Day One in Egypt

Let me preface this by stating that unless you’re actually here, no amount of pictures or words can actually convey what its like. I’ll try.

So I’m in Egypt.

Cairo actually, in the dokki neighborhood. To the west of me is the nile river, and in the middle of the river, the island of Zamilek, which is also one of the “neighborhoods”. When you cross Zamilek, and get to the other side, you’re in the “downtown” district. Go south from there and you get to Maadi.
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&q=cairo+map&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&ei=wEyQSt37I4mOmAOJ3_ymAQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1
We got in CAI at 2 in the morning, got in a taxi by 3:30, and got in our room by 4:30, asleep at 5 (all local time). So… What else is there to do? Sleep. It was the best nights sleep I’ve gotten in months, I was so exhausted. So, we wake up at 3, and start walking down the main dokki drag - El Tahir. Its easy to see why its such a cool place, just looking at the apartments explains a lot.
In the US, everything we do is planned ahead of time. The work is done by machines, and its precise. Helvetica. Lasers. Robin William fake tit nazis. But in Cairo, this is where people live and work together. Everything is custom here. In the US, all the sidewalks are the same size. Not here, it varies, some are only two feet wide, others are huge. The apartments were not built with most of the electrical “pre-planned” or internet, so there are cables jimmy-rigged everywhere, and hundreds of satellites pointed from rooftops. There is a good reason that people from poorer countries become engineers and electronics majors; you gotta be good at it or you won’t cut it here. The poorest cafe owner knows exactly how to set up a wireless network and change the passcodes every day or so, and throw up WPA protection because he can get more money by charging stupid westerners 30 LE to get wi-fi.
But it is a learning experience.

So first, things were going swell. We walked down the main drag, got a wiff of how things worked (stray cats are everywhere, just everywhere, its great, i love cats). We found a vodafone, or someone who sells vodafone stuff, and I bought myself a cell phone (i’m still trying to figure out how incoming calls work, so if you ask, i’ll give you the # but i’m not sure if I can get free incoming yet, or whats the cheapest way to call to the states, i have a few ideas).

So we decide to visit our other WI AUC friend Alison over at the Hotel Isis near downtown. So we hitch a cab. After paying (in hindsight) the cost of six cabrides to downtown from dokki, we get out and chill. Now, i’m never like this, but maybe I was frazzled by the trip, or maybe it fell out, but somehow, my brand new phone (150 LE phone, 25 LE SIM card, 100 LE prepaid on the card) was left in the cab. So I am pissed. We call the phone, trying to get hold of the cab driver. I’m about to buy a whole new package (with a guy who got pissed at us), but just then, the cab driver calls back. So he’s coming to “drop it off”. After some haggling (we’re getting much better), i pay him 50 LE for the phone and his troubles. That made me happy. I’m glad I asked for a cheap phone. Its great, and cheap, and monochrome, and just works. Well, now we are wiser, and I’m happy to have my phone back, and so we start wondering around in the far north side of the “downtown district” if we were even still in it. There are lots of interesting “suuuk” - marketplace - all scattered around in these weird back alleys (if you think of the typical back alley marketplace scene in your standard movie, its like that except it smells more interesting, not bad, interesting).

Once again, the buildings were not built for their use, so there are “shops” scattered rather willy nilly in living complexes, or just out in the middle of no place in particular. Its hard to tell if an “entrance” is a throughway, or a private entrance for living. We try to stay on the roads and look for a restaurant. We found one. Its very american, and expensive for Cairo because of that (my buddy says he lives modestly on $1 a day for food). My schwarma sandwich and a big bottle of water ran me around $3.

But we get to eat outside with the cats, and the weather is perfect.

After that we wonder back towards the “main downtown” where the museums and government buildings are located.

We spend a while trying to find our friend, but we do eventually meet up and wonder around. Its the first day of Ramadan, and its setting sunshine, so soon people should be running out into the streets, but everything still seems pretty quiet. He tells us some war stories of him in cairo over the past few months, my favorite is when he has to barrel-roll off the hood of a car (which btw, if you can avoid doing for a few months is amazing, i’ll get to that).

We’re really tired so we treck it back to Alison’s apartment where the internet is. Soon after we catch a cabride back to our hotel (for about 4x cheeper than the first time, and we’ll get it down yet).

Back to crazy cars.

So the driving down here is fairly intense. The most wicked part of it is not the cars driving, but its the pedestrians, or lack of pedestrian walkways. There are lots of sidewalks, but no places to cross streets. Remember in the movies when the hot business dude is racing after the hot babe’s taxi in NYC, just to tell her to not go to the airport? Well. Thats everyday life here. And when that taxi almost runs into him and he spills his briefcase of papers, and the guy yells at him, yeah. I felt like frogger this morning. I actually see people cross 4 lanes of traffic (one way), almost bumper to bumper, and they run out across one lane, then have to stop IN BETWEEN LANES, on the white lines as huge busses wizz by on both lanes. They actually have to turn sideways to avoid being hit. Oh, and all the cars are going about 80 km/h too, so that makes life interesting. Madison has made me much better at it though, you just have to be fearless and the cars will swerve around you.

I could never drive around in this city. Wow.

So, thats it for today. Tomorrow’s tasks include continued apartment figuring out, taking the subway somewhere, learn about food prices with Luke, and maybe finding another WI AUC’er.

So fun, I’ll keep writing. More pics on facebook. Take care you crazy cats.