Return from Doha (at least trying...)

Entrance to the W-Hotel

I love it when a hotel returns your laundry as if your shirts are brand new.....

Returning from Doha on the last day before Ramaḍān, wasn't so straightforward as the boarding pass for KL442 suggested. Soon after arrival on Doha's brand-new Hamad International Airport, the KL442 was cancelled, due to technical problems.
Indeed, the aircraft was still on the ground, while it should've departed for the return flight Muscat-Doha, an hour ago.
For KLM the impossible task to divert passengers onto other flights, on the evening that half the Arab world seemed to be on the move.
Two hours and many phone calls later, I found myself boarding a Qatar Airways flight to Schwechat Vienna for a delightful 4 hour layover.

As big as the Austrians have built their airport, it's nowhere close to an international airport. At six in the morning, every transferdesk is closed, there are no check-in machines in the passenger area and you have to go to the ticket office (closed too!) to retreive your boarding pass.
Boarding a flight in Austria without a valid boarding card is not exactly easy. The Viennese selected for "Airport Duty" do exactly that; their duty and nothing more. And duty DOES NOT come with a smile or flexibility. Even lounge staff - usually the most forthcoming species on any airport - is forged from cast iron. Seemingly forgotten, they owe their income to their employer's services to passengers - not the other way around - getting to the KL1840 gate required a dangerous amount of verbal violence [sic] and bluff. *)

Back to Doha. Even if it means "big tree", there's not a tree to be found, except maybe the newly planted around the luxury hotels and homes. Which is certainly true for Ras Laffan Industrial City - eighty kilometers away - where we  commuted every day.
Ras Laffan is the biggest concentration of industrial complexes I have ever seen. On a barren wasteland - Mad Max movies are scenic in comparison - one gascomplex after another proofs Qatar means business, when they claim to be 'the number one exporter' of liquified natural gas. After all, something needs to pay for the 2022 World Cup.....

*) From all appearances, the amount of austerity, authoritarianism and 'verbal abuse' requires careful dosage; especially security personnel seems eager for any excuse to  have you arrested.