We’re being bookworms with T again. Sitting on the train back from Alexandria to Cairo the trip seems to take forever so we’ve decided to be useful at least. Coming here on the same route the opposite way it took nearly four hours when it should have taken three. Now coming back we spent (and I quote T) “and hour and a half on a stretch between stations that should have taken eight minutes”. So I’m sure you get our drift. Inch’allah we’ll catch the last metro to our hostel in Cairo.
Sure enough though, reading should be a very appropriate activity while coming from Alexandria, the Mediterranean cradle of civilization and early appreciation for bibliography. We didn’t bother to visit the actual library as it is merely a newly built campus library (the university of Alexandria can be found behind it) with only some small bits left from the original that got burnt down in one of Caesar’s stunts I think it was – the more knowledgeable please correct me at free will. We visited the front door, however, on our quest to find a place to get online and were told the entrance is EP 10 and you must leave your bag outside. For more tourist info, get your own guidebook.
Our guidebook around Alexandria was called Ahmed, a friend of T’s and Rubén’s from the ever-notorious food serving establishment in Helsinki (that hardly needs more advertisement) where we have all worked (although me not at the same time with Ahmed so he was a new face to me). Ahmed moved back out to Alexandria from Finland a while ago so he was there to greet us at the train station upon our arrival from Cairo on Friday night. We had first taken a bus to Cairo from the Bahaariya Oasis the same morning and were happy to see a local face expecting that he might lead us to some hidden jewel of a hostel and take us around town for some nightly action – at least judging by Rubén’s comments on the train on the way there and the sneaky questions to Ahmed about if the dancing is good around here etc etc. What actually happened was that we followed Trotamundos’ (the Spanish Routard guidebook) advice on where to go sleep and Ahmed had to ask around on the way because he didn’t know any better than us. The hometown syndrome of not knowing where everything is, but just knowing your own way around. We found the place in the end but it only had place for two so we descended one floor down in the same building (here and in Cairo the hostels seem to be clustered onto different floors inside the same building) to another hostel which wasn’t smothered with cleanliness but served its purpose to us as it had toilets and showers and a view over the 20 km long corniche stretching out right below the window.
We showered and Ahmed took us around town to the extent that we simply yearned to get to bed, not because of the wild nightlife but because of the long rides on the microbuses along the corniche to get from one place to another. We took one microbus to visit a fort at one end of the stretch and walked around a bit, then took another to go all the way to the other end of the bay and round the bend to see the last king’s palace and gardens. The palace grounds are nowadays a hangout for the local youth to come and snog in the shadows of the trees and inside their cars as PDAs (public displays of affection) are not part of the culture here. I read on Trotamundos – and Ahmed confirmed the info – that you get the odd copper patrolling around in the garden and fining people for this pastime. Imagine a job as one of those coppers!! “Right you lovebirds there, I can see you – now cut the contact or you’ll get a fat ticket.” Now that’s one place where corruption should not only let flourish but is needed to do so. One last microbus ride back to our hostel and we finally got to bed at 3.30am.
One half of the 20 km-long corniche, as viewed from our hostel window.
How to (not) look like a local in Alexandria.
Natalie and Rubén, being on speed or whatever they feed the babies in Spain, got up around 8.30am and went shopping. Me and T were planning to get up too, I was supposed to write some G (my neverending thesis) and wanted to see the catacombs before starting on the writing. Hmmm, yeah didn’t quite happen. We got up at 11am and pretty much went to discuss with the hostel keeper about changing rooms to a double straight away as Natalie and Rubén were going to leave to Cairo the same night but we were planning to stay in Alexandria for a second night so I could use the plug at the hostel for my G purposes. We successfully changed rooms to a smaller one and soon after that the Spaniards came back to greet us quickly in the form of picking up their bags from the hostel before getting their train. All we had to do now was to find an internet café to google up the contact details of the hostel we had stayed at in Cairo earlier and which we had booked for the night as part of our earlier made plan to return to Cairo tonight, so as to avoid double-booking in two different cities.
The search for the internet café started well as we entered a Brazilian style coffee shop to get me the first (and hopefully not last) decent coffee of the trip. I was surrounded by the lovely fumes of my take-away latte for a good while I tell ya. As we’re searching, we decide to buy one of these payphone cards so that we can call both the hostel in Cairo and Ahmed cheaper. We keep searching and we see at least three places with free WiFi inside but no actual old school net cafés. After walking through a couple of barrios we come to the faculty of medicine of some university and in my style I suggest we should just ask instead of wandering endlessly. I mean, these people are students, they’ll speak English and will know their way around town too.
So I approach a lady in a pink veil. She speaks English but I’m not sure she understands what I’m saying. She’s very helpful though, and asks a man who is sitting under a huge sheet pronouncing that a “conference on anesthesia and first aid” is taking place at the faculty. They point us inside of the faculty buildings and tell us to “just ask anyone” which we take to be a bit peculiar but follow orders all the same. Once inside, we are approached by a young man who looks to be a janitor of some sort. We explain to him that we have been pointed inside and that we are looking for an internet café – so no loss of information in our message should have happened during our entry. The man asks us to follow him and takes us up the stairs onto what looks like one of the departments of the faculty with offices and secretaries. He talks to some older ladies inside one of the offices and we try to say a word in between just very cordially explaining why we’re here, but sounding all the more puzzled as to why in the world would there be an internet café inside the faculty office.
