My flight to Cairo landed at 3:30 am. I hadn't slept on the plane, but watched out the window during the flight as lights from cities below mapped out the geography, and occasionally you could see the outline of coast lands. I collected my luggage and located my arranged contact, who quickly ushered me to the line for customs while he ran off to buy me a $15 traveler's visa.
After a quick smoke break for my contact and his driver, we made a short trip into Cairo to the hotel. I somewhat awkwardly asked about tipping in Egypt, as I wanted to make sure I understood the parameters of Baksheesh as it is called in this region. The Egyptian economy seems to run largely on baksheesh, as money is exchanged for all kinds of services, which I would experience as the trip went on. I thought my contact answered very diplomatically to what was likely a taboo question, by stating "It is up to you" but then adding after a pause "but don't embarrass me." I ended up "tipping" him $2 U.S. which he seemed very appreciative of.
The hotel had a security guard with a machine gun at the entrance, along with a metal detector which I had to pass through when entering. (Throughout my stay, the guard always seemed to be there, though he didn't seem to take notice of the people coming in and out, nor seemed to care when tourists would walk through the front doors avoiding the metal detector, which led me to believe that it perhaps didn't work - I don't think it sounded once the whole time I was there.)
As I had a ride to Alexandria arranged for 7 am, I spent the next several hours trying to sleep, but mostly resting, in the hotel lobby. The hotel workers didn't seem to mind, and a few of them lingered around the lobby through the early hours of the morning, sometimes relaxing or dozing off in the arm chairs.
My driver arrived at 7:15 am and I climbed into a min van that had two other passengers who were going to Alexandria with me. This turned out to be fortunate, as they first shared their breakfast with me (I had been awake for about 26 hours and hadn't eaten in a long time,) and then provided me with more information about Egypt and the Middle East as we drove. Jim and Kim (yes their names rhyme) were from Australia and had lived in the Middle East for a while. They were taking a vacation in Cairo and wanted to visit Alexandria. Jim kept telling me that he was a "garbage man" until Kim finally explained a while later that he was an engineer working in waste management.
As we drove out of the city, we passed glimpses of the pyramids which Jim and Kim pointed out to me. The traffic in Egypt is crazy, especially downtown Cairo. Apparently you completely ignore the traffic lines, which led me to wonder why they bothered to paint them. Instead, traffic patterns are determined by the amount of vehicles on the road and where they decide they want to be at a particular time. Most would drive either straddling the white lines, or veer back and forth depending on how many other cars came into proximity. Two lane roads could end up accommodating five or six lanes of traffic. There is also much use of the horn, constant use actually, but more as a normal form of communication rather than out of anger or frustration.
We eventually made it to the highway after crossing over the Nile. As we made our way out of Cairo, we passed two solid hours of billboards on our right hand side. I had never seen such a continuous string of advertisements. I also noticed that our driver seemed to speed up and be in a rush whenever we hit traffic, and then would slow down considerably when we were on open stretches of road, then occasionally speed up again. I had eventually given up trying to guess the reason why, and decided that it was mostly determined by his mood. We were entertained by the sounds of contemporary Arabic music coming from the speakers in the front of the van, which I enjoyed, though it was loud and made it difficult to talk. Kim tried several times to have the music lowered, which it obligingly was, only to be raised again a few minutes later. This happened several times before she gave up the request. The drive was very long, but I stayed awake as I was still running on adrenaline.
As we approached Alexandria, I noticed that it looked identical to the strip mall geography of Southern California, with fast food establishments and retail chain outlets. Once in the downtown core however, the buildings become denser and the area looks more impoverished. Like most of Egypt (and the Middle East), the buildings were made of bare or faded concrete. Some of the structures were quite decorative or detailed, but almost always had a stark or unprotected finish.
Our first stop was the Alexandria Museum. By this time unfortunately sleep was catching up with me. But I still found the tour interesting, which was led by a very animated tour director, a local Egyptian curator. She walked us through quickly but introduced the exhibits with thorough historical detail. The museum housed some early Christian iconography and manuscripts, along with other artifacts of ancient Alexandria.
We were then dropped off at our hotel on the waterfront, and headed out on foot to find a bank and get some lunch. It took some time to locate a bank, and once inside it took considerable time waiting for our numbers to be called. My teller seemed to have some difficulties with his computer program (I think it crashed,) so he ended up reluctantly having to calculate the exchange manually. Leaving the bank we walked up and down some side streets, eventually deciding on a small modern looking cafe. Our lunch was great (I had pasta for some reason) and we were able to meet the owner. Dahlia ran the cafe, which also exhibited her and her husband's paintings and ceramics. We were brought to the back of the cafe which served as a ceramics studio and met one of the assistants she had hired to help with the production of the work. Dahlia gave us a thorough tour and discussed her plans for the business. I thought we were fortunate to meet a local who would share so much of her aspirations with us. Jim and Kim took down her name and the name of the cafe, with the intent of promoting it to travel guides.
We then made a trip down to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which was located across from the ocean , a short taxi ride from the hotel. Originally founded around the early part of the third century BC during the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Ancient Library of Alexandria housed one of the largest collections of books from around the world. The library was reported to have burned somewhere between 48 BC and 642 AD, though the various legends are contested (1). The new library, designed by a Norwegian firm, was finished in 2002 and cost 220 million (2). We arranged for a tour guide, who we found out later was originally from Georgia in Eastern Europe. The library is extensive in size and has a unique construction, housing museum collections, art galleries, a planetarium and a manuscript restoration gallery (2).
In the evening we met up in the lobby of our hotel with some other members who were part of Jim and Kim's tour group. We were shuttled in taxis to our restaurant, which we heard served some of best seafood in Alexandria. The traffic along the waterway is busy at the best of times and comes to a standstill during periods of the day. Pedestrians cross the street in fits and spurts, much like the Frogger video game from the 1980's (see Seinfeld episode related to this.) Vehicles veer and honk but never stop for them, as women and children step out undaunted into the chaos and systematically make their way across what is sometimes five or six makeshift lanes of traffic. As we drove toward the restaurant, I noticed that many of the vehicles drive without their lights on, possibly to conserve their battery, or possibly since they don't work.
The restaurant lets you choose your dinner from an array of fish lined up on beds of ice. I don't recall the desert, if any, but do remember that my waiter was somewhat dismayed at my tip. I guess I still needed to better understand how baksheesh worked. I also recall that I needed to leave the table momentarily to go outside and find a bank machine as I was worried that I wouldn't have enough to pay for the meal. The Egyptian Pound is worth about a fifth of a dollar U.S. This threw me off a bit. Two Hundred Pounds Egyptian, though it sounds like enough at the bank machine, is only about $40 U.S. I found myself visiting the bank machine more frequently than I had planned.
I walked back to the hotel with some of the people from the tour group, and found that I was able to fall asleep around 10 or 11pm, despite the non-stop traffic and honking of horns several stories below.
"Only love has meaning; it raises up our smallest actions into infinity."
- St. Faustina, "Divine Mercy in My Soul." (Diary, p.216)
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina div>
Pyramids, from downtown Cairo
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
