Alexandria

After a couple of weekends bumming around in Cairo this weekend a group of friends and I decided that it was finally time to visit Egypt's second city: Alexandria. With that in mind we made plans to catch an 8 o'clock train out of Cairo station Friday morning, so we could spend a full day touring the city. Unfortunately, this plan didn't account for Thursday night, which just happened to be the first weekend night after St. Patrick's Day. Of course Americans cannot allow Ireland's holiday to go by unnoticed, and the requisite plans for a felucca ride were made. A felucca, or at least a party felucca, is a long, low boat with excessive lighting and bad speaker systems that can be rented out for under 10 dollars an hour. When this is combined with forty to fifty foreign students and whatever alcohol they bring you get a classic Nile party. This one was particularly anticipated, perhaps because some entrepreneuring soul had promised to acquire Guinness and Jameson, two items which are sorely missed in Cairo. Suffice it to say that it was a successful party, but that meant we didn't get back to the dorms until two or three in the morning, four hours before our planned rendezvous.

Somehow my mind managed to wake up just before seven. I briefly contemplated checking to see if anyone else was actually going to go through with the plan, but I decided that the thought was absurd. Twenty minutes later I was proven wrong when I woke up to a phone call informing me that I had five minutes to get up, pack, and make my way downstairs to leave. I made it in under 10 minutes, and by a minor miracle 4 out of the original 6 travelers caught the 9 o'clock train, an hour late but far ahead of my expectations.

We got into Alexandria about 11, and quickly made our way to the Corniche for a view of the Mediterranean, which really is a beautiful sea. Alexandria is a cleaner, smaller and cooler version of Cairo, which makes a trip there a very pleasant respite from the former. Unfortunately Alexandria resembles Cairo in that it often can only echo a more glorious past which is either destroyed or surrounded by endless concrete high-rises. In Alexandria's case there are two epochs in particular that would be wonderful to see first hand: the ancient city with its lighthouse and library, and the early 20-century city which had close cultural ties to the European Mediterranean, before the Suez Canal crisis forced many foreigners to leave the city.

Secure in the knowledge that most of us would revisit the city, our group took our time to visit major sites. In fact the only "must see" we saw was the Fort of Qaitbay, a smallish but impressive fortress that guards the entrance to Alexandria's bay. Afterwards we found a seafood restaurant with a great view and enjoyed fresh fish and mezze for a surprisingly low price. Then it was time to meet the final two travelers, who took a later train after sleeping in a little later. One of these was Ahmed, an Egyptian friend whose parents own an apartment in Alexandria, which was generously offered to us for the night. After lunch we headed there to drop off our stuff and plan our next move. That turned out to be nap time, which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with college students' sleeping habits. Then, to complete the stereotype of living lazily, we didn't move much at all until dinner, which was another beautiful affair at a local restaurant. We finished the day by taking a long walk on the corniche to soothe our over-full bellies and enjoy a sheesha and tea session on the coast. So, while many sites went unvisited, there were two good walks and two better meals, which makes the day a successful one by my standards.

The only real drawback to the weekend was the performance of Catholic Big East schools in the NCAA Tournament. In a spirit of optimism I had predicted that Notre Dame would make the Sweet 16, instead they couldn't make it past Old Dominion. My bracket was even more devastated when Georgetown, who I put in the Final Four, somehow fell to Ohio. To complete the trio Marquette lost to Washington, but I could deal with that, I had them losing to New Mexico in the next game anyway.

Spring Break Itinerary

Today John, Matt and I booked most of our hostels for spring break, so our plans are now more or less set. They are ambitious, bordering on crazy, but since most of us didn't foresee returning to the southern Balkans in the neat future we wanted to fit in as much as possible. Anyway, here's the itenerary, with a picture of each destination, so you can see how many of the locations you can guess.

March 26-27: Athens, Greece- Since we fly in on the 26th, this is actually a day and a half. Trying to see the birthplace of democracy over a day and a half may be our most criminal act, but unfortunately its not our only one. We finish up by taking the overnight train to...

March 28: Thessaloniki, Greece- Greece's second largest city has some good Byzantine sites, and is situated in is supposed to be good, mountainious country. In addition to the 28th, we might also spend the next morning here, depending on whether we take the morning or afternoon train to...

March 29-March 30: Skopje, Macedonia- Probably our most random destination, which may or may not have been added purely for the opportunity to get another passport stamp. But actually there are some good things to see here, and it will be nice to escape the bigger cities for a while. Next, on the night of the 30th we will take a night bus to...

