I was never travelling around the globe and passed my country’s frontiers right before I eldered 21. Then, I had a great opportunity to visit the United Arab Emirates, a remarkable and sophisticated place with a rich history, culture and religion. There were numbers of factors that affected me to travel: incredible high-speed social and political progress, construction industry, infinite flow of tourists and marvellousmarvelous nature with its sand dunes. As a graduate architecture student, I was looking for memorable emotions and experienceexperiences by exploring a variety of urban spaces that significantly differed from the structures I have explored in my home country, Ukraine; also by interacting with multicultural and multilingual people.

My journey lasted up to 4 weeks in a period of extreme heat temperature,temperatures in the summer of 2017. Most of the people were hiding under the huts, in their cars and apartments with air conditioning. Still, I freely communicated with ordinary people in cafés’, restaurants, shopping malls, cabs and public transport. The first thing that impressed me the most was cultural and gender division in many places, like underground: tubes for men and women and general tubes for everybody. A similar rule was spread on the rest of the urban transportation system. Secondly, it is a diversity of immigrants whom I was never expected to meet. I was renting a room in a typical low-storey housing, where tenants were originally from the Philippines and India. All thatthose people brought their cultural traditions to the place they live and work: wall paintings, small souvenirs and attributes, and a decorated entrance door. There werewas so much more to acquire about those nationalities, such as what food do they intake – spicy and fragrant, and what music do they listen to – classical and folk.