So after all the wonderful pictures from Downtown Cairo don't let yourself be mislead, because not all of the buildings of the Belle Epoque are renovated like the first one.

And actually modern Egypt looks completely different. Some pictures I took on my way to school.

A freshly painted school.

Everywhere you walk by you will find water reservoirs the locals use to drink from. You do not have to pay for it. I did not try because I did not want to run the risk of getting sick, but a egyptian friend assured me that this water is cold and very refreshing because the vessels are made of clay.

My school. The first time I came here I almost missed it because I did not expect it to be in a normal dwelling.

...daily business got me already...

Since I found out that I just have to ask the hotel crew for turkish coffee if I do not want the watery Nescafé the Arabs love imcomprehensively my mornings start better. I know my way to school including where to cross the street without to much struggle and where to shout to make the microbus stop. I know some people I meet frequently for chatting (indeed mainly Arabic although it is still very tiring), tea and other action. I met some people from the media scene, journalists and academics, copied some arabic books concerning my topic and even did some touristic stuff like visiting the incredible Egyptian Museum. I get along with the locals very well although I have days, in fact only situations where I really would like to hit someone - usually a young male tout staring at me or telling me in English or French that he wants to welcome me...

It's only one more week to go and I just decided to slow down a bit. Reason number one: Temperature reached almost 40 degrees Celsius yesterday and today and is expected to be as high as this until Thursday, maybe even Sunday. Reason number two: during the last couple of days I saw serveral women seemingly close to a collapse and feel that the city is really draining my nerves. I have had some trouble before I headed for Cairo and I will have lots of work when I come home, so I prefer to spend my remaining time focussing on the language, meeting people for private fun only and experiencing the beautiful sides of the city. In mind I have a Sufi dance event, definitely a shopping tour through Khan Khalili and I haven't visited the Citadel yet although I can see it from my hotel room.

It's late already, I'm tired and I need to get up early in the morning because I'll go to school like I did today and will do for the rest of the week. Besides I'll watch some movies at the Goethe Institut at Midan Tahrir and hopefully will meet some more people from the media scene.

And I'll sweat like I haven't done since a long time while Germany bogs deep in the snow. Poor dears!

So only some more urban scenes:

 

  

  

Believed that the last one was for real? Got ya!

There was a shooting for a film and the staff had a real hard time to keep the passers-by and the curious crowd out of the way. There was a lot of screaming and shouting and waving and the director, or whatever he may call himself, was almost hit by a car. But he seemed to be a real Egyptian because he didn't care but kept standing in the middle of the street. Amazing! Ridiculous! 

Already Wednesday? Time flies!

Monday I visited a leftist daily and they were really nice and invited me to come back to spent some more time and gather information for my work. I'll see but I found it very interesting to talk to them and see their workconditions. After this I went to the university because it was close by but did not enter because it was very crowded and I did not really had something to do there. Besides I few hours later a had a meeting with a professor of the American University so I sat in a cafe and prepared for this.

Yesterday I was strolling around again after school and a meeting with a journalist of a business paper, had lunch in a small restaurant where I was surrounded by locals and ate Koshary, the Egyptian fast food consisting of noodles, rice, lentils, chickpeas, roasted onions and tomatoe sauce. Really tasty!
This artistic boy was too fast for my little mobile to focus - usually the wooden boxes are filled with bread. I really admire these guys because they manage to cycle in this crazy traffic even single-handed.

Sitting at a small square and having a cigarette I saw something I had read about only. Several merchants were selling clothes, shoes or ties, but obviously without having a permission to do so. All of a sudden, all of them started running because a small truck with police men stopped nearby. The police arrested them and took all their goods. One of the tie traders dropped as many ties as possible while they brought him to the car. His acquaintances, bread marketeers who were not bothered by the police, followed and collected the ties so not all goods were lost. After only five minutes the drama was over and people returned to their daily business.

 

   

Today I spent the afternoon and evening with the German girl I met a few days ago. We cooked and sat and talked and in the evening went to a concert with traditional arabic and nubian music. It was really impressive - mainly elder men and women played percussion instruments, sang and filled the beautiful room of Makan with an amazing atmosphere, very slow and quiet in the beginning and almost defeaning in the end. It gave me chills several times.

Yesterday was a Arabic only day. I went to Downtown and bought some more movies for children on DVD because these films are very convenient listening comprehensions, additionally I got new arabic letters for my keyboard because the old ones started to peel off. In the afternoon I met the girl from the fast food restaurant, Amal, and her fiance and we walked around in Downtown, sat in a cafe and they helped me finding the post office which I failed to locate by myself because the main post office is under construction at the moment and I just did not identify it. Then we met some of her colleagues who work like her for a political party. One of them took me to another friend in the evening. Fardouz works as a travel guide and speaks German and while her husband taught my companion some English we studied Arabic. It got very late and all of us were pretty tired so when her babyboy woke up hungry we left and headed back to Downtown by bus. We will probably meet again on Tuesday.

Today I got my first lesson in the language school in Mohandesseen. After two hours mainly talking I walked back to Downtown. I crossed the Nile encircled by cars and then immerged into the comparative silence of Zamalek, a big island which is a domestic area with some embassies. Walking around I saw a lot of pretty old buildings, some of them empty, and many guardians. While the embassy of the Netherlands shone like a precious gem with its white walls the only thing I could see of the German embassy were grey walls with steel hooks around it and the national colours painted to the guardian's huts.

Crossing the bridge to Downtown again a lot of green attracted my attention. It seems usual to use the space beneath the bridges for gardening because of the availability of water there. I saw mainly succulents but also dracaena, yucca and patches with beautiful flowers I could not identify because they were to far away. After strolling around for three hours I had dinner in Cafe Riche and then went back to my hotel room to rest a bit. Later I may meet my Iraqi friend but that's not for sure. It would be fine for me to stay in the hotel and study too - Cairo is just crazy and exhausting, but still, I like it.

Yesterday, I took a day off. I went to my placement test nearby, shopped a bit around on the way back to the hotel and then took a nap since I felt tired since leaving my bed for breakfast. And my tiredness certainly was not caused by the view I have every morning during breakfast ;)

I talked to a university professor by phone who I was supposed to meet in the afternoon but he rescheduled our meeting. So I had nothing to do but watch the children play in the schoolyard behind my hotel. They did what all kids do during their breaks - playing soccer, running around, jumping, screaming, laughing. I saw a girl kicking a smaller boy who interrupted the circle she formed with other girls, other girls spinned on their own axis enjoying the slight rain.

In the evening a thunderstorm emptied the streets and cleared the air. So today walking the streets was even a bit more challenging because big puddles blocked the route.

I met a German girl who is doing interviews for her PhD in Cairo and like me has a Iraqi father. We chatted for a long time in a coffeehouse and then went to the bookshop of the American University. I bought a recently published book on Arab Media and one more Arabic textbook. The streets were very quiet because the Muslims today celebrate Prophet Mohammed's birthday - a big day in Egypt and some sidewalks were blocked by praying men on green carpets.

For tomorrow I do have no other plans then walking around, finding the main post office and maybe meet the Egyptian girl I met some days ago.

So today I got some things done. I had my first interview with a woman who works for a German foundation and did her Master in Communications at the University of Cairo. The view from their balcony was breathtaking.

Afterwards I strolled through Downtown a bit, buying some stuff, watching the people and stray cats and dogs (so thin and dirty), managing to cross the crowded streets and getting familiar with the area. One thing attracting my attention was the fact that many locals wear woollen jumpers while I dress only with a light, though long-sleeved shirt.
Additionally I went to an Arabic language school. I'll have my placement test tomorrow and hopefully start my lessons on Sunday. The school is nearby so I can walk there and depending on the level I will learn with one or two other language students or alone. A friend recommended the school because it is cheap although she was not completly satisfied. I have to check and see how it works.

 

 

During my application the girl I met yesterday called and we will probably meet on Friday to chat a bit. Today I had no time because I met a friend I know from Jordan and lived with during my first stay in Egypt. He is Iraqi and I like him a lot. We walked around, met some Iraqi friends of him (It was kind of strange for me that they wanted to eat at McDonalds...) and in the evening went to a reading. Poets from almost every arab country were invited by the Ministry of Youth and read at the Egyptian Journalist Syndicate. The first part was quite embarrasing because there were only a few people listening to the recitation and a lot of talk in the lobby disturbing the event. The second part was better but I got very tired because I had to focus very hard to follow.

So now I go to bed, read some more pages and then drift away...

first breakfast:

and a look around from my tiny balcony:

I can even see the river Nile 

(hardly to recognize but it's in the right corner behind the buildings...)

well, again some words about the quality of the pics: I'm very sorry but my camera died before I started and I had no possibility to get a new one on short notice or even let the old one be repaired. So I shoot all the pics with my mobile and hope you do not bother. I do but that's the way it is... Since I did not publish all the pics from the last trip to Cairo maybe I will show some of them too.

a little later, after strolling a bit through downtown and along the Nile

 

immediate silence, pretty surprising. This park is next to main roads but for some reason the noise is almost inaudible.

 

my flight acquaintance unfortunately had to work so we will meet Thursday or later somewhere in Germany. Instead I met a nice girl in a fast food restaurant - there were no other places, so she shared her table with me. Amal works for a ministry and talks not so much English, so we had to talk Arabic and she agreed that we meet again. I certainly will call her, it was real fun to talk to her.

And I made two sweet girls laugh very hard when they asked me if I was alone in Cairo. Because of my former trip through the Middle East I know that people usually pity you when you confess that you're on your own so I said that a friend of me stayed in the hotel sleeping. The snoring noise I made because I forgot the proper conjugation of "to sleep" for a moment seemed to be very amusing :)

So since about four hours I'm back in town, in the mother of the world, the Egyptian capital Cairo, after some difficulties concerning my accomodation and transport - heard of the Lufthansa strike? My flight was cancelled and it was impossible to get some information by phone because the hotline was so overloaded that I was not even put on hold. And I tried really hard to get through... So Sunday I went to the airport in Düsseldorf and there could change my flight to Egypt air.

In the airplane I met a very nice guy who will work for the national TV station in Cairo for some days so the four hours flying just spun away. Maybe we will meet tomorrow and stroll through Khan Khalili a little.

I was picked up at the airport by a guy sent by the hotel I checked in. Traffic is still crazy and even now I hear the noise although it is past midnight and I'm aloft the city in the 16th floor. The hotel is simple but the guys at the reception seem to be nice. We chatted a little Arabic/English and then I bought a new SIM for my mobile and some water, bread and cheese around the corner. It seems as if I stranded again in the car repair shops area like in Aleppo but the people at the street were friendly and did not seem to care about me walking around after dark.

So now I will smoke one more cigarette, read a bit Kerouac and then get pretty sleepy and have nice dreams :)

the flight is booked, starting on February 22th and staying till March 17th.

Main missions: improving my arabic skills, preparing my PhD and getting some sun :)

I'm exited!


aah, and by the way, although DHL worked kind of blowzy, the package finally arrived at my friend's who brought most of the toys to a hospital for children again. He and some friends collected additional toys und hopefully I will get some pics for the blog from him. When I'm back I will send the toys that are still waiting in my kitchen.

A happy new year to everyone!

For me I wish I will post more again cause that will mean that I travel more. Does not look too bad for this year.

Bad news from Iraq - the last package has not arrived yet. My friend there is looking for it. I do not know what happened...

And for you some winter fun I had during the last weeks. It's snowing. It's cold. I can not ride my bike. But still ... there is fun ;)

First small fun at home:




and some really big fun.


We named her Elisabeth. And I'm sorry the pics are this bad but I only had my mobile with me.

washing time again...


only the plush underneath will stay with me ;)

three days of sun, music and happiness in Haldern

my castleand what made me smile every morning when I crawled out of bed

The beautiful Spiegelzelt


beer, coffee and other good things


mainstage



the day after