Alex pt. 1

Last weekend (now two weekends ago) was a long one because the Wednesday (October 6) before it was a national holiday and we had our Thursday classes rescheduled, so I got to enjoy a little beach vacation to Alexandria. Four girls, Julia, Nav, and Nora of my normal crew, plus a girl I'm going to call Rachel (because she is not going to be presented to favorably here) who sort of invited herself on our trip and myself headed to the train station at 7am last Wednesday morning, intending to take an 8am train to Alex. Daniel and Mulu were supposed to have come the night before and were going to meet us, but something came up and they weren't able to come, so it was just me and the ladies in Alex.

Traveling with a group of girls in Egypt is always sort of a funny experience because invariably some Egyptian man will yell out to me as I pass by "you are a very lucky man...so many beautiful women!" I usually ignore them or I smile and tell them with as much good-nature as I can muster that I sure am. That being said, I've noticed that being in a group of girls here sometimes puts me on edge, not because I am surrounded by females, but because females get very different treatment in Egypt than males. I should say first off, that the vast majority of Egyptians are harmless, but also there are definitely a fair amount who will try and cop a feel with foreign girls, and few who would do worse. Just knowing this I've noticed I feel a little protective. And the thing is, 99.9% of the time, just the presence of a guy--any guy--with a foreign girl reduces the likelihood of anything happening, which naturally inspires at least a small feeling of responsibility in me as a dude. I'm not trying to turn this into a women's studies analysis here, and this is not about women inherently "needing" men, it's just that things work a little differently here. Anyway, Vassar-education-inspired-disclaimer aside, even though the girls I hang with are definitely more than able to take care of themselves, and most of the time nothing is going to happen to them, I have nonetheless gotten a little quick to bristle at men who I deem (perhaps arbitrarily) are getting perhaps inappropriately friendly with my friends. I think I've definitely given a few stink eyes when none were called for, but what's most interesting to me is that is such a reflexive thing. I do it even though I know that more often than not, it's just the usual Egyptian mode of interaction, which to us foreigners can often come off as a bit too intimate.

I thought these Egyptians all sitting in a line at the Train

Station looked kind of comical (this is not supposed to be a portrait

of the creepy Egyptian men I just talked about).

Anyway, on our first day I was pretty tired from an intense week of homework and hadn't gone to bed until late the night before, but I was awake enough to be fascinated by Cairo's Ramses train station which is amidst some pretty heavy renovations. My bus ride to school each day takes me on a highway that runs over the station and I keep meaning to take pictures of this gigantic building with long green tarps hanging down covering the sides, but for now I only have these pictures taken from the inside. Of course, our train was sold out, so we had to take a 2pm train in second class instead. Though every source had told us it was well worth it to pay the extra LE15 to ride in first class, we were all incredibly satisfied with second class's generous leg room and pleasant temperature, so if you ever come to Egypt on a tight budget, the second class is a fantastic deal for what amounts to $7, especially as I thought back to the nigh unbearably uncomfortable bus ride to Siwa. As a result, we were in good spirits upon arriving in Egypt's coastal metropolis, and I immediately took a liking to the feel of the city.

Sitting right on the water (and on a pile of history much longer and more impressive than Cairo's), this deceptively large city has no skyscraper office buildings or hotels, content instead to simply extend out along the coast and a little south. Throughout my time in Alex as we walked the streets, smells of ocean and fish would periodically register through the surge of vibrant colors and details of this old, old city in my brain. And indeed, wherever we went in Alexandria, whether it was in the older western part or the newer Eastern part, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was somehow still in a small fishing town. The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Alex as "the city with the most history but the least to show for it," which explains how a city that was once the capital of multiple Egyptian dynasties, and the crossroads at which East and West could interact and combine envisioned in the more romantic depictions of Alexander the Great, could feel like a small town today. Indeed, most of Alexandria's greater claims to fame throughout history, the seat of Cleopatra's government, the legendary Library of Alexandria, and the Pharos Lighthouse (one of the original 7 wonders of the world), are little more than memories evoked on the signboards of tourist destinations. Nonetheless, the city has a lot of beauty even without the physical evidence of its history, and there were plenty of things to see and do there.

(For reference, our hotel was near the thing toward the left labeled the Cecil Hotel)

We arrived in Alex around 4, but not knowing that there were two different stops within the city, we mistakenly got off at the first one which was a little far away from our hotel. After taking cab to our hotel and getting settled in our fairly nice rooms we convened in Nora and Rachel's room (they were the lucky ones with a sweet balcony overlooking the street and a view of the ocean) to plan our night and the next day. None of us knew anything about Alexandria, so we pretty much just relied on the guidebook for suggestions on what to do and where to go. The book recommended, of all things, a sort of multipurpose Asian food restaurant on top of an old hotel on the water that had a menu broken up into three different sections for Chinese, Thai, and Indian food. I got a rather delicious green curry dish with rice from the Thai menu and an Egyptian beer. After dinner we headed to one of Alex's incredibly numerous Cafes and drank some mint tea while listening to Alexandrians animatedly play backgammon and dominoes. "Tea," here in Egypt, is basically synonymous with Lipton, and despite never really liking tea that much before travelling here, I'm come to really love mint tea (the name for which in arabic is easy to remember because sounds rather close to "Chai Banana") which is the Lipton with actual fresh mint soaking in the water. I take it with only one scoop of sugar as opposed to the 4 or so that is customary for most Egyptians.

After the cafe we headed to a bar that came recommended not only by the guide book, but by every single Egyptian any of us had ever talked to. Besides being right down the street from our hotel, the Spitfire Bar had the advantage of being rather charming and it played classic American rock music which I actually haven't heard in a long time. The bar was small and had writing all over the walls mostly in English which served as a pretty good reflection of who usually frequented this bar. We didn't stay long and afterward we went to bed excited to get up early for a full day of exploring the next day...which I'll tell you all about in my next post.

A little motivational gem I was reminded of in the Spitfire Bar (it's at the top of the picture).

I know this post wasn't too action-packed, but I've decided to split this post up into pieces. I've just finished the rest of the descriptions of Alex without pictures, but for the sake of spreading out my posts and also making them a little easier to sit down and read I'm leaving you all at this unremarkable cliff-hanger. The next post will be about our adventures exploring the city's big historical sites, the new library of Alexandria, and my new Egyptian friends that I made in the middle of the Mediterranean and on the train back to Cairo.