More Cairo with a side of Alexandria

My legs have been really sore the last few days. I think it might've been from descending into those tombs at Dahshur and Saqqara. Today is a bit better.

Like me, most of the cars here seem on the verge of falling apart. I think if one were to fall completely apart like the Bluesmobile at the end of the Blues Brothers, nobody would be surprised, and in fact would probably just continue driving as if nothing had happened. Same thing if the car split completely in half, they would just drive on the front wheels with the back dragging and making sparks.

I saw two "accidents" so far. In a traffic circle, I saw two cars sideswipe each other. They did in fact stop briefly and yell at each other in Arabic for about 20 seconds, before waving it off and continuing driving. The second was also in a traffic circle where I heard screeching tires and then saw a car cream a guy on a bicycle. He went down and a crowd gathered, but the crowd quickly picked him up (is that a good idea?) and dragged him to the sidewalk where the discussion could proceed unimpeded by 50 cars trying to drive past everyone. He was limping but beyond that seemed functional.

I spent yesterday in Alexandria, a city on the north coast named after Alexander the Great who decreed it constructed but actually died before he ever went back there to hang out. It apparently stretches about 20km along the coast of the Mediterranean and only goes inland about 8km inland, so it is a true coastal city. The proximity to the water means that a nice breeze blows through and makes the heat slightly less oppressive and brutal than it is in Cairo. It is also a quieter city, and I would say that I preferred it to Cairo certainly although it still suffers from the same disrepair and disregard on the part of the locals just like Cairo though in the local areas outside of downtown it seemed a bit better.

On the positive side, I visited the relatively newly constructed Library of Alexandria which was probably the coolest library I have ever seen. The exterior architecture and design is as impressive as the giant reading room which spans something like a dozen levels with a giant sloping windowed ceiling. It's quite a place to behold and definitely the coolest, modern thing I have seen in Egypt and probably will see.

In Alex I also walked along the Corniche, a many kilometer seafront along the Mediterranean which has fewer shops and markets than one might expect, which instead tend to congregate one or two streets inland. I also visited Montazzah, a former king's palace within a huge gardened complex spanning many acres, now occupied by mostly gardens but also containing a few high-end hotels, a casino, some restaurants, and the old palace which I think was at one point the President's residence but now no longer is.

As I walked back from Montazzah towards the train station, I walked along the coast passing many restaurant and beaches on which hundreds of tables with chairs and umbrellas were set up. It was dark by then and there were hundreds of people outside and all around eating their iftar meal to break the fast. I am told things are generally open quite late in Egypt, but the post-Ramadan flurry of activity and socializing lasting until 4am is actually one of the more interesting and enjoyable things I have experienced here.

Ahmed, my first Couchsurfing friend picked me up in Alexandria where he was visiting his family for the weekend, and we drove to the Citadel at the west end of the Corniche, a giant fort on the sea which was distinctly different than the Citadel in Cairo. Much smaller, much more sparse and plain design since I think it was mostly designed to be for defense and not a living quarters for royalty as was the Citadel in Cairo. We then attempted to drive to visit a tomb, but driving in Egypt and finding your way just about anywhere is not too easy, so although I got a nice driving tour of Alexandria, we never quite made it there. At several times Ahmed stopped to request directions of passerbys and this always had a certain comical quality to it in my eyes. Egyptians often speak loudly and quickly with a lot of body language and after the guy gave directions, he reached his hand in the car and patted Ahmed on the shoulder to say, you can do it man, go for it. It seemed to me like asking a stranger for directions on the street in NYC and then high-fiving.

I have seen or done few other interesting or amusing things.