It seems no one else is noticing this tiny little discrepancy, however, and a woman in a grey veil takes action to lead us along the corridor further inside the faculty. She soon disappears into an office through a shiny wooden door which is slightly open and has a big name plate on the door: “Prof. Dr. Arab name. Faculty of Medicine. Dean”. We wait outside. T sits onto one of the sinking black sofas which are forming some sort of a waiting lounge in front of the office. I start blabbering nervously about that we shouldn’t sit down unless we’re invited to do so as I haven’t seen anyone do that over here. Or never mind that I wouldn’t do it anyway in a business context. T looks like he doesn’t care and also points this out. I sit down too. I soon get up again. The woman in the grey veil finally comes out and informs us that the dean of the faculty will be available for us shortly and that we should sit and wait. She asks if we want coffee or tea. We look at each other with T and start trying to explain the situation again from the beginning. “We were just looking for an internet café.” She’s nodding away calmly but starts to look like she doesn’t really understand.”IN-TER-NET café?” we try again. She asks again if we want coffee or tea. We deny cordially. We finally realize we’re really not getting through to her. Shit shit shit. She confirms again that we have a meeting with the dean in just a little while and asks if everything’s ok with us or do we need anything else. We give up and smile and nod as sign of everything being ok, and she smiles back and walks away.
What has just happened? We have asked a stranger on the street for directions to the nearest internet café. Less than 20 minutes later we have a meeting with the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alexandria. Someone tell me, how is this even possible… We have a quick panic discussion session while sitting on the sofa. T suggests we should just bail out with the excuse of pretending to very busy and needing to catch a train. Ha ha. I can’t bring myself to just run out of the situation like that. I suggest we go inside and explain to the dean what has happened. Just as bad of an idea. Besides, he doesn’t sound like the nicest man from what we can hear through the open door. Slightly busy and uptight maybe. Probably not going to take our incident with humour. Plan C includes that we get up and try ask anyone else if they speak English. We wander to the door of an office that is next to the one where the woman in the grey veil is working. We start asking and explaining the same story all over again and add some nervous laughter about not meaning to cause any hassle and how we were just pointed inside the building so we just thought to come and try, but that under no circumstance do we need to meet the dean of the faculty. A man asks if we want coffee or tea. For crying out loud, do these people not understand the word ‘internet café’???? This IS a university, isn’t it? I keep it in and we try once more. One of the younger looking secretaries understands and smiles half-heartedly. The woman in the grey veil has come out of her office next door to see what the corridor huddle is about. Thankfully the younger woman explains something to the others in Arabic and takes us downstairs, “cyber café” she says and nods as we leave. I bend over backwards trying to tell her that she should explain to the others that this was a pure mistake and that we didn’t mean to bother anyone. I probably sound like a lunatic, but she doesn’t seem to mind either way. Back downstairs, she tells us that the cyber café is closed. We thank her and a mutual exchange of smiles takes place. We walk out the door and quickly pace up back to the direction we came from. Dear me. Cyber café. Would that have made all the difference? I can’t believe that either. Another close call for M & T on their long list of incredible incidents.
The course of the day changed there and then. By the time we got out of the university and walked back to the corniche to try yet again to find an internet café, the time has passed well onto the afternoon. This is when we come to the library and try there as our last attempt but think it’s not worth going inside and paying the fee and dropping our bags off to a separate cloakroom not knowing what we’ll get this time. Besides, we’ve seen enough of the one in Helsinki (the Helsinki University information center is called Alexandria), right? It’s 2.30pm by this point. We’ve probably lost the chance to cancel the reservation in Cairo by now anyway and I’ve wasted half of the day away from G writing already and haven’t even seen the catacombs yet. We text Rubén to announce that they should not try and cancel our share of the hostel in Cairo when they get there, because we will be coming there tonight as well. Our reasoning is clear. After all, the hostel in Cairo is better quality and we’re going to have to pay for them both at this point so we might as well also get the most out of what we’re paying for. Also this way we can sort out some paperwork needed for the Sudanese visa still before going to Oman so we don’t waste too much time with all of that after getting back. And I just need a fresh start for the G writing from the next morning.
Open hood and trunk day on the corniche. Free parking.
The rest of the day goes past quickly as we sit down for full-on lunch at an Italian place on the corniche. More of the better end, the place still provides TV screens to watch Zambia-Egypt World Cup Qualifiers while we work through both the appetizers and main course, both at very reasonable prices too. EP 150 for two persons’ guava juices, bottled water, good size appetizers, pasta and fish for the main courses and espresso and tea to digest it all. Egypt won 1-0 as well – people kept blocking my view to the screen towards the end. Who would have thought from a posh place, but once again football just touches the masses.
We used the payphone card to call Ahmed and we were supposed to meet him later but we ran out of time before he made it into town, so we spent the early evening riding the trams (they have some here!) and doing some shopping for mandatory supplies the likes of toilet paper and wet wipes. We also tried to find the catacombs but we learned they’d shut at 4.30pm when we go to ask at the tourist info office at 5.30pm. There went that as well. We called Ahmed again from the train station to say bye before getting on the train. Maybe we’ll be back to Alexandria, or Al-Iskanderia as it’s known in Arabic, after we return from Oman. Now I know who the kebab dish is named after as well – Alexander sure must have been Great to have had a kebab named after him as well.
All aboard! Women have their own section here too.
"Special price for you my friend!" M looks after the shop while the owner helps us to find the right platform, car and seats on the train. No baksheesh asked either.
The train left from Alexandria at 9.00pm and it is now 1.25am and we’re still rattling on. I think we’ve missed the last metro. Rubén and Natalie are waiting for us in the Hard Rock Café in Cairo. I don’t even dare to think where we would end up next if we start asking for directions to get there. “HARD ROCK?” Taxi for us I thinks – straight to the hostel, please.
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