Go East

Our visits to Saudi Arabia are complete. As we want to save days in order to be able to enter Saudi Arabia again later – on the way home, for example. We are now concentrating on leaving the country. However, we want to visit a Saudi acquaintance in Buraida again and in Riyadh we have to go to the traffic police to finalize our accident from April 2024.

Girlfriend

She studied English but was unable to find a suitable job, so she works at the checkout of a supermarket. We met her in spring 2024, when she helped us to upload our internet data. As Buraida is a stopover for us anyway, we invite her to a restaurant for dinner. She recommends “Applebee’s”. And the food is indeed excellent. Rarely has a hamburger tasted as good as here.
We really appreciate the secret get-together. It gives us a small and rare insight into the life of a woman in Saudi Arabia. She would like to move out of her home and live independently. But she is not allowed to, her mother forbids it. Getting married is not so easy either, because what man wants to marry a woman who doesn’t want to have children? We really like Saudi Arabia. But there is one thing we struggle with here. The country is “not alive”. You hardly see any children. You don’t really see the women you do see. And in the evenings, it’s not families but men who picnic together. We miss the colorful life.

Purchasing

This time we go to the Hyper-Panda supermarket for our bulk shopping, which should reach as far as the Arab Emirates. As always, we are served very well. We don’t even have to put the contents of our trolley on the conveyor belt ourselves and they even pack for us.

Ushaiqir

We don’t feel like driving to Riyadh on the highway because the trucks are only allowed to drive in the outer right-hand lane and this is often damaged. We therefore take the main roads overland. In Ushaiqir there is a well-kept camping and pick-nick park on an elevated site. We use it to wash our clothes again and catch up on the website.
We fill up our water tank in nearby Shaqra. While waiting, a boy comes up to us and gives us a packet of dates.
Later, a door in the wall opens and an elderly gentleman gives us several boxes filled with dates. These dates must have come from his own palm trees, because they turned out to be some of the best we have ever eaten. Large, thin-skinned, fleshy and incredibly tasty.

Riad

Our most important concern in Riyadh is to conclude the accident of April 17, 2024. To do this, we are supposed to report to the police together with the other party involved in the accident.
But again, the other party involved in the accident doesn’t show up for the appointment. “He got stuck in traffic”. He’s a totally unreliable guy and has stood us up several times. We suspect that he is afraid of the appointment because we waved the fence post of an advocate.
We speak to the relevant traffic police office. Our hearts sink when we see all the (men) waiting. But don’t worry. We are immediately waved into an office and then seated in the office of a female police officer. She takes our details and tells us to come back in a week. I tell her that we have already traveled on to the United Arab Emirates by then. She looks at me and asks if we have any claims against the other party. I said no, because we agreed to the solution that everyone would have to pay for their own damage, as our insurance company had assured us that it would cover our damage. She sat back and said that our case was closed. Once again, we were pleased to see how professionally and correctly we were dealt with by a female employee. Relieved, we leave the police building and immediately start our journey east towards the border with the Emirates.

Salwa

Salwa is located on the Persian Gulf and has a large park right on the beach. Here we fill up again with cheap Saudi diesel (o.30 euros) and stock up on water before crossing the border into the United Emirates the next day.