Hey there, Travellers!

Today I'm coming to you from a rather sweaty and chaotic Zagreb Bus Station, where I'm attempting to catch a bus to Rijeka, on the Croatian coast. The last time I passed through here, my travel buddies and I had such an unenjoyable experience that Navigator Larissa was inspired to write an article rating the best and worst stations in Europe.

This week, we've been traversing Europe on trains and buses yet again as part of another Lupine Racing event. After setting off from Brussels on Sunday, we have faced Deutsche Bahn delays, traffic jams, and extreme temperatures in Central Europe along our route through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Croatia. Needless to say, there are probably a few more stations we could be adding to that list now!

As always, the highlight of these trips is not only visiting towns we've never heard of before, but also meeting likeminded travellers along the way. As sponsors of the event, Jack's hosts a social evening, The Layover, in the midway city. This time, we set up camp in the beer garden at Salzburg's giant Augustiner Brewery and shared a few steins, a round of trivia, and lots of travel stories between us.

Tomorrow, after a quick dip in the Med, we'll head for the finish line in one of my favourite Europe cities, Ljubljana. Wish us luck!

I hope your next adventure is as exciting as ours has been (though ideally with fewer delays).

Happy travels and safe landings,

Katy - Editor of The Detour

By Akasha

With journeys spanning more than 30 countries and ten years, Akasha's best memories live in the pages of her passport. She always consults her tarot (and her cats) before any big trip. Currently based in Ireland, when she isn't travelling, she’s probably drawing in a café somewhere.

If there’s one hill I’ll die on, it’s this: The beauty of travel lies not in how far you wander but in how deeply you immerse yourself. 

Before, I would’ve said that to truly immerse yourself, you must earn it; better yet, endure it. 

My twisted, achy body after long-haul flights and even longer buses was a testament to this. If I wasn’t playing charades with border police at 3am or crammed in the back of a pickup truck with several strangers (and livestock), was I really even traveling? I mean, to reach some of the most underrated corners of the world, there had to be some type of melodrama involved.

I won’t lie, my heart has never been immune to envy when shimmying past first-class passengers to reach my knee-cracking seat in coach. But flying first class was wedged way down on my bucket list, in between summiting Kilimanjaro and crossing the Drake Passage in Antarctica. Someday experiences if the stars aligned. 

As fate would have it, earlier this year we spotted some brow-raising first-class fares with Oman Air that were just begging to be booked. Could a trip still feel deep and immersive if it started with comfort instead of chaos? Only one way to find out. 

As it turns out, immersing yourself in a culture is a lot easier when you arrive clear-headed, totally present, and entirely unbruised…

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my return flight home. The epitome of melodramatic, it unexpectedly had me squeezed in economy heading for Saudi Arabia instead of Ireland. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Flight details:

Oman Air's Business Class is considered a total masterpiece, but it often goes under the radar, sort of like a boutique hotel vs. the giant copy-and-paste corporate chains. 

And while their first class is technically retired, it’s in name only. They’ve essentially ripped “First Class” off the label of their luxe Apex suites and have transitioned them into an enhanced boutique business tier.

We still consider them to be first class, as flying in their fully enclosed suites is truly an underrated, first-class caliber experience. Especially for a pauper like me. 

Jack's Oman Air First Class Hack

Don't fall for this Google Flights trap! Google Flights lists First Class and Business Class fares available for the exact same seats, even though Oman Air retired the First Class label in late 2024. 

The "First Class" options are significantly pricier and only bookable with an OTA, but they are identical to the Business Class booking. Save your money, book standard business, and enjoy a first-class caliber experience for half the price.

The Suite

Each of the eight suites onboard spans three windows and is set in a 2-2-2 configuration. All have direct aisle access from a hidden walkway between each suite. 

The window seats (A & K) are highly rated in the aviation community for their multi-window views and this dedicated private walkway, meaning you don’t have to scramble over your seatmate. The aisle, however, is fully exposed to foot traffic, so I’d recommend snagging a window seat if possible. 