March 31: Sofia, Bulgaria- Like most of the cities in the region, Sofia is supposed to have some wonderful scenery. But the real reason to come is to enjoy the highly reputed Hostel Mostel, where $15 dollars a night will buy you a triple room, free breakfast, and a beer in the evening. After spending a day here we will spend the morning of April Fool's Day en route to...

April 1-2: Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria- OK, so this is actually the most random of our destinations. But this little place actually has quite a bit going for it, in addition to having another Hostel Mostel it used to be the capital of the famous Second Bulgarian Empire. (Is that an "ah!" of recognition that I hear?) And according to Wikipedia it is often referred to, rather grandly, as "city of the tsars." I'm not sure what the Russians would say about that. Then, we will take a night train to...

April 3-6: Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul, Turkey- Our little jaunt will end with a bang as we spend 3 1/2 days in this ancient city bridging two continents. There's too much to write about, just know that its supposed to be an amazing place. And finally we'll spend a decent (though still probably insufficient) amount of time somewhere.

By the way, alf mabrouk (a thousand congratulations) to anyone who managed to guess even half the cities. You did better than I could have.

How much would you pay for one of these handsome fellows?

Last weekend some friends and I made it out to the Birqash Market, to briefly exhange the bustle of car traffic with the far more exciting bustle of camel traffic. There wasn't a lot of active bartering, and most of the noble creatures were standing or lying around, with one leg tied to prevent escape. Not that this actually prevented them from trying, and we saw a couple make breaks for freedom before being thoroughly whacked back into obedience by stick-wielding Bedouin. Incidentally, the adjective "noble" doesn't really fit the camel, who seem to have a natural, goofy grin that inspires approximately the same feelings as the blue-footed booby, rather than, say, a bald eagle. So of course we couldn't leave the place without making a good friend, and Matt found just the camel to be our buddy. Jim, our possibly now deceased friend, was probably the scrawniest, ugliest camel of the entire lot. Not only that, he was left all alone, just standing in the middle of a dusty yard without a single companion, camel or man. So when five guys went over and started to devote all their attentions to him, it made his day, or maybe even his life. It also attracted quite a few stares from the locals, who probably found the sight of all the tourists in the market oggling one camel quite funny. Meanwhile we petted Jim until he purred, or rather made a unique sound that fell somewhere between an unmuffled engine starting and Johnny Cash singing Desperado. I just hope that it was actually a sign that he was enjoying the attention, because he might have been groaning in despair.

We were disappointed in one respect: our plans to purchase a camel fell through when found out that camels actually go for quite a bit. The cheapest probably go for about $250, and those probably couldn't make the trip to Zamalek. Now, the more practically-minded readers might be wondering what we could possibly do with a camel. I had similar feelings at first, but further thought convinced me otherwise. For one thing, one camel would feed all of us for the rest of the semester, although we might have to rent about twenty refigerators to hold the meat. But before we sent our purchase to the butcher we could have some rollicking good times making a hit film "Dude, where's my camel," or earn our money back by offering tourists a ride around Zamalek on our camel chariot. Think of a horse-drawn carriage, only better.

Getting back from the camel market turned out to be an adventure in itself. The easiest and most common method for tourists to get to Birqash is to hire a taxi for a few hours, to take you there and back. However, this might cost a person a hundred pounds or more, so obviously we had to find a cheaper alternative. Reaching the market wasn't too difficult, even though we couldn't find the 1 pound microbus we found a van that took us for 5 pounds a piece. However, leaving was a different matter. The guidebook said that a minibus should be waiting at the market, and as soon as enough passengers came on board it could take us to Cairo for one pound. But wherever we looked we couldn't find a bus, or at least one with a driver. The only possibility was a bus in the parking lot that looked fairly abandoned, but when we asked the locals about a Cairo bus they only pointed back towards the entrance. Finally we gave up on the bus and hitchhiked in the back of a pickup. Of course, as soon as we pulled out the seemingly abandoned bus magically appeared behind us, with a full load of passengers. But now it was too late for that, so we had to trust that our driver would fulfill his promise to drop us off at a town where we could catch a different bus. Luckily that did work out, and one (very) full minibus ride we were back in Cairo, safely on familiar ground. But there was one more surprise: when the minibus driver saw a police checkpoint he promptly turned around and took an alternative route around, which looked like it was built for four-wheelers and not old buses.

And now, for a question: How many gods and goddesses are portayed in the Judgement Scene of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead?