I'm in Egypt right now...

[onager]

...if anyone needs any travel tips. I spent much of last year in Cairo and Alexandria, and have been here in Alexandria since October (this time!).

The first question most people ask me: "Is it safe?"

I think so. I've wandered all over Alexandria, often lost because I tend to amble down any street or alley that catches my fancy. My only danger is overeating. That's because the Egyptians in the little street markets see a foreigner and start giving me free food...including Bill O'Reilly's favorite, falafel! (You can buy giant natural loofahs here, too.)

I lived in Saudi Arabia for 2 years and that was pretty grim. You could get arrested for taking photos. But here, gaggles of young girls come up and ASK me to take their picture. These certainly aren't foreign tourists--they are usually wearing the hijab, the Muslim head-covering.

And if you think WE hate George Dumbya...strike up a conversation about him over here!

[babylonsister]

1. Sounds like a great experience, onager! And I, for one,

love falafel despite O'Lielly!
Are there loads of shwarma stands around? Yum...
And what are temps like there this time of year?

[onager]

2. Very nice for tourism this time of year

The weather in Alexandria is a lot like Los Angeles, where I normally live. (If "normally" is the word...):-) Alex is right on the Mediterranean, so it gets a nice sea breeze almost all the time.

Today it's a little windy and chilly but it's still pretty early (8 AM). The sea is pretty choppy. It's right outside my hotel room, so I just went on the balcony and took a gander.

YES, there are loads of shwarma! And other good stuff to eat. I like to walk thru the fish market here in Alexandria. They will cook up a whole fish for you and put it in a big cardboard cone with some falafel and french fries. The fish is so tender the skin falls off the bones, so you can eat it with your fingers, local style.

Just last night I walked down the street outside the hotel and bought a whole roasted chicken, served with 4 loaves of local flat bread and a delicious green salad. That cost 18 Egyptian pounds, or about $3.

If I were coming to Egypt as a tourist, I think I would come between now and June. Even in Cairo now it occasionally gets chilly-to-cold this time of year.

Summers are VERY hot, especially in the places most tourists want to see. (Cairo for the Pyramids/Sphinx, Luxor, Valley of the Kings and points further South.) Alex is not too hot in the summer but it is teeming with local tourists. I think the population almost doubles, with Egyptians fleeing to the seaside.

One of the nicest ways to tour Egypt is to book a Nile cruise, if you have the time. You can start in Alexandria and proceed leisurely down to the Luxor/Aswan area.

I plan to do some sightseeing in the next few days. This week is a big Muslim festival and nobody is working. Alexandria has a lot of old Greeek/Roman tombs and other neat sites.

[babylonsister]

3. Thanks for your summary. It does seem like Egypt would be

a fun and exotic place to spend a week in the spring. And there are no concerns being an American, other than the usual common sense precautions, as anywhere?

[onager]

6. Virtually no concerns.

The Egyptians are incredibly hospitable and generous people. My "commute" is about 50 miles a day, one way, and takes me thru a bunch of little farming villages in the Nile Delta. Except for internal combustion and electricity, life has hardly changed there in the past millenium. There are probably more donkey carts than cars, and a traffic jam can be caused by a water buffalo standing in the middle of the road.

If you poked your head into any house in one of those villages, I bet the people inside would wave you in. They would offer you tea and you'd be there about 4 hours. Then they'd probably ask you to stay for dinner.

Alexandria is much the same way. There's a little park beside my hotel, and one day I saw a couple of families having a picnic. Their little kids were playing a game sort of like "Ring Around The Rosie," only in Arabic. That was sort of interesting, so I went over to take a closer look. Those people tried to give me part of their food, and they were poor as they could be...judging by their clothes etc., at least. Even the kids were trying to share their Kiddie Junk Food, which looked about as gross as the same stuff does in the U.S.

There have been some...incidents, which I'm sure you can find on the web. But overall, this is one of the friendliest places I've ever been. I really like it here. (Which is good, since I could be staying for a long time...)

[frankly_fedup2]

4. It sounds like Heaven. That is one of the first places I have ever

wanted to travel to outside of the U.S. I cannot imagine walking near the great pyramid, the sphinx . . . all of the beautiful ancient places in Egypt and the middle east.

I feel like the history of mankind has been stolen from the whole planet because of the wars and war that is constantly going on and will never end. The difference in beliefs of religion still have Iraq torn apart.

Are you going to post any pictures online at some of the free places like Yahoo?

I love ancient history of the World and wish I were a World traveler; however, that has always just been a dream (well, my pipe dream anyway).

If you don't mind, where else have your travels taken you? If you'd rather not say, just say nun ya, and I'll understand and mind my own business. I'm just interested in anyone who travels. Plus I find it interesting that you live in LA. I've always wanted to visit the opposite coast of this country before I traveled outside of the country; however, I've got to talk my husband into flying (and get over the fear myself) or we are going to be stuck in Virginia forever. (sooooo bored).

[onager]

7. Thank you!

My job has taken me to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Britain, France, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and Mexico City for a little while. I think that's all. And the U.S., though I still have not hit some states. I'm a sort of Field Engineer.

I plan to post some pix, as soon as I cure my laziness and set up an account somewhere. (Or load them to my FTP server...) I've taken hundreds!

Aw, go on out to L.A.! Remember, flying is safer than driving!

[PDX Bara]

14. Alexandria

I was there for about 12 days in late March 2004, to coordinate with my host's spring break, and had the time of my life. I would go back in a heartbeat. I did the Nile cruise and Cairo also. If one is female, I would suggest keeping your legs under cover, to the ankles. I ran out of clean long pants (didn't have a long skirt) one day and wore walking shorts just above the knee but it wasn't long enough and I got a lot of stares, probably also because I'm Asian and I didn't see one other Asian person during the entire time. Other than that, the experience was wonderful and unforgettable.

[On the Road]

5. Is It Like the Alexandria Quartet?

Lawrence Durell's "Justine," "Balthazar," "Mountolive," and "Clea" have tons of detail on the Alexandria of the 40s. Have you read them by any chance? (If not, you have to find a copy.) I know they're a bit romanticized, but do you see any reflection of the books in the streets you walk through? I cannot image living near the Corniche or seeing Lake Mareotis at dawn.

[onager]

8. Yes! Yes!

I read the books years ago, and plan to re-read them while I'm here! I also got the latest reprint of E.M. Forster's fantastic Alexandria: A History And A Guide. That was first published in 1922. Being E.M. Forster, it's really a cleverly disguised critique of Western civilization with a damn good guidebook attached.

Right now I'm reading Michael Haag's Alexandria: City Of Memory. It re-traces the times when Forster and Durell lived here, and even interviews people who knew Durell's crowd. (One woman whom Durell complimented didn't exactly return the favor. She sniffed that "he was drunk about three-quarters of the time he was here." If you're interested, both books are published by the American University in Cairo Press.

The city has certainly changed a lot, but many of the places they mentioned are still around. Durell's favorite hangout, Pastroudis, is still in business. That's where he went on his first date with Eve Cohen.

It's kitty-cornered, across Sa'ad Zaghloul Square, from the Cecil Hotel, which featured prominently in Justine. As I've ranted elsewhere, Durell described the lobby of the Cecil as "gaunt," which is an odd word. I'd say it's anything but "gaunt." It's a mixture of Moorish, Art Deco and High British Imperialist style. And designed by an Italian architect, whose daughter hung out with Durell's crowd some, IIRC.

Alexandrians are a pretty stubborn bunch, and they've maintained the old place names you see in Durell, despite all the changes since. Heck, I was recently trying to find the Nasr Station on the tram line and I found out most Egyptians still call it "Victoria Station."

I love that. The district names of Alexandria are like a still-living history of the city and all the people who have lived here--Greeks, Jews, British, Italians, Arabs, etc. And of course, Egyptians!

As we moved from West to East and crossed the city...if we had the energy...Just LISTEN to the poetry of the city districts: Karmouz. Manshiya. Chatby. Sporting. Moharram Bey. Victoria. Ibrahimiya. Bulkeley. Fleming. Bacos. Cleopatra. Stanley Bay. Glymenopoulo. San Stefano. Sidi Bishr. Asafra. Mandara. Montazah. Maamoura...

Some of those should be familiar from the Quartet. And I'll shut up now, before I start sounding like a tour guide...

[On the Road]

9. That's Great!

Now I have to visit Alexandria. I was afraid the city was unrecognizable from the books and it would be a huge disappointment.

I'm so glad you read Durrell. For some reason, fans seem to be few and far between. That stuff is so poetic and intoxicating -- I've gone through the teratology three times, and might do it again.

I will have to find a copy of the Haag book. It's $26 used plus shipping on the internet, but these things turn up if you look for them. Sounds like a similar approach to The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier, which I also liked.

Durrell got me interested in Bowles, who also had the expatriate-in-the-Arabic-world thing going. His books are excellent but chilling -- he destroys his characters senselessly and without remorse. I guess that's to demonstrate the danger and brutality of the environment, but it's completely opposite from Durrell.

