Ooh, I’ve been neglecting this. Mainly, to be fair, because I still haven’t found a reliable, easy way of accessing the interweb. It’s Ramadan, too, at the moment, which means shops and services open and close as they feel like, often not opening until 8pm…
Anyhoo – here a few thoughts, in no particular order, that I’ve jotted elsewhere on the web.
Arabic keyboards are fantastic… good job I can touch type, and just change the language…
Klute equivalents in Alexandria are few and far between. The nearest we’ve found so far is called the Portugese Club and is filled – you guessed it – with Portugese expats. Alcohol, though, which makes a change from the most of the rest of Egypt…
Ramadan… no eating during the day. Shops don’t even open until 8 o’clock IN THE EVENING… yet we have to be at uni from 9am. Grrrr.
Enjoy France / Germany / wherever [this is from a discussion board with other Castle year abroaders] – and feel grateful that you’re not in a country where crossing the road is a full-size human game of Frogger. It’s worse when the taxi drivers haven’t had anything to eat all day…
Ooh, even better is the entire Egyptian civil service and various public employees. Unemployment is so high in Egypt that the government literally creates new jobs by inventing new procedures… getting a student residence permit here requires visiting (I think) 8 different civil servants in 3 buildings in 2 cities (not including the Post Office or the embassy in London). It’s ridiculous. Heaven forbid that you put anything they don’t understand on the form (“English? Do you mean American?”) or leave the “religion” space blank. Luckily, the centre here has a little chappy who, as far as I can tell, is employed only to deal with these forms (at least, that’s all he’s been doing for the last 3 weeks).
Speaking of pointless public servants, Egypt has a Tourism Police whose job, from what I can see, is to sit doing nothing at even the smallest “ancient antiquity” and expect money from tourists. You pay 10LE to get into the place, then spend another 20 or so trying to stop the police trying to show you “special government bazaar, tax free, sale today, owned by my cousin/uncle/brother/camel”.
The roads here… most seem to have three lanes of traffic in each direction, though they don’t necessarily all go the same way on the same side. Lights at night are optional, and seem to be used only as a replacement for the horn when it doesn’t work or you don’t get out of the way fast enough. Rather than slowing down when one sees a potential hazard in the road (accident, pedestrian, camel, central reservation), drivers speed up, working on the theory that the obstacle will get out of the way before they have to brake. In fact, the taxis I’ve been in only used the brake when they needed to stop at my destination. I have crossed the roads in Paris – and these are far, far worse. Trust me on this. I was thinking the other day that a fantastic new reality TV programme would involve getting drivers from various countries, stick them in cars in London, and see who’s the last to be arrested/die. I would watch!
Sorry this was such a rubbish post, but as soon as I get a chance to collect my thoughts and upload them properly, I will do. Promise. Ma salaama.
