We left for Alexandria on Thursday night (not last Thursday, the Thursday before), and the trip got off to what you could call a rough start. Our tickets were for a 7PM train, but some people were not due back to the dorm until after 6PM. We planned that these people would basically grab their things and we would immediately get into a taxi (or two, there were 8 of us leaving on the 7PM train, 4 people were leaving on the 6PM train) and head for the train station, which, depending on traffic, can be a ride as long as a half hour. We knew we'd be cutting it close. However, when I arrived back at the dorm, I was pleased to find out that the people who were due back after 6PM had decided it was safer to skip their 3:30PM classes. Everyone was back to the dorm by a little after 4PM. So, we planned to meet for dinner in the lobby at 5:30PM and leave from there at a little after 6PM. No later than 6:15PM was out plan. Well, you know how things always happen. You give yourself more time and then you think you have given yourself more time than you did. Needless to say, we were piling into cabs just after 6:30PM, putting us in a prime position to miss our train, and for no apparent reason!
Traffic was not great but not bad and the cab I was in arrived at the train station with just under ten minutes to spare. And when I say arrived at the train station, I mean arrived across the street from it. And when I say across the street, I'm using Cairo's definition of street, which means a series of roads with traffic going any and all directions on each one of them. Nevertheless, it is easier to cross these streets on foot than it is in a taxi, so we figured we were saving time (and this was something we very much needed to do) by walking the last leg of the trip. (I was a little nervous about this considering that we had just seen a woman holding a baby hit by a taxi cab on our way to the station. She was just bumped. She was fine, we are almost sure. However, being that my seat in our cab was the closest to the incident, I was terrified and less than thrilled about the dodging of traffic with luggage that we were about to be doing). Miraculously, we made it across the street. Somewhere in out journey we hopped a fence of sorts. This is normally something I'd be much more concerned about doing, but considering our lateness, I just kind of threw my bags over and then jumped without a second thought. I should be incredibly late more often. I'd worry far less about the little things.
Fortunately we already had tickets, so we booked it to our car and jumped in. However, we were not in the clear. From a call to people in the second cab, we learned that they were just now beginning the process of crossing the street. It seemed imminent that they would miss the train. We sent one person back onto the platform to watch for them, but decided once the train started moving, regardless if our companions were there or not, he should jump back on the train. We then decided at around 6:58PM to call the people in the other cab and tell them to just get on the first car they could and then walk through to our car. They said they were already planning on doing this. By the end of the conversation, they told us they had stepped onto the train. No sooner had the words come out of our mouth then the train started moving. Everyone had made it! We had a sense of relief that lasted all of about ten seconds before we collectively panicked that the person waiting on the platform for the other group had not seen them since they got on the first car and had missed the train. Trying to call him, we held our breaths until we saw him walking down the aisle of the train. We actually had all made the train. I don't know how. It was a miracle. (Had we missed the train, we could have taken one at 9:30PM or 11PM, but we ran the risks of these trains being sold out and we would have had to pay for new tickets. I don't think the Egypt rail system would have been that accommodating and I doubt any of us is proficient enough at Arabic to have explained our situation to them. So thankfully we didn't have to deal with this).
The train ride took about three hours. When we arrived at the train station, we first bought return tickets for Saturday at 11:15AM (and vowed we'd leave for the train station with plenty of time to spare). We weren't sure exactly where the hotel was, but an Egyptian security officer on our train said he would guide us there. We were skeptical, but were delighted when he took us to the hotel and then refused a tip. We've become so accustomed to everyone wanting a tip here, it was nice for us to have an experience with a genuinely nice person. Our hotel was very nice. A few of us were hungry and went into the restaurant, where we were told that, despite their extensive menu, they were only serving fried fish and would not have desserts until the morning. This was interesting. I settled on a glass of orange juice and then went to bed early because we planned to wake up early to see everything we wanted to see.
We woke up the next morning around 8:30AM and were having breakfast at the hotel by 9AM. The breakfast was decent, and as promised there were desserts, though I'm not much of a dessert person at 9AM. We left around 10AM and headed to Pompey's pillar. It's a large column and a sphinx-like statue. The architecture at the site was very Roman and very pretty. We then headed to the Catacombs, which are a series of underground Egyptian and Roman tombs. They were very interesting. We thought it was funny that in one room, one wall of tombs was built by the Egyptians and one was built by the Romans. The Egyptian side was missing several 'boxes' while the Roman side looked like a perfect graph. Typical. After the catacombs, we went to a restaurant for lunch. Several people got pizza, which the restaurant is famous for. I got a vegetable oriental pie, which I was a bit skeptical about, but was overjoyed to find out was actually a Middle Eastern version of a quesadilla, my all time favorite food. It was delicious. Who would have thought I'd find a quesadilla in Alexandria.
After lunch we took a quick break at the hotel and then headed to the library, or Biblioteca Alexandrina. There was a library in Alexandria in ancient times, but this library is in no way ancient. It's huge and very modern, and an actual functioning library. I could have spent all day there. We only spent about two hours there though. We looked mostly at the art exhibits, and spent a lot of our time in the Manuscripts Museum. It was so amazing to see the Arabic translations of manuscripts dating back to the earliest centuries. I particularly liked the translated works of Christianity and Judaism. I also thought the translated works of mathematics, philosophy, and medicine were interesting. The earliest versions of the Qu'ran translated from Arabic were also very interesting. And early Islamic scholarship and Qu'ranic studies was great for me to see considering I have learned so much about it in my classes, particularly Islam last year. It's almost unreal to me that I am having to opportunity to match a real life picture to the things I have learned about. And of course, Muhammad's letters to sultans and an early papyrus scroll from the days of the Pharaohs were unbelievable as well. We also spent some time in the portion of the Museum dedicated to the history of Alexandria. This portion of the museum explained the French influence on the region after the French invaded Egypt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of the architecture of the city shows this influence still today. The drawings and maps in this section were very interesting.
After we finished at the library, we went back to the hotel for a bit and then planned to go to a famous fish market for dinner. At a fish market, there is no menu. You choose your type of fish by pointing to it. We took two taxis to a market in an ally. Our taxi got there fine. The same could not be said for the other taxi. We had the owner of the fish market talk to the taxi driver on a cell phone. There was still obviously confusion. When we thought we had at least gotten the other group on the right track, the fish market closed. We did not think of the fact that the market would close when it ran out of fish. We decided to go to a restaurant with a similar dining style but with more of a restaurant atmosphere and less of a likelihood of closing early. We told our friends, still in another cab (well actually a second cab, apparently the first driver they were with got frustrated and told them they had arrived at the market, which they clearly had not), the name of the restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant has two locations in Alexandria. This confused even our cab driver so we were dim on the prospects at this point of possibly ever seeing our friends again. That is why we were pleased that when we arrived at the restaurant that the owner said our friends had already arrived. And then we were dismayed that the friends he meant were not actually the friends we were looking for, but another group of AUCians also in Alexandria for the weekend. It was funny that they were so happy to see us and our reaction, considering the events of the night, was "Oh no!" Eventually, our friends in the other cab did arrive, everyone chose fish, and everyone was very pleased with their meals.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and spent some time on the roof before going to bed. We got up the next morning in time to eat breakfast and make it to the train station. We actually had some extra time at the station because the cabs we took took us to a different station in Alexandria which the 11:15AM train arrived to a littler after 11:15AM because it was the second stop. We were pleased to find that we had somehow bought first class tickets. (On the way there we sat in second class, which was fine). We were able to turn seats around so four of us were facing each other. The whole thing was very Hogwarts' Express, and we had a lovely three hour ride.
We took a taxi back to the dorm after the train ride. It was a quick weekend and it definitely had its points of disorder, but it was a lot of fun and a weekend I very much enjoyed. It's a shame we were only able to spend such a short time in Alexandria. We really are so busy now though that it's an accomplishment just to manage a weekend trip. We're definitely getting ready for our upcoming break. We've been in school now for over a month, which by Egypt standards and especially Egypt-in-the-time-of-swine-flu-standards, is a lot! The break in two weeks will definitely be a welcomed time to relax and travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment