first impressions are going to have to wait

I don’t think I can make generalizations about what I see here. All I’ve got is my specific story, so I’ll stick to that.

I’ve kind been a shut in the last couple days; I’ve gone out for food once and once for a walk. I think it’s just exhaustion; most of the rest of my time has been spent on sleep. In the days leading up to transit I was averaging 4 hours of sleep a night, and I got something like 3 hours in 30 getting here. So I’ve been bone-weary and hurting. Feeling better now though, I got a real meal for the first time since Houston, and that helps.

You know, I said I wouldn’t make any generalizations, but here’s one: This city is gorgeous. Not in a pure clean way, but in a lovely organic way. And the sheer scale of it keeps taking me by surprise. There are lots of small spaces created by twisty alleys and the like, but then you take a turn onto a throughfare and there are panoramas like that first photo. There’s a lot of dirt on everything here; it never rains to wash buildings away, and nobody has though of pressure washing, thank god, so buildings here are covered in dust and dirt.

(Aside: The 5AM call to prayer just rang out.) Earlier today, I was upstairs getting some tea (which felt great on my sore throat) and over loudspeakers from a nearby masque, a dude was leading prayers. And in what sounded like the middle of a sentence, he would just break into song for a measure or two, and then go back to talking. Completely acapella and spontaneous. He wasn’t much of a singer, but there was something beautiful about it, anyway. I was told once, by one of my professors in college, that the words of the Koran were so beautiful that there were often on the spot converts on hearing them. Which leads me to believe that that’s what the singing was. I could be wrong, though.

Then I went for a walk, just to get around and see the neighborhood a little bit. The architecture here is an odd mishmash of time periods when the country was flush and rubble. Seriously, there’s a lot of rubble from buildings torn down or fallen down. And again, there’s the scale of the place; it’s something I wasn’t struck by in any of the other big cities I’ve been to, but here the whole city is telling you it’s a big place. Tons of history. Lots of people.

There are lots of little struggles that fill up the day of someone like me, traveling in a country where I don’t speak the language. Getting food, for example. I have to just kind of point and hope for the best. Tea is easy; coffee also, plenty of that here. My money is holding up pretty well, although that may change as I eat more meals in the coming days. I think tomorrow may be a coding day; that way I can not have to worry about money so much. Although today was a coding day of sorts; I managed to get OAuth working for twitter on my blog, so the updates go to twitter and facebook again. Go me.

the adventure of getting to the hostel

So, after the last plane landed, I got myself through customs with no hitches. The visa was a piece of cake, just pay the man, get your sticker, and move on. I looked like what I am, a tourist/backpacker, and customs doesn’t give a fuck about guys like me. This is probably wise on their part.

So I’m sort of wandering around, and a taxi driver approaches me, wants £80 to drive me into the city. I’m like, no way, there’s a bus that’ll get me there for way less. He tries to tell me there is no bus from the airport, yada yada, but I get on a shuttle and get to the airport bus terminal just fine. At this point I’m feeling quite good about myself and take some notes to the effect of “You’re not an idiot.” And then I waited an hour for a bus that I never saw, and shared a cab into the city with some other backpackers. I tried to get the cabbie to take me to an ATM, as my funds were low, but he didn’t understand. This is a recurring theme: English is useless here. Or nearly. So he dropped us off at the Cairo Museum, which was closed (probably for ramadan), and the other backpackers covered me. We wandered a bit in search of an ATM, no luck, so said our goodbyes and split off our separate ways.

Thus began one of the great trudges of my life, in search of my hostel. I walked one way, and then another, and then a third. Then I ran into some British people with a guidebook, who told me how to get to Ramses Square, which is very close to where I’m staying, and so I set off walking. Unfortunately, what they said would be a 20 minute walk took the better part of 2 hours. There’s nothing quite like the self doubt you get when walking alone with a heavy pack in a foreign city, with no map and only a vague idea of where you’re going. So, I finally get to the square, and I can’t for the life of me find the street I’m supposed to go down to get to the hostel.

So I call my mom, shout some (this is the loudest city in the world), mom gets on google to try and help. I’m trying to figure out where I am, exactly, because I’m not sure after all the walking and the self doubt. So I walk down one road for a little while, find a hotel with a sign in english, and she does directions from there to my hostel, and kinda directs me. I’m on the phone with her, and she’s talking me through getting there, when this guy comes up to me and asks me in english, “Can I help you?”

So I show him the address of the hostel, and he knows the way, and we start walking. I never for a moment doubted this man; I could tell he wasn’t a con man or tout. Just a man, doing something good. Along the way, he shows me a blob on his hand that at one time was a cross. “I’m christian,” he tells me. “Coptic?” I ask. “Yes,” he said. And then I get up to the hostel, and there was showering and sleeping, and then wandering in search of food.

Up next: first impressions of Cairo.

This is the view from my room.

airplanes

ok, 15 minutes to dash off my thoughts so far:

Heathrow is a fucking orwellian labyrinth, complete with lots of fences and bored gaurds and weirdness so that it’s right in the uncanny valley. The kind of shit that freaks you out a little after 18-24 hours of no sleep and flying. Seriously, I was turned the fuck around just figuring out which terminal I was supposed to get to. You had to go down a long hallway, don stairs, around several bends, onto a bus, up two floors, down another hallway, descend one floor, go through security again, and then you’re there. But the departures board there doesn’t show a gate until right before time to board. So you have to wait in this packed shopping mall area (high end stuff, sure, but do I really need a Luis Vuitton or a Rolex while in the middle of an airport?).

About that: Flying kinda sucks. It should be the miracle of flight, wow, soaring, but instead we’re packed like sardines inside a stuffy, hot tin can. This might have something to do with the broken back last year making sitting for 8+ hours pretty uncomfortable (bordering on painful). I almost lost my watch and flashlight on the flight between Houston and london too. Actually, first I lost the cloth I put in my laptop to keep keyboard marks off the screen, and then I liost my watch reaching for it, and then I lost the flashlight looking for the watch. And a packet of cookies. I spent 2/3rds of the flight watchless and flashlightless, a little nervous that they were gone for good. And My knees were aching, I had a sinus headache from sonome’s perfume, and my back was acting up for the first time in months and months. In other words, a pretty typical trans-atlantic flight. edit to add: I’m drafting this again on my last flight, and this one I got a row all to myself. Instant Karma.

What else? I’m smelly, sweaty, and very tired. edit: now just smelly and tired. This flight is much cooler, and I got a reasonable nap in. Now all I have to do is clear customs, hop a city bus to the main train station, and walk five minutes. Then I can rest. After I post this though.

update to the edits: took me four hours to get to my hostel, walking a lot, being lost, etc, etc. That’ll get written up later though. sleep now.

addendum to the list

So, after compiling the list the other day, I realized there were a few things I left off, and some details I left out. First of all, the towel. A Towel is very important. Normally, I would take a backpacker’s towel, which are made out of this microfiber super absorbent material, is smaller than a regular towel, and dries faster. For this trip, I’m using a shamwow, which is the same material as the more expensive backpacker’s towels, but cheaper and available everywhere.

The laptop: it kills me to say this, but packing light isn’t everything. I’m taking the big one.

Not pictured, but packed: A water filter, which was strongly recommended to me. We’ll see if I really need it.

And two more things, especially for travel anywhere with mosquitos: A sawyer extractor, and a bottle of 100% DEET. The extractor is for use on any kind of bug bite, sting, or even snake bite. The do wonders for itching bites, anyway. The DEET is to keep from getting bitten when I’m in an area with a lot of bugs. It works.

And this is what it all looks like: