Adventures with Mr. Asshole

23rd-28th October - Days 25-30 - Cairo, Egypt

6 days melted into one as we returned to that city we now call home – Cairo. Our pockets breathed a sigh of relief as we took the bus from the airport to Midan Tahrir without having to ask our banks for permission first, and we hopped back to the Dahab Hostel and settled in for a few days of business, leisure and lazy wandering.

The business portion consisted of 2 parts: Getting the Sudanese visa, and then getting a ferry ticket across Lake Nasser into Sudan. This first part was complicated by several predictable factors – Sudanese bureaucracy, the French consulate, and our ever decreasing ability to wake up to alarms. We had gone into the Sudanese embassy and were instructed by a man who we would (with great affection) come to call Mr. Asshole that we had to bring 2 photos, a letter of recommendation from our embassy and 100$. M delightfully demonstrated the advantages of being Finnish as she swanned off to Zamalek, got her letter and had a coffee even before I had squirmed my way out of the metro in search of the consulate, which internet maps had told me was out east in a district I’d never been to. As I walked further down the small, dirty and empty streets, asking people who couldn’t give me answers, I became more and more doubtful that I would find the French consulate here. We needed to get the letters into the Sudanese embassy by 12, and it was now 11. The clock was ticking. I decided to abandon my map and ask everyone, getting pointed in vague and contradictory directions each time. Eventually one gentleman informed me that I was in the wrong part of town and bundled me into a taxi with strict instructions to the driver, and off we set across town. An hour and many kilometres of traffic jams later I emerged sweating, tired and cursing at the foot of the Finnish embassy building where M was sat, looking unfussed and refreshed. Trying the phone number several times again, I cursed the Republic even more vigorously. M’s suggestion we go up to the Finnish embassy again bore fruit, and we had an address and a phone number. It turns out that there are 2 El-Fadl streets in Cairo and that Mappy had given me not the large street in the centre of town, but the filthy alleyway out in the suburbs. The joys of travel.

There was a twist in the story yet as the consulate found itself completely unable to pick up the phone when I called it, and then refused to issue me a letter of recommendation on government orders. Mr. Asshole was not going to be happy about this.

And so it proved the next day as we handed in our applications, with Mr. Asshole assuring me that I would not get a visa without a letter of recommendation. I tried to smile and persuade him that he could give me one but he kept on repeating the same two slogans : “No letter, no visa”, and “I told you the rule”. Great. Thankfully M knows how France works and wasn’t overly fussed as we thought we could try again at the consulate in Aswan. Having made us stand around and wait for 3 hours, Mr. Asshole told us we could come back tomorrow to pay, and we began to see a hint of a smile. The day after, we got our passports back, laden with visas. Our names are misspelt on both of them but Mr. Asshole sorted us out well.

Our desperate last minute attempts to buy ferry tickets sank because it was too late but we’ll go back on Saturday as we were ordered to in order to try our luck again.

Leisure has taken many forms as well : lying around, drinking tea and beer, playing backgammon and wandering around the area with the various interesting characters we’ve met – Daniel and Megan, two Americans studying in Moscow; Derrick, a Dutch guy who introduced us to the wonderful game “Cow trade”, and Richard, an English guy who’s heading down to Cape Town and should, inch’allah, be on the boat with us on Monday. The less interesting characters, like the Swedish group who drink lots and say very little, we have tried to avoid. Many hours of backgammon, many gallons of tea and many hours of lazing later, we’ve hopped on a bus to Dahab on the Sinai coast for a couple of days before heading back to Cairo on Saturday and starting the long slog south. Daniel and Megan offered to keep our backpacks in their room so we’re free of them for a couple of days. Woohoo.

This entry is dedicated to M on her 26th birthday and on finding out her sky high thesis grade – I apologise to her that the first bar I took her to had already closed down and that we couldn’t find the second one but at least we had Thai food with Egyptian wine!