Tag Archives: travel

Jun 09 2011
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Egypt, Stories, Two minute read

The backpackers and the hag

We are in weekend now! The Egyptian weekend (and the weekend in other parts of the Islamic world) is on Friday and Saturday since church on Sunday isn’t so popular. Tonight I’m going to an electronic music festival, so no doubt there will be a post about that: I imagine glow in the dark hijabs.

When I was walking back to my apartment today after class and our “cultural exchange”, I  witnessed an interesting scene upon entering my street from the main square.

As soon as you turn left from Medan Messaha (or Messaha Square in English) there is a little kiosk and a flower shop, or rather, a flower kiosk. This kiosk by all accounts appears to be open 24 hours, and with good reason since many love emergencies happen in the wee hours of the morning or the late hours of the night. As I was passing by the flower shop, I saw three backpackers, probably European. They all had a very “natural” look and were laden with ridiculously huge backpacks, making them even more conspicuous than their mere colonizer-ish appearance. They were talking to a woman seated on a stool resting against the wall of the flower kiosk, and I swear this woman popped right out of a fairy tale. I know that she must be a lovely lady with a beautiful family and precious children, but she had the exact appearance of the hag that tricks Snow White into eating the poisoned apple, except for she was about three times as heavy and was wearing an abaya not a cloak. I wished to join their party just as an observer of the strange scene taking place: three clueless foreigners taking up with the ilk of the flower shop folk, but I walked on. I have a feeling the backpackers had left a trail of breadcrumbs or something of the sort. Probably as soon as I left, she fed them poisoned hibiscus flower tea and then stole their kidneys. Or took them to her house and fed them to be nice with the added benefit of fattening them up.

As I passed, I felt somewhat superior since, having lived here all of less than two weeks, I am obviously much better attuned to life here and almost fluent in the language and knowledgeable of every Egyptian custom. My confidence was brought down to size quickly, however, when on the way up the stairs to my apartment I almost went insane when a cat scratching its way down the stairwell came close to clawing my legs as it rushed past me. I think my heart exploded from the fright as well as the abundance of caffeine I’ve consumed today. I’m taking the cat as a sign from God that I shouldn’t drink so much caffeine.

If I’m still alive after the electronic music festival tonight I will write about it.

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Jun 08 2011
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Egypt, Two minute read

Transportation Nation!

Since my post yesterday on crossing the street was such a hoot, I decided to do another quick postie-wostie on how I get to school everyday. Just imagine if instead I were writing about how I got to school everyday at  Boston University and you’ll see how banal this is. And yet I continue.

Roomies and I take the Metro to school…it’s about a ten minute walk from our apartment and in the trek, we walk up a street in which 90 percent of our fellow pedestrians are going the other direction, so if feels a bit like we are the proverbial salmon heading up the proverbial stream. We go down the stairs into the metro (Doqqi stop), which is by all accounts incredibly clean and efficient and big and well decorated. After purchasing a ticket, we head through the (hopefully correct) turnstiles and down the stairs. I love the tiling on the side of the walls down in the metro…the designs are big rounded shapes in pastel colors and so the place feels vaguely like a videogame, a nursery, or a knick knack shop.

Here’s where it differs slightly from Amreeka: if I’m with my g-friends, then we seek out the place to stand which will grant us entry to the women’s only car. There’s a sign above the platform that says “Women” and it has a picture of someone wearing a dress, so we go there, obviously. The word for women in Arabic (one of them) is Seyidat, and every time we enter I think to myself, chuckling: “Where’s my seyidat at?” After only a short wait (so efficient! 80 times better than Boston) we push our way onto the car and enter an atmosphere not unlike a sauna. Everyone else is sweating as well, so the smell is particularly lovely and only enhanced by the additional vapor of various perfumes.

We get off 2 stops later right at Tahrir Square. There are about 20 possible ways to exit the metro, but only one of them is the appropriate one for the university. So far we’ve found it one time, and that was yesterday. We might end up in Sudan tomorrow if we’re not careful.

I look forward one day to writing something of meaning, about Egyptian politics, society, religion, culture, etc. Until that day comes, you’ll have to put up with my ramblings: I bought some nuts today—1.5 pounds for about 4 bucks. Electronic music festival tomorrow. I’m speaking only Arabic with fellow fellows and it’s  little strange and a little hard. At least I have my blog.

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May 31 2011
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Humorous, Travelling, Two minute read

Two used vomit bags

I made it onto the plane in New York. It wasn’t a close call but it still wasn’t extremely pleasant navigating the million

different hallways, escalators, and moving sidewalks of JFK at a brisk clip.

Culture shock began on the plane. I flew Royal Jordanian on a direct flight to Amman, Jordan. The hallway to the plane smelled like urine, as did the plane itself. It wasn’t too strong and I guess had my imagination been apt enough I could have convinced myself it actually smelled like grape juice. Both urine and grape juice are key ingredients and products of children, of which there must have been at least fifty, all sitting in close proximity to myself. This is one of the things I had forgotten about travelling in the Middle East: there are kids everywhere, and the strategy for child rearing differs, the result being that children are also obnoxious.

I sat next to a child on the plane, but luckily she was very quiet and probably more scared of me than anything else. I encouraged this. But there were some screamers. They took it in turns: once one child stopped crying another began. There were some points when I thought about offering up my own child management strategies, which involve gently placing both hands around the neck of the offending child and squeezing until they stop crying.

Luckily we made it through with no deaths and only two people vomiting within earshot upon touchdown. The flight was a total of eleven hours and because of my signature method of traveling slightly dehydrated I didn’t have to leave my seat even once. I realized halfway through that this was my first time flying completely solo beginning a transatlantic journey, and I had a “don’t look down” moment, like if I stopped to think about how ridiculous it was that I was traveling hours across the world by myself I would implode or wet myself or something.

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May 26 2011
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Egypt, One minute read, Travelling

At the airport

Turns out you need a visa to go to Egypt. I had a mild panic attack when it seemed there was some trouble with the fact I didn’t technically “have” one of these. However, I reassured the nice gentleman that I would be able to get one in the airport once I was there and gently laughed away his insistence that I would need one for longer than thirty days. “I can just get it renewed….” I chuckled.

So I got through eventually, but not before bundling up my curtains, sheets, and hangers and stuffing them into a trashcan, a direct result of the fact my bags were a little heavy. On the bright side, whatever I buy in Cairo to replace these things will probably be resplendent with all kinds of gold thread and flowers.

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