Our Trip to Dahab

We had an extra long weekend in honor of Eid Al Adha. Eid means feast. So this is a feast that honors Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Still, Muslims make a sacrifice at this Eid. Often, they will purchase and sacrifice a goat or sheep and share the meat with the poor as an act of charity. We could see many goats in the streets in preparation for this holiday. So, to avoid hearing the bleating pleas for mercy, we left town and went to the beach.

This is our crew: Paul, Carren, Regina, Zach, Rachel. Paul is a friend who teaches at a British school. Regina and Carren are teachers at my school. Jade, Paul's roomate, is taking the picture. He is a teacher at yet a third international school.



Dahab is a small city on the Sinai peninsula. It's kind of the bohemian option instead of going to the more well known Sharm al Sheikh. There are lots of little cafes with pillows and couches along the water. The weather was hot and sunny during the day, even in December, but the water was a bit cold. There were beautiful fish and coral to see, so wearing a wetsuit enabled us to stay in the water longer. I never knew how buoyant wetsuits can make you! Snorkeling in a wetsuit was just like floating along the current.



Here is Zach with his diving instructor. (I took a one-day refresher diving course. For any divers out there, this is mostly because my initial certification was Naui, and now I'm Padi certified, like everyone else. -Z)


It was always a big treat coming back to the hotel to see how the room cleaner had arranged the towels. Here are my two favorites. Can you see the glasses on one of the swans?


Dahab means gold in Arabic. Our Bedouin guide on our desert day hike told us a folktale alluding to the belief that there was once gold in the mountains.

sinai, thanksgiving weekend

We went for Thanksgiving weekend to a little beach camp on the coast of Sinai between Taba and Nuweiba. Being almost winter, there were very few tourists, but there are a whole series of camps with huts on the beach that other times get crowded. Our friends Rebecca and Walid rented a car and we drove out with them at dawn Thursday morning, which took around 5 hours. We came back a day earlier than they did, and a car with driver reservation we'd made fell through, so we wound up on the bus back, over 7 hrs.

The desert we crossed is big, as Walid and I are motioning, but it's not really very flat.


Here's the crew: me, Rachel, Walid and Rebecca.


The huts are simple, with rug-over-sand floors and a foam mattress on the rug, but the whole idea is you're there for the beach.


Sunset over the beach.
This "castle," built starting about 15 years ago, was where we ate a very nice Thanksgiving fish dinner.

Morning: tea, coffee and beach.


Looks like we'll be going back to Sinai next week for another longer weekend.

trying video

A very very short video of the beach.

sunset from the window

food update

We found black beans! The panic is over! These from one of the upscale stores with a lot of imported goods, imported from Minnesota.
And molasses, called black honey in Arabic. From the local bodega. Crocodile brand.

And ketchup. Okay, we'd found ketchup at an upscale store, but it's nice to realize it's just downstairs at the bodega, and in classic glass bottle style.

The strange thing about living in a country where the summer heat is oppressive and the winter cold mild is that produce feels the same way about it, and there is generally better produce in the winter. These were our first purchase of strawberries for the season. Yes, even here, without giant megacorp agriculture, we get some crazy multi-strawberries.

We've heard peaches aren't far behind.

on food

People keep asking me what we're eating here. We're eating pretty much what we eat at home, with the exception that we can't find black beans, long and hard as we might search. So anyone coming to visit us, bring some dry black turtle beans. Black soy beans are available, but they're totally different. We have canellinis, navys, kidneys, garbanzos, lentils, even pintos and limas and of course favas, but none quite scratch the black bean itch. Also we're waiting and hoping for kale and chard to come into season. Broccoli season has begun.

A connected question is if we're having a tough time eating vegetarian here. The diet of the average Egyptian seems to mirror our diets pretty well in being vegetarian, mostly. Beans and vegetables and fruits and bread are the staples of the diet here. Eggs and milk and cheese are common. Meat is eaten, but most Egyptians can't afford to eat it on a daily basis, and many can't even weekly. The way chicken dominates the American palate is absent here (most of it seems to be sold through KFC), as is pork, though we're told that those who look hard enough find pork chops. Chicken exists, but is no more common than beef or lamb. Pigeon and goose are also common, as is fish. Islam forbids the forbidding of that which isn't forbidden, so Muslims aren't supposed to consider themselves vegetarians, but that doesn't mean that they have to eat meat more than occasionally. The typical Egyptian eats fava beans and pita once or twice a day.

