How am I doing?

I had an amazing last week, gifted with great and unique events! It is for sure the most interesting so far in Egypt and one of the most enriching I ever had.

To start with, going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. More on this topic in the previous post.
Part of this event I also got to see Annie Leonard – the producer of the “Story of Stuff” video, she was a great speaker.

I also saw Al Gore talk on climate change. It was the best live speech I’ve ever seen. Amazing ice-breaking jokes, dramatic tone, change of mood, high energy …
I will remember the one with “I used to be the next president of the US”; cannot stop thinking how the US and the world would be if he actually won against George W. Bush.
He mentioned a very shocking fact: US had used in 10 years cans worth the Aluminum quantity enough to build 25 times the world’s aviation fleet.
In his opinion, Egypt’s chance to grow economically and to become green at the same time is to engage and be the main hub for the Desertec project initiated by the Germans.
He ended with “political will is a renewable resource” which is very relevant for Egypt’s reality.
The guy sitting next to me was the manager of a private equity company. Before the speech he told me that he invests in dairy and other consumer goods business. After the speech I told him “you should invest in green energy”, he answered “I will” … that sounds promising …

I ended the week in Hurghada, one the most popular tourist destinations in Egypt on the Red Sea coast. Not really my type of place but I enjoyed it anyways once I found a very good beach, swam a bit, saw some fish, had great sea food and pharaoh massage: D
I have to mention that this place is dominated by Russians, I bet there a few oligarchs around, there was a lot of writing in Russian on the streets and many waiters and staff were talking Russian. One of them told me he learned after taking a 2 months course in town and by practicing a lot with the tourists, he even changed his name, Max!

The Hurghada experience came just 24h hours after walking around in the slum so I felt like being on a different planet … after all, this is what Egypt is for me …

Labels: al gore, egypt, hurghada, trip

Last week I’ve been to Egypt for a business trip. Fortunately I stayed for the weekend as well. A fascinating country and my time there was full of new and interesting experiences. Here are a few:
- I visited the Egyptian Museum where thousdands of objects are displayed, especially from the time of the Pharaohs. I was particularly impressed by Tutankhamun’s room and horrified by how ugly the mummies are, especially the one with broken skull. In Coptic Cairo I found fascinating the existence itself of churches and synagogues
- The famous Giza pyramids are just on the outskirts of the city. They are very impressive and next to them, humans look like ants. For some reason, the Sphinx made a huge impression on me.

- In Cairo, my hotel room was at the 16th floor and in the first night at the 17th floor there was a traditional Egyptian party – that kept me awake for a while …
- Dahab on the Read Sea is one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I’ve been to. Amazing sunrise over the Saudi Mountains and the Gulf, clear and warm water, coral reefs accessible within seconds after getting in the water with amazing water life – great place for snorkeling and diving to see thousands of aquatic beautiful creatures. One of the most interesting for me was seeing Nemo and a black long fish attacking a weak octopus and then she spread the brown ink and the fish left …
- Food portions are huge and besides that on the house they can bring a lot of appetizers. Since coming back I constantly feel my stomach full though it is time to eat :) I got to eat filled pigeons, rabbit, quail, lots of fish and sea fruits; the most disgusting thing was the veal marrow soup … beee!
- Smoking shisha is a national sport and is very cheap, from 0.5 to 3-4 EUR the most expensive one. I even saw someone with a shisha in the car, on the right seat
- Many buildings are almost finalized but not totally. There is some law that if they finalize it, including exterior they need to pay taxes. Because of that many people don’t finalize them and the color of the house is that of the bricks. Altogether looks like a brown city, especially when looking at it from the plane ... but people dont pay taxes and save some pounds
- Cairo is very crowded, full of old cars which pollute a lot. Since streets weren’t conceived for so many cars they build streets on top of the streets :) ... also it is not rare that you can find camels and donkey on the streets
- Being an oil producing country (they don't export much), petrol is very cheap and so are taxis. For the high quality cab I took to airport I paid some 6-7 EUR for 20 km or so.
- Until recently there was a law saying that the landlord of a flat needs to rent the place to many generations of the successors of the rentees in case they die, recently they reduced it to one generation only. This law produced a lot of chaos since people didn’t want to rent their place anymore, rent was also fixed post first generation so one of my colleagues is paying for a flat in a very good area, 3 EUR a month …
- On the way back to Cairo the bus driver was smoking and since I was in the first row I told him I am allergic to smoke. He said “driver works, driver smokes! I arrange a place for you somewhere else!” So he went took a guy, sent him to the front seat and I took his seat … problem solved! At 3.30 am somewhere in the desert the bus stopped working; for 1.5 hours it was quiet, I could only hear cars passing by from time to time and the Qur'an playing loudly on the phone of one of the passenger. Finally another bus came and picked us up and made it to Cairo
- On the plane from Cairo to Istanbul, with Egypt Air, the flight started with a prayer in Arabic on the screen and ended with Tom & Jerry :)

Enjoy more photos on my facebook album Cairo & Dahab

Labels: egypt, trip