Saturday, July 21, 2007
Deathly Hallows!!!
Harry Potter is here! Oh yes, in the middle of Egypt, a country that once banned the books for their perverse witchcraft and anti-Islamic tenancies, I have Harry Potter! It cost 200LE, but at 9am in the morning, I pranced over to the AUC bookstore, where I was immediately handed my own lovely copy. It’s the British version, complete with inky black binding and cover art depicting the locket of Slytherin. I can’t read it all now as I must save some for my beach trip to Marsa Alam, but I have Harry Potter! I still can’t watch the movie as it comes out later here than basically anywhere else in the world, and there were no midnight parties complete with children in costume, harassed parents, even more harassed booksellers, and trivia games that make me smugly think “I could kick those kids’ asses, no sweat”. So see! I am not at the ends of the earth! I am merely a commercial airline flight away from places that actually appreciate the wonder that is the last ((sob)) Harry Potter book!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The hunt for an Apartment (it makes Red October look like a well-signed exit on an American highway)
It is said that finding an apartment, a place to live, especially for a short period of time, is difficult in any city. I can attest to this fact, having spent two torturous weeks in search of an apartment last year in DC. But really, while the actual emailing and endless Craigslist reading and responding are painful, the apartment search itself it not terrible or dangerous or particularly dank and dreary. Even better for me, I found a place with the Kreutzbergs and was spared the agony of outfitting or in any other way dealing with apartment hunting. Assuming I had not found this ideal position, I would still have been protected from sketchy persons, cheating landlords, and other unsavory individuals by things like laws. By contrast, exhibit Egypt. I had an apartment, and then I didn’t, and so I spent two weeks searching the web and asking around about a new apartment. One person at the university told me “not to worry”, he would “take care of it”. I come back from vacation with my parents and, surprise surprise, he has taken care of nothing. Rather, I have nowhere to live and only the amazing wonderfulness of my parents saves my poor self from being homeless in Cairo as they agree to pay for my hotel room. But on the last day, we call one of the numbers on the poorly-spelled “I can find you an apartment” signs in Zamalek. He shows us about 6 apartments after promising he’ll show us “only 2” and one has a staircase darker than the mastaba I crawled into earlier this year and is one of the most unhygienic, dank places I have ever encountered. It reminded me of the crack-den in a dark American movie—badly scuffed furniture, barely-working appliances, water stains and dirty rugs, odd boards over one window, and probably a zillion insects crawling about.
Finally, he agrees to let me meet this “German Girl” who is looking for a roommate. This takes a couple days to accomplish, but when we finally go up to the apartment and an American girl with an Italian parent who went to high school in France answers the door, I am not even phased. And even better, the apartment will work! I talk with the girl and we agree that I finally have a place to live in Cairo—however, due to conflicting schedules it will take me two days to actually move in.
Before moving in, I decide it would be wise to invest in a set of sheets so that I can be sure to have a nice, clean top and bottom sheet, as well as a blanket. Now, I could go to the store in Zamalek, where I will be overcharged by the worth of my firstborn female child in the Middle East or I could be sneaky and go to one of the textiles districts. Now in a place brimming with textiles—everything from gossamer curtains and bolts of tapestry fabric to barely-there panties and nightgowns large enough use as a rain-fly on my tent, one would think there would be no problem finding sheets. After all, towels and lace netting are in abundance! Twenty minutes later on a back alley in the area I come upon a store that appears to have at least some of the ubiquitous heavily embroidered bed linens. These sheets would put a Victorian decorator to shame with the sheer magnitude of the gold, sparkly flowers covering every possible inch of fabric. By this point, an older gentleman with some English has been brought in to translate my exclamations of horror in English and my “la la las” into similar exclamations of horror in Arabic. I finally get the concept of “no flowers, no decoration at all” across and instead of leading me to a less-visible stack of plastic enclosed sheets I am led to the back, toward large bolts of cotton. Oh dear, I begin to think as he says, “Good quality cotton. What color you like?” Cautiously pointing toward bright pink, the only available shade that doesn’t remind me of rainbow sherbert ice cream, the bolt is immediately examined, I stutter out “itneen [two]” in response the an inquiry of “how many each sheet, pillow?” and call it good. The fabric is cut, taken away to be sown into sheets and pillowcases as I wait, and I am cajoled into a chair to wait 10 minutes. So I wait… and wait… and wait. The well-meaning Coptic store owners and workers don’t stare