Giza pyramids

Today Scott, Mike, and I visited the pyramids at Giza with our very own personal Egyptologist Valentina. Scott & Mike are professors (political science and sociology) at AUC here as Fulbright scholars. Valentina is completing her PhD in Egyptology from a university in Bologna, Italy and is spending October studying at the French Institute in Cairo before leaving for an archeological dig down south. The guy above was one of the legions of locals hawking useless trinkets to western tourists visiting the site. He has some connection to Italy, however, because when he found out Valentina was from Bologna he became very excited, chatted energetically with her in Italian for several minutes (so I have no idea what was said) but then he insisted that I take the headdress at no charge and also insisted on having this picture taken with me.

The pictures that follow are somewhat out of order, but they are all on the same site. There are three large pyramids here, several really small pyramids, the Sphinx, and the solar boat museum, among other things. We took a taxi from Maadi to Giza (about a 25 minute ride and a cost of about $9), arrived at about 12 noon, and it was really, really hot, a searing Lawrence of Arabia desert hot. But we made the most of it and it is a fascinating site. It is completely overrun by tourists, and the army of cheap trinket vendors are distracting, but in spite of that it is still quite an amazing place to visit. And with Valentina along we were able to learn a lot interesting things about the history and archeology of the place.

Below is inside the solar boat museum. This was one of several boats found buried near the pyramids. They were found very recently, in the 1950s I think. It was in a hole covered with huge limestone slabs, which I found amazing, because the work it would take to load just those limestones covers (you can still see them in the museum) is unimaginable without modern equipment. The boat is made of cedar wood and is held together only with rope; no nails, glue, etc. It was not stored in one piece but cut up to fit in the hole, so the team that found it spent some time putting it all back together, using only the original wood and modern rope.

The boat was important to the ancient Egyptians because they believed that the sun god (Ra, I think) sailed in a boat across the sky every day, carrying the sun, and then fought "bad guys" at night in order to bring the sun back the next day. The Pharaoh, since he was considered a deity too, would need a boat in the afterlife to go join Ra. After he died, Pharaoh's coffin was probably floated up the Nile channel to his tomb in a boat like this one, but whether or not it was THIS boat in the picture is not known. I don't know how the thing would float because I cannot see how they could seal it up, but evidently there was a way.

Here are pictures of two smaller pyramids just beside one of the big pyramids. They were constructed for the close relatives of the Pharaoh, and one was left empty to house the soul of the Pharaoh.

Two pictures of Scott, Mike and Valentina by the middle pyramid:

Here is a brief video of us between the middle and third pyramids:

The Sphinx, with Cairo in the distance. When you are standing there, you can see the Pizza Hut and KFC signs across the street.

It occurred to me that Napoleon was here (Mike said the story is that the French soldiers used the Sphinx as target practice). So I mentioned walking in the same footsteps as Napoleon, and one of the locals mentioned that he saw Obama here (I guess when he gave his address in Cairo) and we also know that Winston Churchill was here, and a lot of other famous people through the years.

Below are pictures of us by the pyramids. I'm wearing the gator hat I don't really like, but it is my spare hat. I gave the Jelly Belly hat I had on earlier to the trinket seller in the first picture because he gave me the headdress. I wish I had given him the gator hat...

Me and Scott and Mike:

See? I like the Jelly Belly hat a lot better. This was also earlier in the day so we were not so hot, sweaty and tired:

Here I am trying to get a view of the desert. You really can't see how it is in the pictures. It really is Lawrence of Arabia, just a vast expanse of desert as far as you can see.

Here is a hole where they pulled one of the boats out.

Miscellaneous pictures at the site:

And finally, pictures of the golf course at the Mena House. We played this course a few weeks ago:

Here are some pictures I just never seemed to get around to putting up.

Below is a group of kids I met at Al-Azhar park near the Citadel. The park is a beautiful large green space, which is very unusual in Cairo. The place was very crowded and they were actually turning people away, but they let us in entirely because we were Westerners. And while I hate to feel like the crass colonialist, the real reason I wanted in the park was it is the only public toilet around for miles, and man when you gotta go you gotta go!

Anyway, the teens there were terrific. And that seems to be true all over Cairo. They are fascinated with me because I am from America and can speak English. So there were pestering me non-stop by coming up to me and saying "How are you?" "What's your name?" "Good afternoon." All obviously in page 1 of their learn English book. But they are so sweet and genuine in their warmth toward me, and they truly mean it when they say "Welcome to Egypt." I had fun with a group of them by taking pictures on my digital camera and then showing them the pictures, which they thought was fantastic. Not that they don't have those cameras here, but most of them cannot afford them. After a while, however, I had a large group of teens around me, about 30 or 40 I would say, and the pressing crowd was making me uncomfortable. So I started to say "emshee," which is the Arabic word for Go Away! but I was afraid that was too negative. They weren't being hostile, just crowding me too much. So the only thing I could think of to say was "helas," which means finished, and I was afraid that might be a little too negative too. But not knowing what else to say, I held my hands up in the air and kind of made a finished! sign and shouted "Helas!" And they cheered me to the stars! Because I was speaking Arabic, and used just the right word. Then with a few more "Welcome to Egypts" and some "ma salaamas" (go in peace) they quietly retired and left me alone.

While walking in Islamic Cairo with Valentina we were invited into a mosque. The guys at this mosque were especially nice and welcoming, and they didn't ask Valentina to wear this awful green overcoat to cover her entire body like some of them do, but let her in with just a head scarf. The man there couldn't speak any English, but managed to show us around. It wasn't much, really, but there was a tower on the top that he took us up in so it offered some neat views of the city from up high.

From the tower you could also look down onto the roof of an apartment building. Which is strange, because in the West we would classify this as high end property: near downtown, in the historic district and close to popular tourist areas. But in Cairo I think some of these apartments have been in families for years, and they continue to live there.

Here is a video of me and Scott taken by the El Hussain mosque in Islamic Cairo. We walked from here down to the old city gate, which was built around 1000 AD.

We left there and took a cab to Zamalek where we had a few drinks at the Marriott Hotel. This is a neat place, I think it used to be a palace for one of the Egyptian rulers in late 1800s or early 1900s. We walked back over the Nile to catch the subway, and here is a video of us on the Nile bridge.

October 6, 2009 The Khan and Cairo Tower part 2

October 6 is a holiday in Egypt similiar to our Veteran's day. It commemorates Egypt's victory over Israeli forces on that day in 1973 in what is called (among other names for it) the Yom Kippur war. Actually, the days following that didn't go so well for the Egyptian forces, but the events of October 6 did result in Egypt regaining possession of the Sinai peninsula and gave Egypt some bargaining power that resulted in the Camp David peace treaty.

Since I had this day off from the university, I headed downtown with my excellent tour guide Valentina:

Valentina is getting a PhD in Egyptology (of all things) and is only in Cairo for a few weeks before going to an archealogical dig in Fayoum, Egypt and then back to Italy. So she knows an awful lot about ancient Egypt and has taught me a lot about the historical sites here.

Our first stop was the Khan el khalili market in Islamic Cairo. I think this used to be an important market for the residents of Cairo, but now it is mostly a tourist trap, but still very interesting. It is a maze of alleys where there are shops selling everything from t-shirts to spices to silver and gold jewelry to trinkets of Cleopatra and the pyramids. Walking around it is really like being in an old movie, because as a westerner everyone is constantly pestering you to buy a watch, look at this fabric, come into my shop, etc. One of my favorite alleys is full of spices so it smells terrific to walk through. Here are some pictures:

After walking through the Khan, we took the Metro to Mar Girgis (St. George) which is the Coptic area of Cairo, and toured the Coptic Museum. One of the most interesting things here is a papyrus of the Gospel of Thomas (one of the gnostic gospels) dating from the 3rd century. So it is one of the oldest examples of Greek Christian manuscripts that we have.

Outside the museum is an old wall that was built by the Romans. Here is a picture of me in front of it:

After the Coptic museum, we took the metro back to downtown and then took a cab to the Cairo Tower in Zamalek. Here are some pictures I took from the tower. This is the second time I have been up in the tower, but this time was later in the day and it was neat to see the sun set and the city lights come on from the tower.

In the picture below you can see the Cairo Opera House:

We walked back from Zamalek across the Nile to downtown via the Lions bridge. That isn't the official name of the bridge, but I call it that because of the lion statues at the entrance, and because it reminds me of the bridge in St. Augustine. Here are some pictures of me by the statues at the entrance to the bridge, on the downtown side of the Nile:

A few days earlier I was wandering downtown just exploring, and I came across this koshary place near Talaat Harb square. This is the place where Anthony Bourdain ate in Cairo on his TV show "No Reservations." (I know because I double-checked the copy of the TV show I have on ITunes.) I haven't eaten here yet, but I will soon. Koshary is a staple in Cairo because it is cheap and filling. It is rice, corn, pasta and beans with a little tomato sauce. I have learned to love it, although I get sick of it after a few days in a row. There is a place on campus that serves koshary, so I have it about 3 days a week. For 10 Egyptian pounds I get a huge bowl of koshary and a bottle of water, so that is lunch for under $2, which is not a bad deal. The 10 pound price is probably high by Egyptian standards, I suspect koshary goes for about 2 or 3 pounds in Cairo.

Golf at the Mena House, Darshur

Here are some pictures of golf at The Mena House. This is a golf course right by the pyramids, across from the Mena house hotel which was once the bastion of British colonialism in Cairo. I think Winston Churchill stayed here. We (Scott and I) played golf here the last two Fridays.

Scott took this picture. Note the near perfect finish! My arms are shaped like a pyramid.

Some random pictures of the pyramids by the course:

Here I am by the 18th green.

In addition to being adjacent to the Giza pyramids, the golf course has at least 3 mosques right around it. This isn't unusual, there are mosques everywhere in Cairo and I have been awakened by the morning call to prayer from the mosque in my neighborhood. Since we played on Friday, the "church" day for Muslims, we were on the course when the mosques started broadcasting the call to prayer. So it was a true Egypt experience, listening to the prayers with the Giza pyramid in the background. Of course, I felt a bit the crass colonialist playing golf at the same time, but I enjoyed the experience. Here is a brief video I took at this time:

Golf plus caddy plus tip cost me 200 Egyptian pounds, which is about $36. The taxi ride there and back was 100 pounds (about $18).

After the golf game, we ate at the Mena house restaurant across the street, which was good but expensive (you pay Western prices in there!)

Here is a video of the cab ride back to Maadi from Giza. Nothing real exciting, but it does give you an idea of the kind of neighborhood I live in:

Later that weekend, I took a trip down to Darshur, which is where one of the first pyramids was built. It is a far cry from the pyramid scene in Giza (just by Cairo). This is about 50 km south, and is out in the middle of the desert. Very few tourists are here. You really are just out in the middle of a desert alone with the pyramids (except for a few police officers who want to take a picture for you and then ask for 10 pounds).

Here is a picture of the true pyramid at Darshur, which I think is the first true pyramid completed. I went into the tomb of this one, and that was quite an experience. It was 130 steps down about a 30 degree incline through a narrow passageway. You cannot help but feel a little bit "Indiana Jones," but also a bit claustrophobic. A famous Italian archeologist studied this pyramid, and he inscribed his name on the wall in the tomb, sort of like "Kilroy was here" in the tomb of the pyramid.

The other pyramid here is the "bent" pyramid, which starts at one angle and then about halfway up turns in. It made me wonder about the poor engineer who had to explain to the Pharaoh that the angle wasn't quite right, and they were going to have to make a slight revision...

I also stopped by Memphis, which was (I think) the original capital of ancient Egypt. There isn't much to see here really, except for this statue of Ramasees.

Between Darshur and the famous pyramids at Giza is the step pyramid in Saqqara. I think this was the first attempt at building a pyramid. This was the most interesting site to me because it isn't just a pyramid. It seemed to be part of a larger plan with temples and arenas built around it.
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I’m sitting in my apartment just after embarrassing moment #2 in Egypt. I’ve had two rather embarrassing moments since I’ve moved to Egypt. In reverse chronological order, they are:

Embarrassing moment #2. Locked out of my apartment.

The campus is about 20 miles away, and driving in Cairo is not for the faint hearted westerner. So I ride a bus to campus and back. As I’m on the bus home today, I realize that I left the keys to my apartment in the office. I made a few phone calls, but no one answered, so my choice is to (a) take a bus back to campus at 7PM (a 1-hour ride) to get the keys and then bus home again at 9PM (another 1-hour ride) or (b) see if I can get the apartment folks to let me in. I decide for option (b), get off the bus and walk to my apartment. Fortunately, the cleaning guy is outside, and he speaks 10% English. So I manage to communicate to him what my problem is. He makes a phone call, and after some frantic words in Arabic, he tells me to wait 10 minutes and someone will come to help me. I ask him how much this will cost me and he says 20 pounds (that is about $4). So I say OK.

About 20 minutes later someone shows up. I expected the apartment manager with a spare set of keys, what I got what a carpenter with a hammer and a wedge. He follows me up to my 3^rd floor apartment and tries to open the door by driving the wedge in the space between the door and the lock, like you might open a door with a credit card in the US. Now, I have no idea how to say “Sorry, I locked the deadbolt this morning” in Arabic, so I just have to wait until he can figure that out for himself. He does. He says to me in English “5 minutes” and then goes downstairs and comes back in 10 minutes with more hammers. Again, I expected some type of locksmith operation, but his approach now is to hammer away until he knocks the entire lock out of the door. So I’m looking at my apartment door with a big hole in it where the lock used to be, and he then fiddles with a screwdriver until he gets the door open.

At this point, I’m glad to be inside, but I’m wondering how much the university housing office is going to dock my pay for ruining a door and a lock. However, Ahmed

produces a spare lock and key that he puts into my door and everything is good as new. Well, almost—a lot of scratches and chipped paint, but hey! I’m inside.

So now, Mohammed (the cleaning man) comes back up, and tells me in English that the price for a new lock is 50 pounds (about $9). So I pay the 50 pounds to Ahmed. Then, thinking I’m being a bit savvy, I ask what Ahmed’s taxi ride to get here cost him. Mohammed says 50 pounds, but Ahmed quickly corrects him, and after some words in Arabic between them, Mohammed tells me in English that Ahmed needs 70 pounds for his taxi (I expect it really cost about 20). So of course, I may as well be wearing a shirt that says in Arabic “I’m new, I’m an American, I’m an ATM”—but I give Ahmed the 70 pounds (about $14). Then just for good measure, I give Ahmed and Mohammed each a 10 pound tip (so that’s another $2 each) because who knows when I may lock myself out again.

Well, I’m inside, at least. And now I know to leave a spare key in my computer bag. I’m reminded of stanza from Don Henley:

Well we barely made the airport for the last plane out

As we taxied down the runway, I could hear the people shout

They said don’t come back here Yankee --

But if I ever do

I’ll bring more money

Embarrassing moment #1. Wrong bus stop.

So, as I said, I bus to campus and back. The first day I did this it was easy. I got on the bus at Victoria Square, just down from my apartment, the bus drove to campus, and then the bus in the afternoon brought me right back to Victoria square. Piece of cake.

So I get on the bus the next day and ride home. I figured when it stopped I’d get off right by my apartment. This ride, however, suddenly has frequent stops. It is my 3^rd day here, so nothing looks familiar to me. Finally, we get to the last stop, everyone gets off, and I have no %!@#@!% idea where I am. I step off this bus, look around, and then (somewhat pitifully) say to the driver “eye-na?” which is what I learned as “Where is?” in Arabic (but it turns out they don’t use that phrase in Cairo), and I try to communicate to him that I’m lost. He looks at me, and I say “Victoria Square?” and after some gesturing he gets the point and says “I take you.”

So I get back on the bus, sit down, and the driver starts the bus up. Then the bus supervisor gets back on the bus. Now, I don’t understand Arabic yet, but I can tell what he says to the driver: “What the hell are you doing?” in Arabic. After a brief flurry in Arabic between them, the bus supervisor turns to me and says, “You need to go to Victoria Square?” and I say “Yes.” He says, “but we already passed Victoria Square” and would have added “you nitwit” if he knew how to say that in English. So I tell him, “I’m new, it’s my second day, I just missed it, I’m lost.” He then says to me “OK. But you can take that taxi right there; don’t pay him any more than 3 pounds.” I say, OK, but all I have with me are 100 pound notes (taxis in Maadi will NOT make change).

Well, I guess the only thing more galling to the bus supervisor than driving me back to Victoria Square was for a Maadi taxi to make a 97 pound tip for taking me back to Victoria Square, because then he starts giving me directions on how to walk there. A left, then a right, then straight, then 2 lefts, then a u-turn past the camel,…geez. My eyes start to glaze over, but I decide that if I head out and wander through Maadi long enough I’ll surely recognize something.

Then the driver (who I think had some sympathy for me) starts in frantically in Arabic. They go back and forth for a minute or so, after which the bus supervisor turns to me and says, “OK, we will take you to Victoria Square.” I say “Show Kran, Show Kran” (thank-you, thank-you). A 5 minute bus ride later and we are there. I apologize again, say thanks, and get off the bus.