One thing I love about Durrell is that he cherishes his characters, cares for them, and allows them to be reborn in surprising ways. Everything from Scobie's posthumous canonization to De Capo's "resurrection" to Clea's artificial hand with overcomes her artistic block. And when a characters dies, it's always significant and always for a purpose.

And you do sound like a tour guide, by the way. Of the best kind. Now I'm intoxicated again.

[onager]

10. Thanks! Nice compliment!

I understand Durell toured Alexandria, and later wrote, with Forster's guidebook in hand. He was very much impressed by Forster's chapter on "The Spiritual City" and especially the pagan Neo-Platonist movement which sprang up in Alexandria and fought a losing battle with Christianity.

The Neo-Platonists were an interesting bunch, and that's coming from an atheist. The founder of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus, studied under a former Alexandrian dockworker named Ammonius Saccas. He had been a Christian but de-converted back to Paganism. Another of his students became an ultra-Christian: Origen, who allegedly took care of his lustful tendencies by castrating himself. The last and probably most famous Neo-Platonist philosopher was Hypatia, murdered by a gang of monks in 415 CE.

The neo-Platonists taught that we are all part of a mystical One and are always struggling, knowingly or not, to get back to it. That theme resonates thru the "Quartet," as I remember.

Plotinus often said he was ashamed of the moment when his soul came down to this Earth and joined his body.

He later decided, for some weird reason, that the best way to study Zoroastrianism and Hinduism was by joining the army and seeing the world.

As Forster wryly noted, that decision "very nearly relieved him of his shameful physical body." :rofl:

[On the Road]

11. I Never Thought of Durrell in Terms of Neo-Platonism

I know of Plotinus, but am a bit fuzzy on details. Thank you for the summary. I do know the Gospel of John apparently came from Alexandria along with the whole Johannine tradition, a lot of so-called gnosticism, and Jewish thinkers like Philo.

I do want to say this: the title of your original reply ("Yes! Yes!") gave me an eerie shock. I just finished rereading Kerouac's "On the Road," which is filled with Dean Moriarty going to having long philosophical discussions and going to jazz clubs, all the while shouting "Yes! Yes!" It's probably the most recurrent phrase in the book, coming from that beat enthusiasm which seemed to have infected LD in a quieter way. And now synchronicity seems to be acting up again.

[onager]

12. That was a James Joyce allusion...

To the end of "Ulysses." :-)

Just kidding. Interesting that you picked up on that Kerouac frame of reference.

(Slipping back into Tour Guide mode...)

One of the weirdest and most interesting places in Alexandria is the El Shoquafa tombs. They were discovered--no kidding--when a donkey fell in a hole.

They date from around 200 CE, when all the religions in Alexandria were apparently sort of "melting into" one another--ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman.

El Shoqafa has two carvings of the Egyptian gods Anubis and Sobek dressed as Roman soldiers! (Sobek was a crocodile, so that looks very bizarre.)

Another tomb chamber was decorated with 2 painted panels. The upper showed a traditional Egyptian mummification, with all the Usual Godly Suspects like Thoth and Horus standing around.

The lower panel featured Artemis and Athena fighting Hades as he tries to carry off Persephone, with Aprhodite and Eros hanging around as spectators. Pure Greek.

Maybe E.M. Forster got it right when he said we shouldn't read too much into all the symbology. The tombs were just decorated by ordinary workmen, carrying out orders from customers. Just like Forest Lawn would do today for you and me.

Oh, and the Graeco-Roman Museum here has a fine example of a person who was taking no chances. It's a mummy prepared in the usual Egyptian style, with a big Christian cross painted on it. A double bet on the Afterlife!!!

(In ancient times the entire western end of Alexandria was known as the Necropolis, the City of the Dead. It contained nothing but tombs and the people who made their livings from death--embalmers, monument makers, etc. I bet that was a good reason to be grateful for the strong sea breezes here...)

[On the Road]

13. I've Seen Similar Sarcophagi in the NY Metropoitan Museum

The faces painted on are eerie. Don't remember the crosses, but maybe it was a different set.

There was a lot of mixed symbolism in early Christianty. Some of the Roman catacombs show Jesus depticed as Hercules. A lot of Paul's depiction of Jesus drew from Mithraism. But many of the strangest things came from sources in Egypt. The library from Nag Hammadi has dozens of gnostic and other synchretistic versions of Christianity. And a lot of the earliest traditions in middle eastern religions, such as covering a tree with pieces of cloth tied to the branches, survived in Egypt centuries after they were extinguished elsewhere.

Anyway Onager, please post more about your experiences in Egypt some time.