Premium Terminal
Aviation is a relatively young institution. For our not so remote ancestors, the air was reserved for birds, angels and miraculous ascensions. We are genetic pedestrians and we are noticeable even when we fly. We are the ones who walk our invisible restlessness through the corridors of the plane and caress the vague feeling of being at home when we finally go down to a terminal, even the most impersonal of all. Counting on that, with the fact that we are not birds (neither are frequent travelers loaded with points), Qatar Airways created the world's first Premium Terminal in Doha.
It is a place that takes the best of both worlds: extends the treatment of the first class on board to the mainland and he counts on us being worldly beings and covers us from earthly attentions. And it makes all this something bigger, as big as an entire terminal.
10:00. I arrive by bus at the gates of the terminal. 10,000 square meters built in nine months. I take a few steps back and try to calculate the number of workers that were needed taking as a reference that time we built a chimney between 9 and it took three months. Something does not convince me at all in that measurement system. And all prepared to admit 800 passengers per hour. They ask me for my boarding pass and, bingo, I have a First card that gives me the right to go through the gate and access the atrium, to a world of high ceilings s, fountains in the desert, many sofas and people coming and going with suitcases and small plates of canapés.
One of the halls of the terminal
10:25. On one side of the entrance to the door of the main room, a cathedral room, a room full of consoles and screens and empty of public exhibits its modest temptation. Hours of canapés and juices await me , so I start here to start well. I drop the suitcase and kill bugs.
10:40. I'm out of training or too hungry, so I give up. And I open the doors to enter one of the most peculiar terminals in the world.
11:00. I've already taken my place on the sofa, near a plug.
11:20. On my way to the first bar I see, I stop at the screens announcing arrivals and departures. I find it a beautiful sight to have all those exotic possibilities (we're in Doha, there's a lot of Indico on those screens) dancing almost imperceptibly on the unnaturally vertical flat screens. Laborious European cities on time, paradises retarded between the waters.
A terminal with a sauna: yes, we can
12:00. I have made a tray of canapés with some little ones that were lying around and that hardly seem like airport food. As it is necessary to do in these cases, I opt for what seems to be local and fresh products (I am largely unaware of Qatari agricultural production, if any). I ask for a sandwich with a lot of green that a man with a dazzling cat smile prepares for me and a TV chef's hat. It's good.
13:00. I wake up from an unexpected nap in one of those leather armchairs that seem to hug you.
1:10 p.m. The bathroom has a shower and is constantly attended by someone in charge of providing you with a towel and soap. There are always 150 employees in the terminal. They exhibit relentless diligence in contrast to the Jetlagian laxity of the rest of us there. They empty ashtrays, clear tables, place armchairs, prepare healthy dishes, offer towels, welcome. It is a translucent army that ends up looking normal to you.
1:30 p.m. The show is nice for a guy who comes from the plateau and to whom everything that is sallow looks like part of the casting of Lawrence of Arabia. In addition to inventing heroic biographies of everyone who is dressed in white from head to toe, I look at how close the families are around here. There is something in that way of sitting down all together, almost in a circle, of looking attentively at the children at their parents, the parents at each other, that indicates a vague happiness of being together, even in an airport , even returning from some vacations.
The vague happiness of being together
2:00 p.m. To buy tobacco you have to leave the room with its cuddly leather sofas. It's half the price of home and when I pay in dollars I get a bunch of colorful local bills back. It's not like they're bills with a lot of action, typical, some gentlemen I don't know, but only because of the strident combination of colorinchis already It's the cutest dirty money I've ever seen.
2:15 p.m. I smoke in a midget room surrounded by very large hunks that I bump into every time I move or they move. I glimpse them through the smoke, as well as the few seats. For smokers, sin is penance. Someone could consider that it is unnecessary and a little cruel to make life on this earth so petty when we are going to last so little.
3:00 p.m. It's about time. Massage and bath time. A public relations man shows me the facilities. In an area staffed by receptionists there are beds, massage rooms, sauna and a jacuzzi . Personalized massages. How does that sound? All included in the price for First travelers. I reserve EVERYTHING.
Beds in the terminal
4:00 p.m. I explore: conference rooms, business center, and the nursery that watches over the dreams of passengers without children. Private entrances that facilitate immigration procedures . Access for tourist passengers to enter certain areas. They tell me that they are designed for babysitters to meet the children in the children's areas. There is a clinic, but I don't see it. It will be a sign, so I don't insist.
five pm. All of this is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wonder what it will be like to work here, what it is like to go to a passing place every day, one where nobody stays too long and everyone wants to get somewhere else. Everything renewed daily, the clients, the menu, the beds, the flights. Everything but you, the only permanent thing in this universe on the run.
18:00. A bath in a hot tub sponge twice as much when done in an airport.
7:00 p.m. The right place to get a massage is an airport. Now I understand.
8:00 p.m. A mattress, a bedside table and all this sleep is all that is needed, an unbeatable combination.
04:00. I've been woken up on time and, ahem, insistently. I go out through a special and fast door. It's the first time I've taken a flight at dawn without grumbling.