ridiculously, but are not quite sure what to make of this young American girl in there shop and attempt to ask her simple Arabic questions. Confronted with men who have small, secret cross tattoos on their wrists (a common practice) and who speak no English, I settle on the “nod and smile” method while attempting to read a book on Chinese individualism. Weird. An hour later my sheets and pillowcases, all in shocking pink, emerge from the outside street, fresh from the sewing room where they have been created. Who knew getting sheets could be this difficult? By this point, it’s 8pm and I trudge back across the 26th of July Bridge (and literally beat off a 9-year-old who thinks it’s funny to run by and smack my ass), only to receive a voicemail telling me that my new roommate is still not at the apartment and I am still without a key. So I find a coffee shop and sit. Today, I learned several lessons: it will always be harder than I thought it would be; don’t go shopping without provisions as you may be forced to stumble into a food establishment salivating and delirious after having not eaten in over 12 hours; and somehow, I don’t know how, it really always does work out in the end.
Finally, he agrees to let me meet this “German Girl” who is looking for a roommate. This takes a couple days to accomplish, but when we finally go up to the apartment and an American girl with an Italian parent who went to high school in France answers the door, I am not even phased. And even better, the apartment will work! I talk with the girl and we agree that I finally have a place to live in Cairo—however, due to conflicting schedules it will take me two days to actually move in.
Before moving in, I decide it would be wise to invest in a set of sheets so that I can be sure to have a nice, clean top and bottom sheet, as well as a blanket. Now, I could go to the store in Zamalek, where I will be overcharged by the worth of my firstborn female child in the Middle East or I could be sneaky and go to one of the textiles districts. Now in a place brimming with textiles—everything from gossamer curtains and bolts of tapestry fabric to barely-there panties and nightgowns large enough use as a rain-fly on my tent, one would think there would be no problem finding sheets. After all, towels and lace netting are in abundance! Twenty minutes later on a back alley in the area I come upon a store that appears to have at least some of the ubiquitous heavily embroidered bed linens. These sheets would put a Victorian decorator to shame with the sheer magnitude of the gold, sparkly flowers covering every possible inch of fabric. By this point, an older gentleman with some English has been brought in to translate my exclamations of horror in English and my “la la las” into similar exclamations of horror in Arabic. I finally get the concept of “no flowers, no decoration at all” across and instead of leading me to a less-visible stack of plastic enclosed sheets I am led to the back, toward large bolts of cotton. Oh dear, I begin to think as he says, “Good quality cotton. What color you like?” Cautiously pointing toward bright pink, the only available shade that doesn’t remind me of rainbow sherbert ice cream, the bolt is immediately examined, I stutter out “itneen [two]” in response the an inquiry of “how many each sheet, pillow?” and call it good. The fabric is cut, taken away to be sown into sheets and pillowcases as I wait, and I am cajoled into a chair to wait 10 minutes. So I wait… and wait… and wait. The well-meaning Coptic store owners and workers don’t stare ridiculously, but are not quite sure what to make of this young American girl in there shop and attempt to ask her simple Arabic questions. Confronted with men who have small, secret cross tattoos on their wrists (a common practice) and who speak no English, I settle on the “nod and smile” method while attempting to read a book on Chinese individualism. Weird. An hour later my sheets and pillowcases, all in shocking pink, emerge from the outside street, fresh from the sewing room where they have been created. Who knew getting sheets could be this difficult? By this point, it’s 8pm and I trudge back across the 26th of July Bridge (and literally beat off a 9-year-old who thinks it’s funny to run by and smack my ass), only to receive a voicemail telling me that my new roommate is still not at the apartment and I am still without a key. So I find a coffee shop and sit. Today, I learned several lessons: it will always be harder than I thought it would be; don’t go shopping without provisions as you may be forced to stumble into a food establishment salivating and delirious after having not eaten in over 12 hours; and somehow, I don’t know how, it really always does work out in the end.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Luxor and Bahariyya in brief(ish)
Luxor is the heart of Upper Egypt--the illustrious home of Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings and the colored walls of Medinet Habu and the day-to-day existence at the village of Deir el-Medina. It's also in teh hartland of sugarcane burning and mass tourism and improperly dressed German and Russian/Eastern European visitors on their endless lines of cruiseships (most of which are ugly, kitchy, and inhibit the natural breezes of the Nile from coming onshore.
