Cairo, no idea what the temperature is.

I appear to have misplaced a journal entry. I know I wrote something after we went to the slums, and now I can’t find it. Weird.

Anyway.

We’re just back from Alexandria – I’m in the hotel bar recovering from a 200 kilometer trip that took nearly 4 hours (do the math). The bus went frustratingly slow, and until we hit the Cairo ring road it wasn’t due to traffic ~ the road is now a 6 lane freeway with limited access, and everyone was zipping around us. Yeesh.

So, here’s the thing. I haven’t written in a while – we had a few lectures and talks and it wasn’t really inspiring. Thursday was the day of no good news. We had a lecture and visit at the Al Ahram newspaper, and the news about the bombings in London had just broken when we left to go over there. When we came back, all of the national networks (Egyptian, Lebanese and Saudi, which come through on the satellite feed), as well as Al-Jazeera were bouncing back and forth between the London attacks and the news that the Egyptian envoy to Baghdad had been executed. Interestingly, the second story didn’t seem to break for another 24 hours on CNN. People here are depressed about both – there’s a lot of Egyptian connections with the UK, lots of people with family there, and the story about the ambassador kind of hit home like it does whenever another American hostage is executed and the tape is shown live on the Internet. (And for the record, Al-Jazeera did give as much attention to this one as it does the others).

Friday morning we joined hordes of other middle class Egyptians for a weekend commute to Alexandria. Samer came with us, and to my surprise, he nearly found himself on the receiving end of my fist (and I’m being deadly serious). He means well, but he managed to piss our tour guide off him the first 45 minutes and it went downhill from there. Unlike Kamran, Samer doesn’t know that loud, argumentative Chris is much safer than quiet, still Chris. I don’t really remember a huge chunk of the Friday visits to the catacombs and Fort Qait Bey because I was so angry. It did all work out well in the end, largely through Kamran running interference and me staying on the other end of the group.

Last night, we took the group to the gardens at Montazeh Palace, the former summer residence of the kings of Egypt. I think the commute there was probably more interesting – Alexandria really doesn’t get foreign tourists, but rather local tourists. The population wells from 5 million to 7 in the summer with all of the people who come up from Cairo and other parts of Egypt, and the constrasts were interesting. It was quite fascinating to watch families strolling the corniche at sunset – here comes one family with the ladies in niqab (the face veil that leaves a slit for the eyes), followed by a couple of beach bum guys in board shorts and nothing else.

Today we went to the World War II memorials at El Alamein. I’d never been there before, and was questioning how worthwhile it was (107 kilometers = 2 hours. The speed limit is 100. There’s something weird there…). The memorials and monuments, and even the cheese-on-a-stick museum were surprisingly well put together. The decisive battle at El Alamein was 53 years ago – in early July 1942, and we were wandering around in the hot sun trying to imagine what it must have been like inside the all-metal tanks in high summer. Good grief.

After a lunch memorable only for being unmemorable, we went to the new centerpiece of Alexandria: the Bibliotecha Alexandrina, the new Alexandria Library. Interesting – I picked up a stalker, which was weird in and of itself (in this case, an Egyptian who really wanted to practice his English, but after a while I spent more time trying to make sure he wasn’t around than I did looking at the exhibits).

At any rate. Our organized activities are done. The next two days are wrap up and run around (I haven’t really done any souvenir shopping yet…), and then we’re off in the wee hours on Tuesday. It’s hard to believe it’s almost over, but I’m not going to say that I’m not ready to leave. For one thing, the mosquitoes are eating me alive! And breakfast without bread … ahh, imagine the possibilities …

Tags: alexandria-egypt, al_ahram_newspaper, cairo, corniche, eating, el-alamein, veil, weekend