The night before I went to Alexandria I met up with Couchsurfers in Zamalek, an Egyptian woman and her American husband who has been leaving in Cairo for 7 years. These were more or less the first non-muslims with whom I have hung out since being here, so it provided an interesting insight into some of the other people who live here in Cairo although it still seems to me a very small number (based on my limited experience) compared with the overwhelmingly majority Muslim community everywhere. They had a crazy cat which I enjoyed watching a lot, then they had two of the smallest kittens I have ever seen who they rescued off the street apparently parentless and were feeding with an eye dropper. They must've been only days old. They are both vegan (Couchsurfers, not the kittens) and cooked me an absolutely wonderful meal for which I am going to have to acquire names and recipes, but one of the dishes was a potato-like vegetable in some sort of green vegetable-pesto like sauce, which we ate over rice. This is apparently an Egyptian dish, not an outright invention on their part. Also there were a sort of fried dumpling filled with hummus, and another kind of fried dumpling for dessert filled with fruit and possibly nuts or dates and with a sweet dipping sauce. They also made a mountain of babaganoush and zucchini stuffed with tomato sauce and rice. We had a great conversation and I am going to try to see them again tonight before I leave for the desert tomorrow morning. I was exhausted after dinner so I didn't stick around too long, only long enough to participate with them in their Ramadan tradition of watching "The Biggest Loser."

Random interactions:

The cab driver on the way to the train station yesterday morning was excited that I was American and put me on the phone with his son who said to me, "How can I go to America?"

I met a Coptic Christian guy who also wants to go to the states. He told me many Egyptian people apply for the green card lottery since even if you want to go on a student visa, they expect you to have a certain amount of money in your bank account and that amount of money is very hard to earn here.

I had fuul (Fava beans) with tahini for breakfast finally.

Ramadan is everywhere for another week or two and although people are apparently tolerant of foreigners not fasting, I still feel awkward smoking and drinking water on the street during the day, and many Egyptian restaurants are closed. Nobody really seems to care, but it still feels like I am being stared at (I am, but not for that) and judged. That being said I have met a variety of people who are not fasting or who are at least smoking during the day even if they are. In Alexandria I passed a few cafes filled with smoking guys some of whom even appeared to be drinking tea. There are non-Muslims here to be sure, but even those who tell me they are not good Muslims who go to pray 5 times a day still fast. I suppose it is comparable to Jews who fast on Yom Kippur or go to synagogue on the high holidays but don't do anything else the rest of the year.

Yesterday I took the train back from Alex at around 9pm, on the same train as Ahmed and Chalid returning from their weekend visiting their families. The weekend here is Friday and Saturday and they work on Sunday again. It turns out by the way that you can smoke between cars on Egyptian trains. I rode 1st class going to Alex and 2nd class returning. These are both virtually the same. The seats are assigned and both are basically like any Amtrak train in the US except for the whole smoking thing. I wouldn't have known that actually, but I napped for about 30 minutes before Ahmed found me and woke me up to say hello and asked if I wanted to join him and Chalid for a cigarette, so I walked with them and we stood in between the cars for the rest of the trip since they both chain-smoke when they are not fasting. I did see a few 3rd class cars parked in the station when buying tickets and whatnot. These look more like New York subway car seating, though the seats are wood, the windows do not have glass in them, they are just open, and there is no A/C. They were hosing one of the cars down when I passed by. So I arrived back in Cairo exhausted and fell asleep around 1, not waking up til 11, which qualifies as my longest and probably best night of sleep since being here. I have generally not been sleeping well, mostly attributed to jetlag, often waking up at 5 or 6am and going out immediately, then napping in the afternoon. That being said, I feel pretty good today. I was originally going to the dessert today, but the buses tend to leave only in the early morning and late afternoon since traveling during the sweltering heat of mid-day is obviously not desirable. I also have yet to make a reservation at a hotel in Bahariya Oasis, my refactored next destination, so I will make all those arrangements today and probably leave first thing tomorrow morning. Tonight my main goal is to smoke sheesha, basically a hookah, a cultural experience in Egypt I have yet to try.

I am told apple is the way to go.

Update: I could not post this for a few hours since the internet was down, so I went out and took a walk in Zamalek and bought a few things at the grocery store. Then I spent a while trying to contact a hotel in Bahariya. It was amazing how few of them pick up the phone. I imagined it looking a lot like when Luke and Ben returned to his home to check on his foster parents only to discover smoldering skeletons in the desert, except with a ringing telephone. I finally was called back by a guy at one of the hotels and made a reservation, so I'm definitely going to Bahariya Oasis tomorrow (about where I plan to explore the options of visiting places like "the Black Mountain" and the "White Desert."

only 7000 years?

There sure is a lot of history here. I went yesterday with a guide to Saqqara and Dahshur, two pyramid sites a bit farther south. I hired a guide to join me who was a trained archaologist. Here is a summary of some things I learned:

THe period of Egyptian history with which we concerned ourselves stretched from 3200 BC to 2161 BC, about 1000 years. This period comprises what the guide called the Archaic period and the Old Kingdom.

During the Archaic period there were two dynasties, the 1st and 2nd, ruled by 7 and 8 different kings respectively. Apparently, generally dynasties lasted about 120-130 years on average throughout Egyptian history, with various exceptions. During the Archaic period, there were no pyramids built. Instead, they built what are called mastabas, a flat-topped tomb that looks like the base of a pyramid only. That's how they did things until 2680 BC when the Old Kingdom period begins.

The Old Kingdom contains 4 dynasties, which are the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th. During the 3rd dynasty, a guy named Imhotep came up with the bright idea of putting several smaller steps on top of a mastaba, thus inventing the first stepped pyramid and paving the way towards the pyramids we all recognize. So there is a chance it may have not been aliens after all. Unfortunately for Imhotep, he didn't live to see his designs perfected. During the 4th dynasty, some early attempts were made to build flat-sided pyramids resulting in a bunch of weird angles including something called "the bent pyramid" at Dahshur, which rises up at a 55 degree angle and then cuts in at a shallower angle of 43 degrees since they detected some cracks and thought the thing might collapse. Later during the 4th dynasty the Red Pyramid at Dahshur was built also under the rulership of Senefru, which if I remember correctly was indeed the first flat-sided pyramid paving the way for the famous pyramids at Giza, including the most famous one which was built by Khufu, the son of Senefru.

So to sum up, I saw some mastabas, the first stepped pyramid, a few early attempts at flat-sided pyramids, and then the first flat-sided pyramids. All of this stuff is within maybe an hour's drive of Cairo. A lot of tourist groups include Saqqara, the site of the stepped pyramids, but most ignore Dahshur, and really at both sites I was pretty much on my own. There were a few other cabs or cars with people there, but no buses or anything whereas at Giza, there were parking lots filled with buses, although still probably far fewer than there are during the high season.

Oh yes, in Dahshur and at the "pile of sand" pyramid at Saqqara, it is possible to climb down a long shaft into the tomb itself which is pretty much empty but still kind of amazing and terrifying. I'm not really claustrophobic, but even I felt it a little climbing down what I counted to be 140 steps which aren't really steps, but metal bars on an angled floor to help you from sliding down to your doom. Mind you this is hunched over to about half of your normal height. It is at least a little scary, and it must've been even moreso if you were the guy discovering it and heading down there with a lantern or something.

So there's the condensed Egyptian history lesson.

Some other interesting things that happened:

Went to the Citadel, a giant fortress in Cairo comprised of palaces and mosques mostly. It's barely a few hundred years old, but still a very significant structure that somewhat dominates the skyline of Cairo. Lots of interesting architecture mostly and embarrassing tourist behavior. I ran into a few nice travelers there from Brazil and London respectively, we ended up spending the next few hours together exploring the Islamic Quarter of Cairo until the wife of the pair decided it was time to shop for rugs. We did manage to pass through some very local markets en route which reminded me a lot of open-air markets in China. Lots of vegetables, spices, and animals in cages. I've seen that a lot, but I had never seen rabbits before in a food market. Mmmm, rabbit burger.

I met up with a few Couchsurfers a few nights ago. One of them is the Egyptian alter-ego of Antonio from Deathalizer. They even kind of look similar and have similar mannerisms, are both guitar players with similar musical taste, and many other things. It was kind of eerie. He and his friend Chalid took me first for the iftar break-fast meal at a crowded restaurant called Gad where I'd wanted to eat previously but was too intimidated cause of a giant crowd of post-fasting people who seemed to be rioting in the restaurant when I first arrived. Going together was better. We sat there for an hour and a half before we ate though, because it is a popular place to break the fast apparently so you have to sit there and save your table. You order whenever and then by the time 6:30pm hits, the food is on all the tables and people dig in. There were a few hundred hungry muslims there, and one white dude. After dinner they took me over to Khan al Khailily, a busy market in the Islamic Quarter which was also packed at night. We walked through a few beautiful mosques and former mosques as well as generally old and ancient streets. I received slightly less attention though 2 people said to me separately "How can I take your money?"

I relocated from downtown to Zamalek, a neighborhood popular with foreigners and ex-pats on an island in the middle of Cairo's stretch of the Nile. It's much quieter and more relaxed than downtown, and I'm glad I decided to move to experience another part of the city for a few days. Things here are a bit more expensive, but after 5 days downtown I was beginning to go a little nuts. This is my last day here and I was thinking of visiting the medieval Coptic Christian neighborhood to see a few things there before heading to Alexandria tomorrow. I think I'm ready to get out of Cairo and see what else is going on in Egypt.

Remind me to tell you about getting ripped-off in Egypt next time.

Awkward...

It turns out that on the Cairo metro there are cars specifically for women. It also turns out that although they may be labeled, they do not have an English label that jumps out at the person about to get on for the first time. The women on those cars will allow an errant male passenger a moment to take a look around and notice they are the only male on the car before looking at each other and giggling knowingly while said passenger briefly panics and then shamefully resigns himself towards keeping a distance from all parties until the next stop when he can frantically change cars and pretend none of this ever happened. This information is provided as a public service announcement to any intrepid male travelers who may find themselves in a similar situation one day.

Some people I have met:

Mohammed was a student who timidly accosted me as I was contemplating crossing 10 lanes of moving traffic with no streetlight and asked if he could practice his English with me. This happened quite often in China and I always enjoy these sorts of interactions, so I happily obliged. He was studying Economics at the American University of Cairo which I'm told is a very highly-regarded and exclusive school and he did in fact speak English quite well if a bit shyly, especially given that he had only been taking English classes there for 3 months.

Yousef was one of many touts in Midan Talat al-Harb, a large square relatively close to my hotel in downtown Cairo central to many budget hotels and therefore a popular place to approach foreigners for all purposes. We chatted amicably for a while as I had decided to indulge all who approached me with a smile and my best Arabic banter. He was actually an interesting guy who grow up in Saqqara village, a village adjacent to one of the more significant groups of Pyramids just south of the most famous Giza site. He showed me pictures on his cellphone of his home village before asking me to come into his family's perfume shop to receive his business card. I politely declined with an explanation of lack of desire to disrespect or offend him which has seemed to work on all the people I have met lately and we shook hands and parted ways. His family also owns a hostel and a cotton shop.

Achmed was just down the street from Yousef and wasn't a tout in the same way. He was just a guy who stands out on the street outside of a clothing store and yells at passer-bys, primarily Egyptian, about what clothing and what great deals can be found inside. He looked at me and said "CLOSES!" "CLOSES!" so I stopped and told him "Clothes?" "Clothes." He repeated. Then he said "T-shirts?" ... "T-shirts." ... "Jeanies?" "Jeans!" After this he decided he wanted to shake my hand and we spoke for a few minutes and he laughed when after he said "Nice to meet you" I responded in kind in Arabic.

There was another Bedouin guy outside of a perfume shop near the museum who wanted to chat for a while with the ultimate goal of getting me into his shop, but when it became clear that I would not go inside, he remained extremely sociable nonetheless. I would say the lesson I have learned is that the best way I can react to the numerous people approaching me to sell me something is to be friendly, to speak Arabic so they think I am at least not too-foolish of a tourist, and to not take it personally and not let them get to me. This may sound obvious but when people approach you every few minutes, it's hard not to get frustrated as I learned my first day at Giza and I am determined to not be rude and to not ignore someone who wants to shake my hand. Yesterday I would say it worked well for me and I did not feel exhausted by the attention as I did the previous day.

I also met the manager of the American University of Cairo bookstore which is a large English-language bookstore near the University's campus. He was born in Cuba, grew up in Miami, and spent the last 4 years living here in Cairo. He said one of the things he loves about it is the opportunity for travel, which I understand, since so many interesting places are with an arm's throw and a cheap ticket from here. He said that he thinks he gets along well here because Cubans and Egyptians are similar people, which I thought was really interesting. He also gave me a lot of good advice about Cairo in general, not the least of which was enlightening me to the existence of a popular local dish which is a sandwich filled with french fries. Let me repeat that. There is a popular dish here which is a sandwich filled with french fries.

I will not write too much about the food for now. I did have an amazing sandwich last night which was Falafel, here called Taamiya but basically the same deal, and in the Alexandria style which has chilis all over it or in it. I have also eaten Koshary three times which is another national dish consisting of rice, lentils, two kinds of pasta, tomato sauce, hot sauce, and fried onions. My meals have always costed approximately $1 USD.

Yesterday I took a break from the sun for a chunk of the day and visited the Egyptian Musuem of Antiquities. It looks like the sort of place Indiana Jones might work. Imagine if the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the entire size of the Met. Then imagine there was basically no air-condioning and 3 light bulbs. It's not really as big as the Met, but the number of items in it is staggering. Apparently they have way more in the basement and it has sat there in crates for so long that it has sunk into the ground and they actually had to excavate in the basement of the museum to get at everything. There were a lot of cool things in there, but one thing that blew me away was on the floor filled with King Tutankhamun's treasures. Imagine a bedroom made entirely of gold and ornately inscribed on all sides. Now imagine four of them, each slightly smaller than the previous, and that they fit inside each other like Russian dolls. They had each room in a glass case adjacent to the other. I guess Tutankhamun figured being buried in one gold room was for suckers.

Anyway, off to the Citadel of Salah al-din and meeting a Couchsurfer tonight for Iftar, the fast-breaking meal at 6:30pm. I gotta get going. It's almost 8am.

I am in Cairo

I have only been here for just over 24 hours, but I feel like I have aged a year. I'm sure that's part jetlag and part that I haven't traveled like this recently, but most of it is because Cairo is a pretty intense and overwhelming place.

A few impressions of how so:

1) First, the cars. I thought I'd seen it all with crazy driving, but they've really taken it to the next level. No real use of lanes or signals. No speed limits. NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS. I think I have seen two lights since I've been here, but even at huge intersections, it's primarily a yellow blinker. Forget about pedestrians, you cross into moving traffic. I had to take a video to try and capture it with all the horns going and the ancient and decrepit vehicles. It's unlike anything I have really seen, even in Southeast Asia. I read a great line in a guidebook that the government has tried to put in streetlights here but they have yet to acquire "credibility" with the locals.

2) It's insanely crowded. There are about 18 million people living here apparently. I think most of them are on the sidewalks near my hotel.

3) It's hot. Like, Africa hot. Literally. That said, thanks to jetlag i was out at 5am this morning and it's extremely mild and pleasant with a light breeze. The evenings are also reasonably comfortable too.

4) I'm here during Ramadan, so a majority of people are fasting during the day. This doesn't mean I can't eat, but it does mean food is harder to get. What's most amazing though is that those fasting don't drink water during the day, which is just unimaginable to me though they claim you get used to it.

5) It's not a clean city by any stretch. Garbage cans are kind of hard to come by and there is definitely a mentality of throwing trash on the street without thinking twice, no matter what it is. Also, no street cleaning of any sort that I've seen. There was quite a lot of trash floating on the banks of the Nile as well.

6) Brutal homelessness. On the one hand, I didn't see that much of it, but on the other hand, I saw one women wearing the full muslim dress that I would call a burkha which may or may not be accurate, but she was sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the packs of tissues she sells, more or less covered in black flies. I tried to tell if she was breathing, but the nearby people seemed unconcerned so I guess she's a regular. Incidentally, I read that 1/3rd of the homes in Cairo don't have running water and some don't even have sewage.