In Luxor, we decided to go the route of "small tourism" on the lesser-inhabited West Bank, surrounded by green fields and local Egyptians, as well as closer to the major funerary monuments. Getting there with all our luggage proved a mite tricky as the bridge is an astonishing 9km north of Luxor--this is either to preserve the vista view at Luxor (did I mention the cruise ships line the banks and ruin the vista already? Oh yeah, I did) or a government official owns the land up until 9km north and so the government just stole the land from the "stupid Saides", or Upper Egyptian peasants. My bet is on the latter--it's the least rational and most typical reason I can think of.
So our hotel is cute and located right next to a mosque with particularly poor quality loud speakers. For those of you who have never heard a call to prayer, it is enough to make you desperately wish for the technology of even 50 years ago when a person, as opposed to a scratchy, high pitched, wailing recorded message calls all good Muslim men to come pray. The women can come too, but they have to sit behind a curtain in the back or outside (but this is a story for a later post, wherein Lindsey is bitter and meditates on the meaning of Buddhist equality while forced to sit behind said curtain).
Cute, but Mom and Dad's AC doesn't work in their room! That's okay in January, but we are talking 45C/113F and humid from all the agriculture. It's not hot, it's damn hot. So we all sleep in Lindsey's room and wake up early to visit Karnak Temple. Mom and Dad are a little bitter about Karnak still--I got excited, they got hot, I started bouncing and talking and forcing them to walk over ruined mud brick and open mounds with one column and no other tourists. And then they laid down the law and we left.
And we get back, try to get cool (their AC still isn't working), go to tea at the Winter Palace Hotel, walk around and avoid carriage drivers, shopkeepers, annoying children trying to sell me an unneeded bottle of water for 10LE (it should be like, 1LE), and the unnumerable SKETCHY men that roam the streets trying to buy me from my father and generally be assholes (forgive the language, but I mean this with conviction). And then we go to a pub, visit Luxor Temple at night, which is a beautiful sight as the reliefs are more defined, the colors more true, and the trash is invisible. Stunning!
Except we go back to the hotel, where the fuse box white literally catches on fire, and we are out of electricity. This of course means no AC. They promise it will be fixed "by midnight" and we check into the Winter Palace Hotel, where we will make use of the lovely pool and nice on-premise restaurants.
Daddy gets Egypt-sick and Mom and Lindsey go to Medinet Habu (the mortuary temple of Ramses III) and Deir el-Medina, where I bribe my way onto the roof, take a zillion photos, get insanely excited (I wrote a major paper on the temple for class this past semester), and am mildly mean to a guy trying to sell me plaster cat statues. (P.S. Cats weren't even worshipped in Luxor, they were worshipped in Bubastis, which is several hundred km north in the Delta).
After the traumatizing ferry ride back involving a 9-year-old that needs to be smacked, I hide in the hotel the rest of the day. Seriously, it was sick what he was able to get away with.
The Valley of the Kings was lovely as always, Dad accused me of inciting the Bhutan Death March III over the Theban Hills from the Valley of the Kings to the Temple of Deir el-Bahri in the middle of summer, we swam in the nice pool, and we did a road trip down to the Greco-Roman temples at Kom-Ombo and Edfu in an insane convoy that consisted of bad driving, scary speeds on bad roads, and gorgeous temples overlooking the Nile. At this point, before intense industry, the Nile is beautiful and clear and sparkley and not filled with unthinkable toxins, though some sewage running into it is still rather... raw.
We take a flight back to Cairo to catch a van to Bahariyya Oasis, the closest and most-settled of the Western Oases. It is near the black and white deserts and is the jumping-off point for many desert safaris. Instead of desert camping, we opt for the more-refined eco-resort called the el-Bawity Resort, where after a 5+ hour drive that has redefined desolate emptiness, we encounter a palm grove, a spring-fed pool, and a lovely collection of little house-casita-villa-bungalo-ish buildings. They are all of traditional materials with no steel or conrete in sight--big domes keep hot air at the ceiling, while thick stone walls keep heat out in the summer. One room is especially beautiful, with a view overlooking the oasis, huge windows, and a suchy bed, but with no AC, it's no good and we opt for a cute suite instead.
We are served way too much food and huge amounts of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, which Mom and Dad won't eat and I have to eat in order to not be rude (I will later pay for this in a very painful manner). I attempt to climb Pyramid Mountain in flipflops and almost drop my camera. The poor shoe choice was, for once, not my fault. We go into the main town and end up eating dinner with the family (or rather served by the family) of one of the resort workers. It is a huge family of lovely women; no one speaks English; my Arabic is near non-existant; it is only slightly awkward; I am almost strangled by Yasmin, his 5-year-old daughter who wants to put I nikab on me; I almost hyperventilate once I am in the nikab (yes, there are photos) due to heat and me frieking out at being covered in a black shroud-like garment; the food is amazing!
It was a lot of fun and my first meal with an Egyptian family--definitely a trip highlight!
The next day is a desert day with huge white dunes, scatterings of black igneous rock atop white sand, crazy Utah-like arches and columns and statues of bright white chalk-stone. The driver had a crush on me--Daddy thought it was funny--I thought it was mish-quayess (no good).
We left the next day, dealt with the loal police who insisted we needed a police escort (I think one of them just wanted a free ride back to Cairo), got into a fight with the van driver, who initially refused to drop us off in Zamalek at our hotel and instead ended up south of Dokki (quite a ways away) and I had to yell at people in French in order to end up in Zamalek. Good times, always.
And then I got sick, so we just kind of chilled and I laid in bed and we looked for an apartment for me and then the Mom and dad departed.
And I sat in Cairo with nowhere to live... party!?
But more about those adventures in the next post.
In Luxor, we decided to go the route of "small tourism" on the lesser-inhabited West Bank, surrounded by green fields and local Egyptians, as well as closer to the major funerary monuments. Getting there with all our luggage proved a mite tricky as the bridge is an astonishing 9km north of Luxor--this is either to preserve the vista view at Luxor (did I mention the cruise ships line the banks and ruin the vista already? Oh yeah, I did) or a government official owns the land up until 9km north and so the government just stole the land from the "stupid Saides", or Upper Egyptian peasants. My bet is on the latter--it's the least rational and most typical reason I can think of.
So our hotel is cute and located right next to a mosque with particularly poor quality loud speakers. For those of you who have never heard a call to prayer, it is enough to make you desperately wish for the technology of even 50 years ago when a person, as opposed to a scratchy, high pitched, wailing recorded message calls all good Muslim men to come pray. The women can come too, but they have to sit behind a curtain in the back or outside (but this is a story for a later post, wherein Lindsey is bitter and meditates on the meaning of Buddhist equality while forced to sit behind said curtain).
Cute, but Mom and Dad's AC doesn't work in their room! That's okay in January, but we are talking 45C/113F and humid from all the agriculture. It's not hot, it's damn hot. So we all sleep in Lindsey's room and wake up early to visit Karnak Temple. Mom and Dad are a little bitter about Karnak still--I got excited, they got hot, I started bouncing and talking and forcing them to walk over ruined mud brick and open mounds with one column and no other tourists. And then they laid down the law and we left.
And we get back, try to get cool (their AC still isn't working), go to tea at the Winter Palace Hotel, walk around and avoid carriage drivers, shopkeepers, annoying children trying to sell me an unneeded bottle of water for 10LE (it should be like, 1LE), and the unnumerable SKETCHY men that roam the streets trying to buy me from my father and generally be assholes (forgive the language, but I mean this with conviction). And then we go to a pub, visit Luxor Temple at night, which is a beautiful sight as the reliefs are more defined, the colors more true, and the trash is invisible. Stunning!
Except we go back to the hotel, where the fuse box white literally catches on fire, and we are out of electricity. This of course means no AC. They promise it will be fixed "by midnight" and we check into the Winter Palace Hotel, where we will make use of the lovely pool and nice on-premise restaurants.
Daddy gets Egypt-sick and Mom and Lindsey go to Medinet Habu (the mortuary temple of Ramses III) and Deir el-Medina, where I bribe my way onto the roof, take a zillion photos, get insanely excited (I wrote a major paper on the temple for class this past semester), and am mildly mean to a guy trying to sell me plaster cat statues. (P.S. Cats weren't even worshipped in Luxor, they were worshipped in Bubastis, which is several hundred km north in the Delta).
After the traumatizing ferry ride back involving a 9-year-old that needs to be smacked, I hide in the hotel the rest of the day. Seriously, it was sick what he was able to get away with.
The Valley of the Kings was lovely as always, Dad accused me of inciting the Bhutan Death March III over the Theban Hills from the Valley of the Kings to the Temple of Deir el-Bahri in the middle of summer, we swam in the nice pool, and we did a road trip down to the Greco-Roman temples at Kom-Ombo and Edfu in an insane convoy that consisted of bad driving, scary speeds on bad roads, and gorgeous temples overlooking the Nile. At this point, before intense industry, the Nile is beautiful and clear and sparkley and not filled with unthinkable toxins, though some sewage running into it is still rather... raw.
We take a flight back to Cairo to catch a van to Bahariyya Oasis, the closest and most-settled of the Western Oases. It is near the black and white deserts and is the jumping-off point for many desert safaris. Instead of desert camping, we opt for the more-refined eco-resort called the el-Bawity Resort, where after a 5+ hour drive that has redefined desolate emptiness, we encounter a palm grove, a spring-fed pool, and a lovely collection of little house-casita-villa-bungalo-ish buildings. They are all of traditional materials with no steel or conrete in sight--big domes keep hot air at the ceiling, while thick stone walls keep heat out in the summer. One room is especially beautiful, with a view overlooking the oasis, huge windows, and a suchy bed, but with no AC, it's no good and we opt for a cute suite instead.
We are served way too much food and huge amounts of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, which Mom and Dad won't eat and I have to eat in order to not be rude (I will later pay for this in a very painful manner). I attempt to climb Pyramid Mountain in flipflops and almost drop my camera. The poor shoe choice was, for once, not my fault. We go into the main town and end up eating dinner with the family (or rather served by the family) of one of the resort workers. It is a huge family of lovely women; no one speaks English; my Arabic is near non-existant; it is only slightly awkward; I am almost strangled by Yasmin, his 5-year-old daughter who wants to put I nikab on me; I almost hyperventilate once I am in the nikab (yes, there are photos) due to heat and me frieking out at being covered in a black shroud-like garment; the food is amazing!
It was a lot of fun and my first meal with an Egyptian family--definitely a trip highlight!
The next day is a desert day with huge white dunes, scatterings of black igneous rock atop white sand, crazy Utah-like arches and columns and statues of bright white chalk-stone. The driver had a crush on me--Daddy thought it was funny--I thought it was mish-quayess (no good).
We left the next day, dealt with the loal police who insisted we needed a police escort (I think one of them just wanted a free ride back to Cairo), got into a fight with the van driver, who initially refused to drop us off in Zamalek at our hotel and instead ended up south of Dokki (quite a ways away) and I had to yell at people in French in order to end up in Zamalek. Good times, always.
And then I got sick, so we just kind of chilled and I laid in bed and we looked for an apartment for me and then the Mom and dad departed.
And I sat in Cairo with nowhere to live... party!?
But more about those adventures in the next post.
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