"Put oko svijeta za 3 dana"
After my semifinal loss to Roger Federer at the US Open on Saturday, I immediately made my flight and hotel reservations. I had planned to fly from New York to San Francisco with American Airlines, then onto Beijing.
When the car took my girlfriend and I to the airport at 5:30am things were going well. Arriving early, with only a reservation form and no tickets I went straight to the check-in desk.
Then things started to get difficult. At the desk the girl told me, "You lost your reservation yesterday. You do not have a flight." Undeterred, I responded, "No problem, give me something different." "Okay, we have something for 11:30am," she said.
Having arrived at 7am I needed to wait four hours and finally got on a 16-hour flight to Tokyo. Unable to sleep, my eyes were red as I watched six different movies. Switching planes to Japan Airways, I slept throughout the four-hour journey.
We finally arrived in Beijing at around 9pm last night and were surprised to see that my two bags of clothes had arrived safely. The organization was great as a car was waiting to pick us up and when we got to the hotel, we didn’t need to check-in – just like at the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai last year.
I slept well in a perfect suite and woke at 6am. We ate a great breakfast at 8am and then ventured out to a supermarket just 50 meters from the hotel where we bought some chocolate and water. (valjda nemaju u hotelu vode).
Although there are plenty of Europeans at the hotel, none of them seem to venture outside. Perhaps they are scared?
The flights and the time differences do take it out of you, but if I have proper rest and prepare for each match then I can play a lot of tournaments and feel okay. The time difference between here and New York is 12 hours so today it is tough for me, but I will try to sleep better tonight and then maybe tomorrow I will be okay.
While I may not make it downstairs to the hotel dinner and reception at 8pm, I am looking forward to exploring Beijing. We’d like to see the Great Wall of China and my girlfriend is particularly keen to do some shopping.
I’ll write more after my first match tomorrow.
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