Blog Like an Egyptian

The temperature hit something like 105 degrees today, which made me extremely thankful that my new car has air conditioning.  Not sure what I would have done if I was driving my old car around after work tonight.

Anyway, the heat got me thinking back to Egypt.  A few random memories tonight.

-We spent two nights on a felucca – an Egyptian sailboat with enough room for about 10 people to sleep – on the Nile River.  (I’ll blog about this in-depth later on.)  On the second night, the boat’s crew took the cover off the boat so we could stargaze, and I don’t recall ever seeing anything like it.  There were no homes, cars or Wal-Marts to light up the night sky.  There were stars as far as the eye could see in every which direction.

I made out one of the dippers for the first time in my life.  I saw a shooting star for maybe the second time in my life.  That’s the kind of thing I’m never going to forget.  Nor am I likely to see anything that clearly in Vancouver or Portland.  I was in total awe of how clear, close, clustered, bright and beautiful the stars were.  There were no trees to obscure the view (which happens when camping).  Just stars, everywhere you looked.

-We spent another pair of nights on a night train.  It wasn’t anything like “The Darjeeling Limited,” much to my surprise!  The cabin was very nice, with two seats (which folded down into bunk beds), a sink and a coat rack.  My only complaint was the bed!  If I straightened my body out, my head touched one wall, and my feet touched the other.  So that wasn’t really comfortable.  Then, there were bumps in the night, waking me up and nearly throwing me off the bed.

Other than the bed, the train ride was seriously cool.  It was definitely different than anything I’ve ever done before.  But you could say that about a lot of things on the trip.

-I really miss walking around Cairo.  It would be 9:30 or 10 p.m., and we’d be done with dinner, on the way back to our hotel.  We would walk along 26th of July St., which is apparently one of Cairo’s biggest and busiest streets.  And there would be stores along each side of the street, selling clothes, toys and all kinds of stuff.

Then there were street vendors, selling books, magazines, DVDs, cassettes and more.  And in the middle of it, you’re surrounded by families and couples walking every which way.  And of course, cars and cabs are competing for the same lanes in the street.

But you know what I loved about it?  No one was rushing to get you out of the way.  No one pushed us or made us feel unwelcome as we just kind of gawked at the scene.  Merchants would even randomly say, “Welcome to Egypt!” as we walked along.

Just being in that mob, surrounded by all that energy, was amazing.  In Vancouver, there’s never anything like that.  Go to Vancouver’s busiest street, and it’s packed with cars, but there are no people walking along the sidewalks.  If you’d like, you could pretty much have the sidewalk all to yourself.  Convenient, sure.  But where’s the fun in that?