1st stop
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
40
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Cairo,
Egypt
Friday, March 17, 2006
We made these fellows offers and they scoffed at prices an Egyptian would never pay. One realised that we were stubborn and after much hawing accepted our more than fair offer. Walking to his car we heard the usual spiel that "Benzine is expensive," "life is hard," "my wife shouts a lot," [etc]. I am such a sympathetic soul. By the way, the Egyptian government subsidizes gasoline. It is cheaper than water; in Dahab one driver told me the cost ratio was three liters to one.
We gave our driver the roundabout Midan Talat Harb as our destination. We had heard that drivers will try anything to get us to a hotel of their choice (because their hotel will give them a commission). It was as if a prophecy came true: the driver started asking us about where we were staying only moments after starting the car. After 10 hours in the bus together, Dale and I had developed a bit of a rapport. Thence we began the funniest version of improv I have never got the chance to laugh at.
at first, we made evasive comments about the driver's suggestions. A few minutes into the ride, the driver's suggestions became direct questions about where we were staying. He asked us if we had been to Cairo before, and if knew the city's lay out. Simultaneously we both realised that if we didn't give this louse half decent answers, we'd never get to where we were going. So quite dismissively, Dale and I said that we had both separately been to Cairo before. When the driver began asking more questions, we brought the purpose of our visit to deflect from our lack of know how (Oh, but of course it had been a long time since we had been in Cairo! Can one rhetorically argue that, at a certain point, a long time can blend into never?)
So we told the driver that we were meeting a certain friend at this roundabout at a particular time. What did our friend do in Cairo? and where did he live? Where did we know him from? Did he have enough space in his apparment? What colour was his hair? We kept making up answers until by the time he dropped us off, he knew more about our old friend "Ruddiger" than we did! He was bald, and we had both went to University with him, but we each knew him better than we knew one another, and so on. Right until the very last moment this driver kept inviting us to come to a really nice place, and we kept reminding him of Ruddiger's special offer of a free appartment. I almost believed it myself!
A moment after the driver drove away, we found the hostel of our choice. More than a little bit cautious that someone would accost us as we climbed the stairs (getting out of the cab we had three new "friends" say hello already), we waited around a while. We had both read that touts will try to go with someone inside the hotel, and then claim a commission from it. We bolted inside when no one seemed to notice.
The place was alright, and before we went to bed, we had KFC. I hadn't had Western fast food in months, and my poor belly had been wasting away. The Mega Super Chunky Spicy Deep Fried Chicken Whatever did its part to keep me North American. Outside the fast food joints on Sadat square, only a pane of glass between us, some eighty protesters yelled and chanted about something. It wasn't possible to find out precisely what they were protesting. The locals we asked said "democracy" and "wages" but couldn't elaborate.
The next day I had planned to go to Aswan. After a tasty breakfast at Pizza Hut, I went off toward the train station to get myself a ticket. I first tried to get a sleeping carriage. I was told that I needed to pay for it in US dollars or I could not get it, because tourists are not permitted to pay in Egyptian currency. Of course, I didn't have any more USD on me. With my bank card, it's easy to get Egyptian Pounds out of any ATM, but not USD. I needed to find a money changer.
Unfortunately it was a Friday. Banks are closed, and I spent way too long looking around for somewhere open to change money. After endlessly wandering around for an undefinable eon, I returned to the train station to get some direction from the tourist information office.
Apparently it is quite hard to get foreign currency. I was told that the Egyptian government hoards it all for its own ends. The advice I recieved was to not spend the money on a sleeper, but just to get a 1st class seat and take the regular night train. It is said to be safe enough and commonly used by tourists. It is also guarded by secret police with automatic weapons. Buying this ticket was marginally easier, because I could pay in pounds (and it was one tenth the price). After languishing at a ticket window for the clerk to wait on me, I had my ticket for Aswan, three hours after I set out.
I went back to the hostel and found Dale. We hunted around to find a cafe that had a backgammon board. When we found one where we spent the next hours playing backgammon. He beat me three in a row, and then I insisted on a best of seven. I came back to win the next five games in a row.
We were pleasantly surprised when the bill was not outrageous - we had been so happy to find a place with a board that we forgot to ask the prices. Such honesty seems rarely the case in this country, even in Dahab, but I qualify that statement by saying that we had walked outside of the tourist zone, for there things are more likely to be okay.
After watching some James Bond in the hostel, I took the Metro to the train station and caught my night train to Aswan. Aboard I met Justin from Australia. There were also four Copts sharing our compartment who make Christian tv shows for a living. They asked us if we were believers in the faith, and Justin said he didn't have any faith. They grilled him for that, until their English skills failed them in the deepening theological debate that followed. Then we were ready to call it a night, and I found an empty compartment to lie down in. I slept until the train pulled into Aswan.
[Explaination on the general delay in my posts]
The regular visitor will have noticed that I have fallen more than a month behind in my blog posts. Where in earlier months I was considerably more timely in positing, a few things have changed for me.
I did not have a lot of time to access the internet in Egypt. I was too busy rushing around (and I spent six nights on some form of transport). Now in Germany (since April 3), I have spent a lot of my time studying German and drinking in pubs. I don't have internet at my place so that doesn't help any either.
But for those of you who have expressed your concern for me and your continuing interest, I thank you, and I entirely intend over the next while to catch up with my posts, and write about my journey until its end. Thanks for reading!
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