For the next 5 days that I ride the bus, the bus supervisor comes up to me every day and says, “The next stop is Victoria Square.” I’ve got it now!

Saturday, Sept 12 2009 Downtown Cairo

On Saturday, September 12, Scott, Mike and I went down to the Khan el-Khalili market in Cairo. We spent the day walking around and then returned to Tahrir Square where we had dinner at Felfella and then cought the Metro back to Maadi.

The market is a maze of narrow streets (I think until you get the hang of it). Here is a picture looking down one of the streets. Can you spot the tourists?

There are several famous mosques in this area of Cairo, but I cannot remember their names. Here is a picture of one.

We walked through the market down to the old city wall. There were signs on a lot of the structures with the date they were built, and most of this stuff was built around 1100AD.

A few more pictures of the market.

Here are two videos in the cab from the Khan el-Khalili market back to Tahrir Square.

Here our driver is a bit impatient getting around an accident:

After we got around the trouble, the driver opened a bag of dates and offered them to us. We've been here about 3 or 4 weeks now, and most of us are starting to have some stomach trouble.

Scott (who has lived here before) just told me earlier that the best thing to do is stick to cooked vegatebles and bread. So you can hear me asking, "Are we going to regret this?" Meaning,

eating this uncooked, unwashed fruit.

Scott says no, pauses and then adds "en shallah" which means "God willing."

So we ate the dates, which were delicous and as of the next day no problems.

As we were going to the restaurant, we had to cross a really busy street in downtown, near the Egyptian Museum. I stepped out, but

then hesitated (as only a toursit would do) and then stepped back as traffic rushed by. Then I heard a voice down the street yell at me

in perfect but heavily accented English, "Close your eyes, pray to Allah, and go!"

Dinner downtown and AUC faluka ride

On Thursday night my excellent tour guide Scott took Mike and I downtown to meet some other AUC faculty at a restaurant right in the middle of downtown Cairo, near the old AUC campus. Scott & Mike are here as Fulbright scholars. They both study religon, Scott from a political science perspective and Mike is a sociologist. They let someone from the business school tag along in hopes of enlighting me on something.

We took the metro from Maadi to downtown. Here is a picture of the Maadi metro station:

and here is a picture of the mosque adjacent to the Metro station:

This is a clock at the station. I just get a kick out of the Arabic numbers!

This is a picture of the original AUC campus. The campus was in the center of downtown, which was great in some ways, because it really connected you with the city. On the other hand (so I've heard) it also connected you with traffic, smog, noise, etc. So most are happy to be in the new campus, which was built in large part (at least, I have been told) with a grant from USAID.

We had dinner on the roof of a hotel (sadly, I cannot remember the name) downtown. The nice thing about hotels downtown is that the food is good AND they serve beer, which is kind of hit and miss at other restaurants in Cairo. The view was spectacular, although you can't tell it from these pictures. You could see a large part of Cairo all the way to the Nile.

I took a picture of the group at dinner:

Here is the view from our table:

I ate until I was stuffed and we all had a couple of beers. The food was terrific, very mediterranean. I don't know what all of it was, but we had humus, bobagonoosh (however you spell that!), breads, some meat dishes of which one was chicken livers (fried and salty). I tried it all. Our bill for all 7 of us totaled a whopping 550 Egyptian pounds, so my dinner, beers, and tip cost me about $17 in US dollar terms.

Here is a picture on the street downtown on our way back to the Metro station. This is the month of Ramadan, so observant Muslims obstain from food, drink, tobacco, and I don't know what else from sun-up to sun-down for the entire month. Which means that at about sun-down the entire city shuts down as everyone stops to eat. Then everyone is out again later and they stay up late, I think so they can eat again before they go to bed. So everything closes in the late afternoon, and then opens up around 8PM and stays open until about 1am. We were walking home around 9PM, so the city was very busy. The picture doesn't capture the energy.

On Friday night AUC took all the new faculty out for dinner on a Faluka in the Nile. The food was terrific and the views of the city from the boat were great, but it was dark so none of the pictures of the city came out very well. Here are some pictures I took before sundown:

The falukas ready to board:

Me on the boat. I don't know why, but the driver seemed to be having as good a time as we were.

I took this picture from the back of the boat looking back toward Zamalek: