…Egypt (14)
Saturday, may 15th 2010
nothing really exciting today, except for my father’s birthday; yeeeeej!… Other than that, we are being transferred from Dahab to Cairo. We are not sad, just a little melancholic…
it gives me time to contemplate a little in the bus and think about this amazing country we have seen so much, but still too little of these weeks.
it is the beauty every time when visiting another country; get to meet the people, understand their habits, get into their customs, try to speak at least a very little bit of their language and be amazed at their environment, which is so ordinary to them, all of this without any prejudice or judgement… And boy, have we done this these last two weeks!
as i mentioned, a little boy’s dream to visit the land of pharaos, pyramids and temples and so much history. i was amazed, both at the things i knew to expect and the things i didn’t know to expect. and as usual, when looking at a different country, a land of fascinating contradictions. on the one hand the most amazing cultural and historical beauty and on the other hand excruciating filth and dirt. about both, by the way no one seems to care too much! in some areas the people have amazing sophistication, in others they are rude and primitive. a land of extraordinary accomplishments with amazingly underdeveloped solutions for some of the problems they face…
and the people: amazing to try to understand their motivations and goals in life a little. i know people who were complaining about the salesmethods here. i think if they came from those backgrounds, they would be motivated too, to pull some out of those european and american walking wallets visiting their country! and then the polution by some of the eastern european countries, especially russia! it is really incredible, but they still find it necessary to carve their names (“vladimir/moskow”) in rocks in the coloured canyon, take pictures in the tombs when that is forbidden and even leave their undoubtedly infallable presence carved in the stones and tombs themselves!!! it is a shame, but hey, with all the money in the world, you can’t buy class!
then the public interest commercial against extremism; i guess every country has its demons, right?! by the way, Jacqueline will get back to me about what the exact payoff is of this commercial. you will know as soon as i know… by the way, i just found the video on youtube: watch for yourself…
also, i keep being intrigued by the way the Islam is embedded in this culture; the prayer times, the ‘human church bells’, the enormous richness of the mosques… but most importantly, the impossibility to ban certain intrinsic human urges; “we have determined that sexuality is restricted to the marriage!”, yeah, like that’s gonna work!
the Nile fascinated me so much: how this river indeed is the main artery of this country, literally feeding it, fertilizing it, but only for about a couple of hundred meters on both sides! behind that, it is desert and rocks… but no matter how important their blood vain is, they keep polluting it with the waste-equivalent of cholesterol: dirt, bacteria, human excrement and garbage, a whole lot of garbage!
and even in this bus, driving straight through the sinai desert, where no matter how hot and infertile it is, there are still people living here… we drive under the suez canal and end up in this traffic frenzy, close to cairo… three lanes, but you can easily drive with six cars and trucks alongside each other! a horrible accident apparently causes this pile-up and we finally end up back at the hotel. the grlz and i have already decided to have a small bite at the dd-kfc (deaf-dumb-kentucky-fried-chicken) and end up in bed, not too late…
at 00:30, we get to the airport and i have not had a smoother check-in in my life (must be the hour…)! and the flight is also as smooth as it gets. back home, we are picked up by my parents and we have an amazingly relaxed sunday, where we celebrate my father’s birthday together with my brother’s family…
we were all amazed about this gorgeous country…
but most of all, as usual i guess, i was impressed with my grlz, amazing, special, extraordinary grlz…
Tags: egypt