7) Scams are a little overwhelming, though isolated to specific areas. At certain squares, people approach and want to talk and pretend to be your friend, and then try to sell you something or take you to their shop to buy something and so on. By the Pyramids of course where I went today, this was at its most brutal. Even getting there, there are people directing you not to the entrance you are looking for, but to some store or other street. Once inside the gate, there are people who approach every few minutes and try to give you a "gift" which then you will have to pay them for, or they start a tour without asking and then ask you for money at the end, or try to give you a ride on a camel. Apparently it is not uncommon that they offer you a camel ride for $1 into the desert, then charge you an exorbitant sum to return. I did not find out if that would happen to me, but I was offered a camel ride for $1. A bit more about all this later.


So those are a few basic gripes that come to mind. Here are a few adventures of the last day or so, and a few things I have enjoyed.

1) The Pyramids were indeed incredible. It was every bit as impressive as I thought it would be to stand underneath them and walk around. Getting there was interesting. I walked for a few hours in that direction since it was 5:30am and I don't think the gate opens til 8, and then I ultimately ended up getting a minibus which is certainly among the most insane modes of transport I have experienced. There is a guy driving and a guy who hangs out the door of the moving vehicle yelling the destination at people on the sidewalk repeatedly. They sort of stop when they are picking people up, but just like the bigger buses, the just sort of slow down enough that you can jump on. Thankfully for foreigners, they slow down a bit more than that and it was pretty interesting and insanely cheap. I also experienced the pyramids as a crash course in Arabic, which I started learning on the plane. I found that in general speaking Arabic to all the hustlers dissuaded them from hassling me further and I even managed to be friendly with a bunch of them.

On the way to the Pyramids, I had found the right bus successfully and was on my way when two Japanese people got on with an Egyptian guy who I initially and incorrectly assumed they knew. I went to talk to them to see where they were from and before I realized that he had picked them up to scam them, he said we had to switch to another bus, so I went with them. We took another bus towards the back entrance of the pyramids and then he wanted to go buy a ticket in a special place for a special price, which is when I realized what was going on, so I excused myself and no harm was done. In fact I had wanted to go to the rear entrance anyway since it was reported to me correctly that if you show up there early which I had, you would have the Sphinx pretty much all to yourself, which I did. In general, it was not very crowded at all at the Pyramids, there were times where I was more or less by myself at the base of either of the two larger structures. Did you know that originally the Pyramids at Giza were originally covered with smooth, white limestone?

2) As I am here during Ramadan, at about 6:30pm everyone eats a meal to break their fast. Last night I had this meal with the hotel staff which sounds a lot more formal than it really is. The streets quiet down for an hour while people eat, and then completely fill up with people who socialize and go shopping. People seem to be out for a long time doing this, I'm told up until 4am but with my jetlag I didn't get to see that with my own eyes. The consumerism in general in my neighborhood of downtown Cairo is pretty extreme. It reminds me somewhat of China in that respect, and from what I've been told so far, shopping for things during Ramadan is quite common and several people even related it to Christmas. I have also heard the calls to prayer and seen many people lay mats down on the sidewalk en masse. I haven't been the Islamic Quarter of Cairo yet where I imagine I will see a lot more of that.

3) Men walk arm in arm here the way Chinese women do.

4) One guy approached me on the street just to talk. Another guy at the Pyramids spoke with me for about 30-40 minutes about his life in Egypt. He's bedouin and he invited me to his home for dinner, which I haven't decided if I will do yet. After being approached by 40 people trying to take advantage of me, it was difficult to trust people, but I asked him how much he'd ask me if I came and ate at his house and he seemed to be genuinely taken aback. He said work is separate, this is just hospitality and he wants me to leave Egypt with a better impression. He knows that many foreigners experience these things and wants to give a better impression. He said I should judge people individually, and open my heart but guard my pocket.

5) Another guy approached me in the city and said I cross the street like an Egyptian. I talked to him for a few minutes and he works at a diving school at a resort in Hurghada and seemed to just be friendly, but again, being so overwhelmed by the majority who want to take advantage, it's difficult to trust, but at least we had a nice chat and his intentions seemed innocent.

Alright, probably nobody read this but at least a few things have been documented about this insane 24 hours. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?