Below is a stir-fry I was working on with some of the most common vegetables here. These are all from a produce guy downstairs from our building who sells only the most common local veggies and fruits, cheap and fresh and very convenient. Here we have tomatoes, eggplant (both thin white and fat purple are usually downstairs), onions (sometimes only red, and often half-red half yellow), cilantro, carrots, bell peppers, zucchini and garlic. Also always downstairs are potatoes, small lemons, hot peppers, spinach, okra, and yams. As is typical for Egypt, often the produce is out, but it takes some yelling and patience to find the seller.

We didn't detail it, but the bigger market two or three entries ago has much more selection, including many imported items. Guavas are local and abundant and cheap, apples imported and expensive. There are also supermarkets nearby with produce wrapped in styrofoam and plastic-wrap, but they just look sad in there.

Also, we're up to all our usual baking madness. Cakes, cookies, brownies, you name it. Rachel took no time getting used to an oven with numbers from 1-10 instead of temperatures. Here the pancake king strikes again, although alas no maple syrup. We're using cream cheese and jam.

We also haven't mentioned it, but alcohol is easy to find. Even during Ramadan a few liquor stores stayed open. A couple of chains deliver liquor in under an hour, and are popular since most drinking seems to be done in homes. Most restaurants don't sell liquor, and cafes almost never do. Maadi has a small variety of bars, with prices generally about what we'd pay in NYC.

This brings me to restaurant culture. Egyptians seem to love to hang out in cafes and restaurants, usually just for a drink, usually juice or tea, and maybe an appetizer or dessert, or maybe a series of appetizers spread over hours. There might be a bit of stigma about eating a full meal out, like it means you're not getting fed well at home.

dates

Clockwise from top left: black date as sold, red date as sold, red date with a big bite out of it, black date slipped out if its skin.

Dates are wildly popular in Egypt. Fresh dates come in red, less ripe, and black, more ripe. When red the meat of the date is like under ripe pears or granny smith apples: crispy and acidic. When black the flesh is gooey and soft like mashed bananas. The skin of a black date is papery and annoying but it's easy to pop the fruit out of the skin. The skin of a red date doesn't come off and is eaten with the flesh. Sometimes you get lucky and get one that walks the line, loose on the outside but still a bit crunchy inside.

A Little History

Zach and I organized a day trip out to some of the earlier (and lesser) pyramids. There were six of us total with a very knowledgeable guide.

This site is known as Saqqara. It is one of the oldest pyramids and it was a huge burial site for a few pharaohs and then countless numbers of nobles and priests.

Saqqara is across from Memphis, which was one of the many capitals of Egypt throughout the Pharaonic period. Memphis was the place where people lived. Saqqara was the place where they went for eternity. Ancient Egyptians put a lot more money and energy into their eternal residence than they did in their living home. This is an archaeological dig in which it is possible to see three different layers of burial sites, as people were being buried here for 3,000 years. The green that is in the background of the picture is the fertile land along the Nile, but the transition from fertile farm land to barren desert is quite abrupt.



Cop on a camel. We never get tired of it.




This is my (rachel) favorite display from the museum. Since Saqqara was such a huge burial site, there is a TON of information about daily life, burial rituals, etc. This is an actual mummy (which we never get to see at most sites). Most of the time you get to see an empty sarcaphogus, but you never get to actually see the mummy. Unfortunately the glare makes it hard to see but you are looking at a mummy's head and the body is wrapped in linen. This mummy (including the linen) is 3,000 years old at least. There is still flesh and even the lines of some veins that are still visible.


This is Zach's pick. It is petrified cheese. There was the faintest fuzzy layer of mold, but I think I have eaten cheese with more fungus on it than these. I am still not conviced, though, that these aren't just rocks put in a bowl to look like ancient cheese.




Here's Zach cruising by a Sphinx. How's that for scale?


This is a giant statue of Ramses II. It fell over and only broke into two pieces. It was submerged in a swampy canal of the Nile when it was found.

The Other Side of the Tracks

This is the little vegetable market where we like to do our week's shopping. Since there is a subway line that runs through Maadi, we have to cross over the tracks on an elevated ramp to get to this side of the neighborhood. There is about a one block span that feels a little rougher around the edges (more like the real Cairo), but then it transitions right back into fancy restaurants, tall apartment buildings, and cute boutiques.



Zach is locking up our bikes while we fill up on produce. On the way back, our baskets will be overflowing with fruits and veggies.






The vegetable purveyors are particularly proud of their displays. They are always friendly and I (Rachel) get to practice some basic Arabic. Nuss kilo is a half kilo; ruba kilo is a quarter. Berengen is eggplant and felfel is pepper. These eggplants are 4 LE/$0.80 per kilo, while the peppers above are 10 LE/kilo.




Zach is chowing down on kushari, Egypt's big thumbs down to the Atkins diet. This bowl is filled with rice and three different kinds of pasta (spaghetti, small tubes, and vermicelli). Then they sprinkle lentils, chickpeas and lots of friend onions on top, and give you a small personal bowl of spicy tomato sauce (empty here). Finally you can dress your kushari with vinegar (small pitcher) or oil with hot peppers soaking in it.




Here is a typical juice stand. You can tell which fruits are in season based on what's hanging from the bags. When we first arrived there were mangos and guava everywhere. Now it is pomegranate (called roma) and orange season. The big sign says Jewel of Maadi.


They press the pomegranate in halves just like an orange. It took three pomegranates to make this one glass of juice, which cost about $0.60. Anti-oxidant magic!

opera

No picture this time, you'll have to use your imagination. We decided to check out the Cairo Opera last night. They were showing Puccini's Turandot. Turandot was originally a classic Persian tale, made into an opera by Puccini in 1926. The story takes place in China, but of course the characters sing in Italian. The troupe, though, was the Chinese National Opera. So a Persian story being sung by Chinese actors playing Chinese parts in Italian in Egypt. The orchestra was mostly Chinese, but they borrowed some local Egyptian musicians, too. The handbill was in two versions: Chinese/English and Arabic/English, but the subtitles were exclusively in English.

The costumes and dance numbers were especially good, maybe because they transcend language.

The experience was wholly enjoyable. The opera house is beautiful - the whole building is white marble. There is a dress code requiring men to wear jacket and tie (and thank goodness there was also a tie lending system on premises). The tickets are very affordable, so we can gamble about how good the performance will be.

miscelany I

This time some disjointed images.

This is Carefour, the French-owned box store here in Cairo, a 15 min cab ride from home. Yes, we have access to retail junk of all stripes. Giant bags of snack-sized Snickers? We got 'em. In one stop we got an electric heater for the winter, Egyptian cotton sheets, a giant bottle of olive oil, potting soil, bulk spices, and frozen treats.

This is for the bike fans: I swear this was the only patch kit available. No sandpaper piece, but lots and lots of patches. Lots and lots. We've only needed one so far, but with the shape of the roads I expect we'll need more.

You're all probably used to this view from our dining room by now. Pyramids, I don't need to remind you, are on the right. This is about as close as we get to rain. Not wet, but nice all the same. The weather now is pleasant, cool enough for long sleeves at night, and even generally during the day. No sweaters or jackets yet. There was some rain in different parts of our neighborhood. We didn't see it, but friends report that there were mud waterfalls cascading off the valley walls in our favorite Thursday hiking spot (Wadi Degla). There was also about a five minute shower during the week. If you were outside, you got soaked. If you were inside, you didn't even know anything happened.

One last shot of Norway:

Rachel is standing around the corner from where my tiny apartment was, on one of many many streets forbidden to motor vehicles. While it's now cool in Cairo, wool coats are still a long way off here.

Norway part 2: Fjords

What is a fjord, really, you ask? It's in between a bay and a river. This fjord that we rode this ferry down looked much like the Hudson river, and I kept having to tell myself that it was salt water. We are drinking hot chocolate to help stay a little warmer as the chill air blew through our meager layers from Cairo.



On the way up the fjord, we were treated to brilliant fall colors. It was like fireworks compared to the constant brown of Cairo.


Trolls are very popular in Norway. Not the trolls themselves perhaps, but their imagery. Yes, trolls are generally depicted with tails eating wild mushrooms.


Though it is only the start of October, the train on the way back to Bergen passed over a snowy plain.

The hypnotizing fjord, close up. We really only believed that it was salt water after seeing a fleet of starfish.

We stayed one night in a cabin with a little deck right over the fjord. One can't help but feel romantic in a setting like this.

Norway part 1: Bergen

And now for something completely different: Bergen, Norway. Bergen is the opposite of Cairo: it rains at least a bit every day. It's cold, clean, green, efficient and quiet. Some of this has to do with being in Norway, and some with having only about 2% as many people as Cairo. This is looking down on the city from a viewing platform at the top of the trolley. We walked up a public trail that was filled with locals getting some exercise, and then rode down the funicular.

Bergen has lots of bikes, despite the fact that nothing seems far enough to justify not walking, and parking is as artistic as it is practical.

This is the reason I was in Bergen: Rex Sean O'Fahey, the world foremost expert on Zubayr Pasha. At least for now. He is warm and amazingly helpful.


Bergen has great cobblestone sidewalks in interesting patterns, though this one takes the cake. The houses, especially at night when lit from within, look warm and inviting - almost fairy tale like.

Because of the huge amount of rain, the hills around the city are full of waterfalls. This was taken on our hike beyond the platform above.