From Cairo to Alexandria

Ramses train station is chaotic, and the ticketing system seems unnecessarily complicated. There are separate ticket lines regimented by type of train, final destination, passenger nationality, and ticket class desired. The signs telling you which line is correct are exclusively in Arabic, including the numbers. It took all of my months of language training to find the correct line. It took that same training to understand that I had not actually found the correct line. Finally, it took away all of my pride to have to be led to the correct line by a patient station attendant.

Once there, I was reminded that Cairenes don't queue, they just rush. Even worse, you haven't necessarily won even after muscling your way to the ticket agent. You can be right in the middle of a transaction - actually in the process of handing over your money - and still your position isn't secure. People will still try to get ahead of you, either by insinuation or by brute force. Once you've managed to buy your ticket and make it to your seat, though, the trip to Alexandria is actually pleasant enough. Trains run regularly and usually take only between two-and-a-half and three hours. First class tickets are cheap - depending on whether you get the Turbini (LE 50) which makes one stop, or the Francese (LE 35), which makes quite a few more. I took the Turbini out and the Francese return, not by design, but because in each case that was the next thing leaving that had available seats. I also wanted one of the first class cabins which are comfortable and not much more expensive than the fairly miserable third class seats. Only a few liberal arts majors would suffer through sitting in the third class carriages and for reasons that they will articulate to you poorly.

The train stopped in Tanta, about half-way between Cairo and Alexandria, where a handful of vendors selling snacks and newspapers boarded. I had no apropriate snack money, having used the last of my reasonabe-sized currency to pay for a taxi to the train station. The vendors were nonetheless doing well with my fellow passengers. Too well, in fact, because they had only made their way half-way down the carriage when the train begin to slowly pull out of the station. Still, they continued to trade. Every additional purchase raised my blood pressure. "Get off the train!" I thought at them, "You're going to get stuck on the train!" As we gathered speed, all of them hopped off - except one, who was stuck selling sweets to a little old thing. My jaw tensed in sympathy as memories of my nine years of hard labor at Albertson's Supermarket begin to surface. I watched this little old crone insist on clawing exact change out of her bag. Our man did not have time for this. "This can't end well," I realized, "he's going to be stuck on board all the way to Alexandria." The carriage conductor wasn't going to let that happen, however, and scowled at him from next to an open carriage door, through which the landscape could be seen zipping by at an alarming speed. The nasty old lady finally passes over her money and our man makes a bolt for it. I can hardly watch. I already realize before it happens that he's going to die. He jumps from the train... he hits the ground... and nothing! He jogs it off. He doesn't even lose anything from his basket. I am ecstatic! I am breathless with excitement! I have just witnessed unbelievable acrobatics! Laws of physics have been broken! Nobody else seems to care. I realize that this same scene probably repeats itself on every hourly train that passes through Tanta.

Alexandria is freezing when I arrive. I haven't prepared for this at all and am shivering as I walk down the platform. A railway worker sees this and does what I hope was a really exaggerated version of my shivering.

"Bard!" I say. Which might mean "cold!"

"Your Arabic is very good!" he replies.

Yes, I start to think to myself, yes it is.

Alexandria may have been freezing, but the northerly winds had cleared the sky of pollution. There was a contrast between the clouds and the sky that simply doesn't exist in Cairo. I took a picture as proof, but with my cell phone instead of my adult camera. Members of my family have commented on the fact that I like to take travel photos. It's true, I do. Unfortunately, I had left my lovely Canon G10 in Cairo. My first trip out of Cairo and I'm snapping photos with a primitive cell phone camera. Gutted.

I was also struggling to find the hotel at which I had hoped to stay. Street names change as quickly as the political climate in Egypt, so it's very easy to find yourself with an outdated map. Interestingly, the streets whose names have so often changed are themselves often ancient. For example, the hotel I was looking for was just off the Sharia Nabi Daniel, which is believed to be only the most recent iteration of one of the two primary streets plotted by the architects of Alexander the Great's eponymous city. Whether the fault of my map or my navigation, I wasn't finding what I was looking for and I hate not knowing where I'm going. Or rather, I hate looking like I don't know where I'm going, mostly because the touts are a lot harder to dodge if you're genuinely confused and you show it. I did manage to shake off one guy who was trying to lure me into a pension by confidently walking off in the opposite direction. After another fruitless half-hour of combing the streets where my hotel should be, I finally decided that I'd just stay anywhere with a bed. Moments later, I ran into the same tout - actually the owner of a pension - as he dragged a young Austrian couple who were staying with him to the duty free shop. I recognized the two from the train (two of maybe six Europeans on a train of hundreds) and they let me know that the place would do, so I took a room. Now I would have to live with the embarrassment of accepting the help of someone I had taken pains to avoid only an hour before - circumstances this guy was going to go out of his way to remind me of several more times before the night is over.