Originally, the airline assigned me an aisle seat with no ability to switch before my flight. I’m not sure if this was a glitch in the system or a common inconvenience to passengers. When I boarded, however, I offered to switch seats with another traveler so he could sit next to his partner. 

Inside this cushy pod of peace is a motorized privacy screen that can be raised between you and your neighbor, making it feel deeply secluded.

Unlike Air France or Qatar, where your feet have to slide below a narrow coffin-like enclosure under the armrest, the Apex suites offer an open, wide ottoman. That means side-sleepers like myself can flop around completely unhindered on a lie-flat bed. They also offer adjustable lumbar support and a massage function. 

As far as space, the size of the seats is 22.8 inches (57.9 cm) wide with a pitch of 80 inches (203.2 cm) and a lengthy bed of 76 inches (193 cm). These far exceed the configurations of British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Emirates.

I’ve heard a few complaints about storage within the Apex Suite. Beyond a small pocket for a water bottle and my phone, there are no large, enclosed side lockers or deep bins to store your laptop or small bags while sleeping.

There's a designated storage area under the TV, far enough to be unreachable from your seat. This wasn't an issue for me, but I can see how it could be frustrating, especially for people with mobility challenges.

Food

Definitely one of the biggest highlights of flying with Oman Air was the chance to try Omani flavors before even landing. Soon after takeoff, the staff presented us with dates, a hot towel, and a drink of our choice. I couldn’t help myself and asked for a glass of Laurent Perrier to toast my first first-class flight. 

It did take quite a while for the main meals to be served, something that displeased my new neighbor by delaying his sleep. Honestly, though, all was forgiven when the first course arrived. 

Keep reading for more highs, as well as the very eventful lows...

Olivia - Sub-Editor of the Detour

A San Diego native, Olivia left home three years ago to live on the road. Since then, she's had homebases everywhere from Quebec to England to New Orleans, but she always ends up back on the West Coast. When she's not hiking through the desert or the woods, she can usually be found exploring her current city and scoping out the best bars and coffee shops.

There’s something so fascinating to me about the concept of jet lag. After millions of years of naturally waking and sleeping in rhythm with the sun, humans finally figured out how to outrun it. We now treat the disruption of one of our most basic biological systems like an everyday nuisance, even though it was an unimaginable experience for most of Earth’s history.

People have been aware of “time zones” in some form for a lot longer than we’ve been dealing with jet lag. Dante even mentioned the concept in Purgatorio, when he wrote that it was midnight in India and noon in Spain, but he had no way of knowing what would happen if someone made that entire journey in one afternoon.

The first person to actually experience and record the sensation of jet lag was the aviator Wiley Post, who wrote about changing his sleep schedule across time zones when he circumnavigated the globe in 1931. That makes jet lag younger than Mickey Mouse and David Attenborough! 

^{The Winnie Mae — the plane that Wiley Post flew around the globe}

Newspapers in the 1960s (when commercial flight was starting to boom) wrote about the condition like it was a bothersome new side effect of the modern era, similar to how we write about doomscrolling or deepfakes in 2026. So while jet lag may seem like a commonplace nuisance, we’re actually the first few generations to feel that way.

This is what I was thinking about in the days after my return from Europe last month, which gave me a nine-hour shift backwards in time. I’ve done that time zone shift before and never had the slightest problem with jet lag, so I always figured I was mostly immune to it. But for whatever reason, this one hit me hard. I crashed immediately when I got home and ended up on a seemingly unbreakable 6pm-2am sleep schedule, physically unable to stay awake until sunset no matter what I tried. 

I spent an entire week in that weird limbo that most travelers find eventually, where you feel half like you’re at home and half like you’re still overseas. To quote a delightfully vintage newspaper article from 1966, “There you are having martinis with Grace a