Not My Lucky Day

First day in Cairo, Egypt

I arrived in Cairo as planned. That is after a bus ride (instead of a 100+ minutes delayed train plus subsequent subway and bus), some 5 hours waiting in the airport in Bucharest, a flight to Athens, 3 hours in Athens and another 2 hours flight to Cairo. I arrived in Cairo at 1:45am. In spite of the very short and fast formalities the queues at the airport for passport control and visa were long and slow. By the time I retrieved my luggage it was around 2:30am. I escaped the very pushy taxi drivers and looked for a seat in a corner.
My plan seemed to work so far. I planned on sleeping a few hours on the airport then make my way into the city in the morning by daylight. This way I saved the cost for a night at the hostel (would have been a very short one anyway) and I could go early to the Syrian embassy and apply for the visa. I did not sleep but lay there over my pack across 2 seats. From time to time somebody came and asked whether I needed help :-)

It was before 6am when I headed out of the airport. Some information I had was wrong. The bus terminal was at the other airport terminal, so I took the shuttle and with some asking around found the bus terminal and got on a bus. That costed only 2LE instead of the 100LE a taxi would have charged. I got off at Nasser subway station and from there walked to my hostel. It was very pleasant in the morning hours. The traffic was not very bad yet, the birds were twittering and the temperature was still ok. Very warm but ok. I walked based on my instinct and gut sense. I had walked a lot in Cairo in January and so felt quite confident about it.

And so I arrived at Paris Hotel at 7am. But 7am is way too early. At this time all shops are closed and all respectable people are still in bed. I sat down on the stairway and read for 1 hour and a half. I finished my book. I finished the second book since I left my mom's place. I loved that. First it was Voltaire's "Candide" which was extremely entertaining and now a book I had taken out of an impulse: a young man's survival story in winter in the Himalayas. 43 days without food and much else spent at around 3500m. A gripping story of determination and family support and love. This reading was also good for another reason: it meant lightening my pack.

To cut it short, after a warm welcome from the hostel owner I left my bag there and headed for the Syrian embassy. Getting there was straightforward as it was in the neighbourhood of the Ethiopian embassy. I'm quite knowledgeable about embassies in Cairo it seems :-)

At the embassy the answer to my request was similarly straightforward. No. I cannot get the visa. Why didn't I apply in Canada? But there was no time for explanations and so I left the building disappointed, very disappointed.

Alright, plan A did not work so I had to switch to plan B now. Except there was no plan B. Well, not until I reached the corner of the next street. And I went even further than that: there's a plan B and a plan C. Suffice to say that the latter would add beiruth to the list of keywords.

Maybe it was the lack of good sleep, the dehydration or the heat, possibly the combination of all these on top of which came the disappointment, but as I was walking away from the embassy I suddenly felt very weak and about to faint. I stopped and bought something to drink right away. It was hot and sticky and the sweat was dripping off my face and body.

Since my favorite internet cafe was in this neighbourhood and went there only to find it closed. Another disappointment.

I decided to go check out the bus terminal before returning to the hostel and getting some rest. I needed to find the long distance bus terminal and see if I could get bus tickets for the Sinai ahead of time. Getting to the terminal was not very straightforward mainly because the directions in Lonely Planet were misleading. I walked the shorter and straightforward way on the way back. The good news was that I could get the bus ticket now. And so, out of disappointment I decided to not stay until Thursday as initially planned, but leave on Wednesday. I wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. It was hot, too hot, dirty and polluted.

On the way back to the hostel I calmed down and enjoyed the things that I liked so much about Cairo. The people, the livelihood, the colours, the contrasts, the architecture. And as I just pushed back my earlier disappointment I suddenly felt sad about leaving Cairo so early. I was stupid. Why did I just act out of an impulse? Oh, well, that was it now. Nobody to blame but myself. I missed the chance to see some more beautiful places and revisit others. That was stupid.

I returned to the hostel and took a much needed shower. I was stinking dirty. Then I decided to take a nap. The heat was giving me a very hard time. And my nap lasted from about 2pm to almost midnight. That was my first day in Cairo. Not the best one, for sure :-)