Cairo

Again we’re moving in a block, eyes darting in all directions, reading the intentions of the people surrounding us. They know where they’re going, we have to huddle up so Mihai can look on the iPad to find the streets we’re supposed to follow to reach our hotel. We left Luxor early in the morning, boarded the train and passed the time people-watching, eating, working on the computer.

We even got an answer to the unspoken question “Why are so many broken windows on this train?” in the form of rural boys throwing stones at the crawling metal caterpillar. More than half of the time it just glides, we had time to notice how they were filling with bricks the space between armed concrete skeletons, making apartments. Or how men worked in the fields, watering the fields with the Nile, or the dump at end of the village with a dead cow in it.

This one is from Cairo, but they look the same.

We were late by three hours, it became dark, the names of the stations were written in Arabic and we had to get off at Cairo Giza, not the terminus station. Our fellow travelers were kind and said they will help us.

And now we have to get out of the train station’s maze, that is combined with the one from the subway, both of them melting in a conglomeration of taxis, van-buses, carts, market and people. We walk for a long time, the backpacks hunkering our shoulders, hoping that the next street is going to be the one that we need. The iPad says that we’ve passed our street, but we couldn’t have, still, we backtrack, we walk some more and eventually Mihai asks: we have ten more kilometers! We have no energy to spare in getting mad at the Google maps that tricked Mihai for the n’th time in reserving a room in a hotel close to a transportation hub, when in reality is a long way away. The man that helped us hailed a taxi and told the driver where we want to go. We crawl and dart, like playing Green light Red light, only with cars. There are no lines, people are walking between cars, it has a flair of India.

Four on a motorcycle, weaving through traffic.

The hotel, a cold and distant four star affair, looks nice but is noisy because of the traffic. Ear plugs to the rescue. Next day we eat a brunch from a very diverse buffet, with horrible imitations of European food (I think they rearrange the leftovers everyday like they are fresh) and lay low in our rooms until we can’t avoid it anymore: we have to get out to see the Pyramids. After all, they are the reason we are here.

We take a taxi and not long after, the driver pulls on the right: a guy wants to talk with us to offer us a guide or a camel trip. We decline and continue our way. In the middle of the heavy traffic there is another guy, making stop signs. The driver tells him something in Arabic, slows down, the other one jumps on the car, and we have to stop again, to refuse another camel trip or drive. “Cars are not allowed inside, you’ll need transportation, there is a big desert!” The scene will repeat itself with little differences three more times. The political scene doesn’t encourage tourists to visit this country, these people are hurt in their businesses and makes them bold enough to jump on people’s cars.

We’ve seen them through the smog haze, triangular orange grey flat shapes, surreal, dwarfing everything. Still we almost couldn’t see them when entering, because of the people “Camel drive!”, “Horse rides!” “Guided walks!” “Show me your tickets!”

Wow! Ginormous! It’s like I’ve become an ant in a world of sand-grey cracked legos stacked in pyramids. One row is almost my height (5’10’’). The first impulse is to climb it, but it is forbidden. People touch it as they’re having their picture taken with the Cheops pyramid. There are many people here, too many for my taste so we press on, toward the second and the third one, to escape the groups and the camel drivers. We are passed by uphill galloping horses, led by their master, while the two unfortunate men are afraid to sit in their saddles, afraid of the pain that for sure will come.

This is not the ending he had in mind...

Far away from the maddening crowd we enjoy their beauty, listening to the whistling wind. The distance, the sand dunes, the line of view, they all have their contribution. We’ve read somewhere that you can never see all of them in one line, it’s just a photo trick. But here we are, having them in a row, or in a line, or peeking one from behind the other.

The three little ones are for the three queens of pharaoh Menkaure (he has the smallest pyramid)

We could stay here for a long time, but we still have to see the Sphinx, so we make our way toward the exit, passing a half eaten horse carcass. We pity a group of tourists perked up on camels, moving slower than us and not having the liberty of choosing their path. At least they are safe from the dogs that have eaten the horse and are defending their territory. Armed with my day pack, I open a trail away from them (they look in our general direction but don’t move) and we pass the den: five yapping puppies (their mother is at some distance, head low, tail between her legs, pacing and surveying us, the others in the pack growling and barking.) As cute as they are, we don’t stop to pet them.

Ileana took this picture.

The Sphinx lies attentively in its own closed yard. Sanded, chipped, noseless, beardless (we’ve seen the beard in the British Museum) he looks ahead with serenity, not minding the people that take pictures and play games.

The boulder in the middle is the Sphinx's head. The smog make everything hazy.

Ioan's view of the Sphinx...

...from his mom's shoulders

Next day we take the metro and get down at Tahir Square. This is the place where the demonstrations take place, where people exercise their newly acquired right to express an opinion, different from the official one. The whole place looks dirty, there is an area with flags and banners, with empty chairs and carpets, just a few people manning the station. I guess some of the demonstrators have a job during the day, they will return in the afternoon. There is a faint smell in the air, pregnant, bitter...I can’t pinpoint it...burnt gun powder! Flashback of the Romanian revolution, an explosion 500 yards away, the orange light on the buildings, then a rush of cold air snapping my head backwards, forcing its way through my open mouth, making me deaf for almost an hour! I tell the children, but they can’t differentiate it.

We continue our way toward the Egyptian Museum, a pink and white building from the beginning of the 20th century. After three different security controls, we enter in a space that hasn’t changed in more than a hundred years. Labels in Arabic and French (from times when French was lingua franca), some typed, some handwritten give a minimal information about objects exposed in dusty wooden and breakable glass, fastened with rusted wire and sealed with lead! The treasures of Egypt, the most complete collection of Ancient Egypt artifacts, stare back at me with clouded eyes.

But we don’t have time now, we have to go directly to Tutankhamun’s room, to enjoy the  mask and everything in there before it gets crowded. And there it is, in the middle of the room, in a secure glass casing, the child-pharaoh’s face, gold skin and enamel eyes. I could say he is serene, no worries, but if I look at him from the front, he looks bored and from the right side, he seems interested and eager to know more.

internet

Maybe he is amused by the continuous stream of tourists oooohing and aaaahing at his jewelry and sarcophagus. His tomb was not the only one found almost intact, Yuya and Tjuya, his great-grandparents have their treasures exhibited and Psusennes I too. These rooms full of beautiful things, a crown, a scepter, a pair of gold sandals, are almost empty, herded tourists passing it by like muggles pass 12 Grimmauld place (an invisible house in the Harry Potter series.)

courtesy pinterest

Having seen the most important things, we give ourselves a two hour limit to roam the rooms as we see fit, the liberty to look at what captures our eye and imagination. Big or small, with room to breath or crowded between similar objects, wood, metal, rock, earth, all hoarded. I even found the original of a copy that I’ve seen in the Luxor’s Nubian museum. Which one is better: the soft-lit copy with an inscription of its own, stating why it is an object of art, or the original bathed in natural light, in a dusty case, with no inscription at all?

Picture from the internet representing the copy or the Nubian archers, each with its own height and characteristics.

Though the vast majority follow the rules, the statues are not the same, their features are different. Akhenaten or Amunhotep IV, the pharaoh who worshipped just one god, Aten, the sun, breaks the mold with his elongated face and carnal lips. His wife, Nefertiti, has a bust, not so beautiful as the one in the Berlin museum. A stelae with three dancers looks modern in its fluidity of the rotating movement. Cheops, the one with the pyramid, has a very small statue, almost one inch tall. There is another statue, of a dwarf with his wife and their children. A robbing servant with a mustache has Indian features. Hatshepsut as a Sphinx! On, and on, and on... oh, how I missed being in a museum in which I could live, every day discovering its secrets! In this one we could get lost, like Maria did!

Eventually we got tired and we want to go home, the only problem is the crowd at the metro. We separate, the boys can take any car, we head for the women-only one. The first metro comes, we’re six bodies away from its doors. The second is right in front of us, but I have doubts it could take all three of us. A woman held her hand in front of me, saying no, we’ll get the next one. The robe of a young lady got caught in the closed door, she cries and hurries to rip the sheer fabric. Slowly, the metro moves away. Now there is an empty space in front of me and a worming mass behind. I turn sideways so as not to get pushed, squish to make room for the exiting women, and we’re thrusted inside. Giggling we look around: they are laughing too, holding their purses above their heads, talking excitedly and stealing glances at our uncovered heads.

Last day in Cairo we choose to visit the Coptic neighborhood, enclosed in a police barrier. We walk like in a daze, noticing the buildings, their decorations, the little vegetation, stores with decorated metal pots. The Coptic Museum requires cameras checked, no photos inside.

Outside of the Coptic Museum with the Roman ruins next to the Egyptian flag, and behind them there are the spires of the Hanging Church

 We’re trying to make sense of what we see: cornices from ancient buildings, clothing, woven fabrics from the 3rd century, some of exquisite finery, a complete hymn book, from the same century, carved wooden doors from 600 AD, crosses that evolved from an ankh and icons.

My hieroglyphs and drawings of different kinds of cross.

In one of the rooms we see a woman, dressed like in the 70’s, barefoot, eating an apple, more dancing than walking, checking from the corner of her eye the cameras and then, taking pictures! Why her and me not? I take a picture of an icon that interests me, the next thing there is a male voice in Arabic over the sound system, the screech of a chair, steps and a guardian telling me not to take any pictures. “OK” and then I am upset, because I got caught and she didn’t (she was in the next room doing the same thing).

We get out and walk a little bit more and stumble over the “Hanging Church” built over the Roman gate used to access water. There is a courtyard, whose walls have new mosaics,  stairs leading to another, inside courtyard, with pictures or paintings of all the Coptic patriarchs, from which we can enter the church.

In the floor there is a long glass window to see the gate. There are pews decorated with arabesques in the darkened wood and an ivory cross. Icons hidden behind glass, a pulpit built over thirteen marble columns, each with a different decoration, representing the Apostles (the black one for Judah), the Christians entering the church, crossing themselves and then going round, touching the walls, the icons, the drapes over the altar doors, in a counterclockwise motion. I follow them and stop to admire the finesse of an icon, when I smell something like frankincense, but not quite.

My mind races across memories, stopping in Meteora: Holy Relics! I look around and see a wooden box with glass walls, burgundy velvet inside on which there is golden embroidery and a small icon of Theodor Stratilat. I know this saint! I move around, there are more, St. Jacob, St. George that killed the dragon, St. Cosma and St. Damian, patrons of doctors, all in similar boxes and velvet, each with a different fragrance. This is an unexpected gift!

St. George' relics, covered in prayers.

What a wonderful way to finish our visit in Egypt. There are many other things to visit, but they will have to wait for a better political time and for us to recharge our depleted energy stores. Until then, I will miss the people and the Egyptian food. Thank you for everything! Shokran!

Maa Salaam Egypt! Good bye!

If one's high enough, one can see a TRIPLE circular rainbow!

5 Things That Make Egypt the Most Interesting Country Yet

I might say that Egypt is my favorite country so far as well, but that might be a bit of exaggeration and a lot of relief from the fact that we're going home soon… so I'll just use the adjective 'interesting,' and go from there.

Interesting can mean a lot of things. It can mean interesting as in "lots to learn about it." It can mean "slightly negative situations you're being polite about." It can mean interesting as in, "haven't seen this before."

So, without further ado, here's my list.

1. Temples and tombs. Having just come from Europe, where the majority of ancient temples/religious buildings are either bare and broken down, Egyptian temples are completely different. (Greek/Roman statues, the decoration of choice, have all been moved to museums, which makes the temples… boring. Churches are too well-known to provide any more interest.)

For one thing, every single inch is part of a relief. Sunken relief, where the shapes' highest layer is on the same level as the rest of the stone, but the outlines are carved into it, or raised relief, where the negative space has been pared down to create the relief, are everywher. Hieroglyphics abound. Some temples (and tombs) have the depiciton of religious scenes from the Book of the Dead, others telling of valor on the part of the pharoahs, and others being perfume recipes.

Apparently, it's really easy to read hieroglyphs— they're basically an alphabet (which is pronounceable) and symbols (which aren't). We could have learned, but decided not to (rather, we kind of forgot one should earn before reaching Egypt.)

Some of these reliefs still have the original paint on them. (The ones that don't were painted, once upon a time). To paint the walls, Egyptians would cover the sandstone with limestone and egg white, then paint the walls in black (powdered and burned animal bones), green (malachite), yellow (egg yolk), red (iron oxide), and blue (lotus). In some of the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, these colors persist.

Now tell me where else in the world you find this stuff. Angkor Wat has bas-reliefs everywhere, but I don't think they were ever painted, and they're not on every wall. Also, we'd seen the stories in India (it's all the Ramayana and the Mahabharata), so there wasn't the same impact.

2. Christian influence. Our first contact with Christianity in Egypt was at the St. Catherine Monastery, a few hours away from Dahab. This is the nice sid. We saw the Burning Bush, 6^th century icons that survived the icon-destruction period, the church, etc.

But elsewhere, outside the monastery, there's the bad side of Christianity (as related to historical monuments). Christians came to Egypt, hid in the tombs of the pharoahs to avoid the Romans (who were persecuting them), and, from then on, they began defacing the Egyptian tombs.

Either the reliefs were pagan (so they had to be destroyed), or they looked like the Virgin Mary (so they had to be modified, i.e., destroyed). Faces have been carved out, legs have been chipped away at…

Egypt, of course, isn't the only place where Christians did this. Greece and Italy have also seen their monuments defaced for one reason or another (either because masterpieces looked like good collection items or, again, were pagan). The only things that survive in some places are things that look like members of Christian religion— winged beings, important historical figures, or the Virgin Mary.

And, of course, Christians weren't the only people to deface the temples. They just show up the most. Also culprits of destruction were the Ancient Romans, who'd sharpen their swords on the temple walls (at Habu Temple, near Luxor), looters from Ancient times, who came to get as many riches as they could find, incautious archeologists, and of course…

Tuthmosis III, whose aunt, Hatshepsut, kicked him out of Egypt so that she could be queen. She declared herself queen-king of Egypt, rationalizing her divine right to rule by saying that she'd had a dream in which her father, Thutmosis II, had blown on her and given her his blessing. To commemorate her father, she built the Temple of Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Queens.

When Hatshepsut died, Tuthmosis III moved into the Valley of the Queens and began removing every single one of Hatshepsut's cartouches to replace them with his own. Dad looked at the temple a bit and then he said, "What idiots."

3. Horse carriages. At first I thought this was just an Aswan thing, but it turns out that, with the exception of Sharm el Sheikh and Dahab, horses standing at carriages are everywhere. Their owners sit on the tongue of the carriage, holding the reins, and when they see you, they ask, "Carriage?"

90% of the time we say 'no,' so the owner gets down from the carriage, leaving the reins somewhere, and starts following after us. "Carriage?"

"No, thank you." Says the person in charge (usually Dad).

"Carriage, sir, you know how much?"

No reply.

"You know how much? Five Egyptian pounds, sir." There are six Egyptian pounds to a US Dollar.

We shake our heads, keep going. The price is actually about 20 Egyptian pounds, plus a little bit 'for the horse.'

"I'm honest, sir, five Egyptian pounds, sir."

One told us 20 Egyptian pounds outright. We hired him to take us back from hte Luxor museum, and when we got down, Dad gave him 25. He asked for 5 more pounds.

"Why?" asked Dad.

"For the horse." Said Ali.

"That's for the horse." Said Dad, gesturing to the money Ali held in his hand.

"Alright," said Ali, "Five pounds for me, then."

The horses range from well-fed and healthy to showing their ribs. Some have knobby knees. They all stand quietly, even without someone at the reins, until the driver gets on and asks them to start walking.

In Luxor, there's even a horse 'parking,' if you will— standing shelters with room for carriages in front. I'm pretty sure these are the stables (walls aren't required because it's so warm here).

Near Cairo, the only place you see horses and carriages (and camels) is at the Pyramids of Giza, which one tries to reach by car and ends up stopping every 10 meters because everyone feels the need to sell you a ride on a horse carriage or camel because 'you're not allowed at the pyramids with car.'

In one way, I can't figure what's better. The cars, which guzzle gas, make noise, pollute the air, etc, or the horses, who also pollute the streets (though, honestly, I always found the smell of horse lovely), but are much healthier for the environment. However, not all the horses seem healthy.

I'm not sure, therefore, which is the better solution for the environment (animals included).

Horse carriages or cars?

4. The Egyptian Museum. This is like… stepping back in time. The museum, opened in 1902, hasn't changed much since then. I think they've added motion sensors to one or two rooms, and they've definitely replaced the light bulbs with those long lights you find in the ceiling of all sorts of institutions like schools and hospitals. There aren't many guards in it— at the beginning the metal detectors don't even work (or, if they do beep, no one checks to see what's making the beeping noise)— at the end you're asked to open your bag to make sure you haven't just opened one of the very simple key locks (or broken the glass in one of the vitrines) and taken a priceless antiquity out.

Some, of course, are small enough to go into a coat pocket. Or pants pocket.

Yes, I was a bit shocked myself. It's a bit weird to be able to go just about anywhere in a museum chock-full of priceless, unique objects (there's 120,000 of them).

I accidentally stepped past a 'No Visitors' sign and got to go all the way to the end of a long hallway with lots of broken objects that are either in storage or awaiting movement to another location.

On the first hallway (I'd already visited most of the museum, bypassing the Mummy Room, which requires a separate ticket), I was stopped by a guy who was like, "You're not allowed back here."

"Sorry!" I said, and turned right back around.

"Ssss!" (the Egyptian version of 'Pst!') I turned back. He was moving a big wooden slat-thing and let me through.

However, I went back down the hallway on the other side, about two minutes later, then turned back and walked (that one was a dead end). At the end of this hallway was a family, who I'd seen before. The girl, a bit older than me, had her hands out to the side, her eyes closed, and she looked like she was in a bit of a trance. The father was running his hands just above her body, her head, her eyes, making all sorts of weird hand gestures that looked a bit like some magical ritual.

I wasn't sure what the protocol is when you end up in an abandoned hallway (it was full of pottery, both in vitrines and  just there, on the floor) with a woman who looked like she was meditating and a guy who's looks as if he's performing some arcane ritual. I looked around the hallway. The mother was acting as if this was completely normal, and she was examining the pots and jugs lying around, her hands behind her back.

I hung around, then asked the girl where she was from. She kind of blinked at me, then said, "Egypt."

"Oh." I said, "What was that?"

The mom suddenly became animated, "Energy meditation! He's an expert—" (gesturing to her husband) "in energy meditation. If you hurt anywhere, he can fix it right now."

I shook my head, half-wishing I could, but I thought I'd heard 'money' somewhere in the sentence, and I said, "I don't really hurt anywhere."

There's an awkward pause, and then I say, "Thank you," and walk back down the hall.

Seriously, though, this museum is full of everything. There's a flax rope found in one of the tombs (parts are basically disintegrated, but the parts that are still in one piece look as if they just came off the field). The placards— basically the descriptions of what everything is, are either yellowed with age, typed on a typewriter from 1902 (probably older— you can see SMUDGES!), written by hand in lovely calligraphy, or (and this is rare) new placards which are obviously printed on a printer.

It's fantastic. At some point though in the future, someone will realize that something isn't right, and they'll probably upgrade it to one of those museums which is fascinating, but has none of that history behind it. Of course, it's not good that people can lean on a sarcophagus or touch a statue's face from lack of guards, but that's the problem of personnel. Personally, I like the fact that nothing's organized, and that you can walk around and have to figure out yourself what's going on and why.

5. The metro. To reach our hotel from the Egyptian Museum, we had to take the metro. After buying our tickets, finding the train, and pushing through the crowd of people, we separated into two groups. Ioan and Dad went off to the rest of the train, while the rest of us went to the women's compartments. (I am so grateful for these compartments).

Women were pressed up almost to the line, waiting for the metro to come. We were all squished together when it finally arrived.

As the doors opened, a man carrying an enormous bag of papers thrust his arm up and tried to protect himself by the incoming sea of women. You know when an explosion goes off in a movie and the characters are thrown back in slow motion?

Well, the women are the explosion, and nothing's in slow motion. He pushed against the flow, managed to get through, and then the doors closed on one woman's skirt or purse strap. The train took off, and all of us waited for the next one.

Second train, an enormous surge of women into the car, basically not allowing the women trying to get out to get out. One looked really quite angry about the whole situation, but I think the rest of us, those trying to get in/deciding not to go in, were just laughing at the silliness of the situation.

Third train. As soon as the doors open, we're all squashed in, all the way to the doors on the other side of the car. We grab hand holds, prepared for the doors to close and the metro to take off, but more women push in, until we're literally packed together like sardines. Everyone is laughing, everyone is talking, and there's so many of us that when the train moves, basically no one budges from her spot.

It's like that for two stations, and then at the second one about three quarters of the people get off. From then on, it's just a normal metro car, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Honorable Mentions

The friendliness.

The cats.

The Pyramids.

The Best Museum in the World

We left Luxor on a 10 hour train ride. The train came late and was getting later and later, it seems that it stopped more than it moved. We had first class. Periodically the conductor came to clean up the car of the scores of guys that didn't have tickets. It was an open layout, we observed the people. Foreign tourists were not allowed to travel on day trains in Egypt. It was the rule for a long time, and we have no idea if it is still on the books, we went to the train station, got the first class tickets and pretended that we know what we are doing. We did it so we could see the country, save some money and also because we were not in the mood for another night on the road. We were the only foreigners. Why wouldn't they let foreigners on day trains? Hard to tell, I doubt that there is an official explanation. The train had third, second and first class cars, the one we were on had some uncracked windows. Most others were broken, a mistery that would be solved in an instant, just a couple of hours into our trip. A very loud noise came from Ileana's side. She ducked, a rock had just hit and broken her
window! I was shaken for a few minutes, fortunately the windows are built well - even broken they hold together. I take that in a linear country like Egypt where everything happens on just a narrow strip around the Nile, the only distraction that the children have is to throw rocks at the train. At night the children might be sleeping and the tourists would be safer. The only other reason why they might not want foreigners during the daytime is that they would see how miserably poor and dirty the country is. But if they would really care about that it might be just easier to clean it up.

Luxor train station

First class in an Egyptian train

Ileana's window after the violent attack

Egypt sightseeing

We didn't go as far as Cairo, we got off in the suburb of Giza, I chose a hotel close to the pyramids. It took maybe a couple of hours to find our hotel, just 5 kilometers away from the train station, but in a neighborhood of several million people. It was a four star high rise, advertised with one name that nobody knew and in reality having a long Arabic name that cannot be pronounced or remembered. Anyhow, compared to our previous hotel experiences in Egypt this was nothing. The place was decent and a room was $35 per night. Supposedly from the terrace we could see the pyramids, but they were a little far, the air was too dirty.

Modern Cairo

We spent four nights and three days. With our plan made to get to Romania in a few days, it was almost like a duty. We had to see what we had to see and nothing more. I also had the desire to keep my family safe and Cairo was again the scene of some violent confrontations. It might be a magnificent city but we made it really simple. One day at the pyramids, one day at the museum and the last one to be decided. Between visiting the first pyramids at Saqqara, much older and smaller than the more famous ones and visiting the Coptic city, we chose the later. The city is surrounded by walls, well limited within the confines of the much bigger muslim Cairo. There were armed guards all over, but there were few people and the soldiers were getting bored. The Coptic religion is close to ours, it is orthodox Christian and one of the oldest unchanged Christian churches in the world. The Coptic museum attempts to present the culture and the history of these people. It was brand new, with the latest technology, clean, well displayed exhibition rooms and beautiful gardens. Even so, it was hardly exciting, we were done pretty quickly. We didn't see any exquisite artifact, the history lesson was almost boring. We moved a couple of blocks down the street and entered the hanging church. Now that was something that was worth the whole trip, a little gem full of old icons and relics. It made our day and instead of going to visit the other coptic attractions we decided that we had enough and were ready to return to the hotel. The two cab trips and the next day transfer to the airport were all we would get for now of the modern city of Cairo, but we didn't feel like we missed much.

The expensive, modern and boring Coptic Museum

The interior garden in the Coptic Museum

Coptic City

The Hanging Church in Cairo

By the way, returning to the hotel from the Coptic city we took a cab. The price we agreed on was 40 Egyptian pounds, I gave him two bills of 20. I looked back to make sure that the kids don't get off in the traffic; a moment later the driver was handing me back two bills of 25, saying that I gave him too much and I should give him some change. I pushed his hand back, laughed, and got off shaking my head. In a split second he had substituted the real money with some old bills without any value and expected me to fall for it. I guess he wouldn't try it if it wouldn't work most of the time. As for me, it is not this incident that I'll remember.

We saw the pyramids! We left our hotel early in the afternoon, got a cab in front of the hotel. The driver started the meter and got in the traffic. A couple minutes later somebody jumped in front to stop the car, came to the driver and started to talk with him in an agitated manner. He pointed to us. The driver explained: he is not allowed to take us to the pyramids, we should get down there and take a camel. I said no thank you, we should go further, as far as the car can go. For the next 10 minutes, this repeated numerous times. We understood that the driver could not drive over the people who stopped him, he could not avoid them, we had to play the game. Everybody had a similar script. We are not allowed there, the car cannot get in, the only choice is the camel. The driver got better at diffusing the attacks by referring people to me, even blaming me for my close-mindedness. I got better at getting rid of people, pretending we are not going to the pyramids, we don't speak English or using other various tactics. Twenty meters at a time we advanced toward our destination, the driver left us 100 meters from the ticket booth. I apologized for the inconvenience we caused him and gave him a good tip. Poor guy. We charged through the mob, got our tickets and took the path toward the first pyramid. But we were blocked again by people demanding to see our tickets that supposedly were not good. I laughed out loud and refused to show them any ticket, even saying we don't have tickets. It worked, it took them by surprise and they were out of arguments, how do I dare not show them the tickets? Of course, they were not officials, just touts trying to convince us to take a camel or a horse ride. We passed the first block and slowly, very slowly, the harassers started to ignore us, just like we've ignored them. We started to look around us and came face to face with the first pyramid, then the second and further away in the background, the third one.

What's to do and see at the pyramids? First, people get in, walk through dark narrow corridors up or down to the burial chamber. Then they get out, wonder out loud what got them to do that and swear not to ever do that again. Second they take a horse ride, a convenient way to try something for the first time in their life and get a memorable experience. The handlers have no safety gear or requirements and a weird sense of humor, they have fun running their horses as fast as they can and enjoying the screaming and yelling of the terrified tourists. Groups of tourists also can get to take their picture next to a camel. Usually their guide makes an arrangement with a camel owner, I don't know how much his cut is, but he will urge his group to pay $1 each per picture. Still, by far the most common form of entertainment at the pyramids is the camel ride. The tourist agrees on a price and gets on the camel. After a while the handler demands much more to lower the camel. After noisy quarreling, sometimes begging, sometimes pleading and crying, the tourist ends up throwing a bunch of banknotes or the whole wallet at the camel handler and the camel bends its knees and lowers the rider to a safe height.

We witnessed all of these but did not get to experience any of it first hand. We settled conveniently in the minority, walking around, looking around and just enjoying the view of the pyramids. Further more we were the only people that actually walked away in the desert to get a better view. Suddenly alone we got to have the whole place in an unusual, magical way. The three main pyramids and the score of smaller ones lined up in different, interesting ways, as we were trying to get a better picture. Hesitant, I looked at my wife and asked her: "Is this really the best place we've seen so far?" She smiled back at me, confirmed that it is and we both felt a similar combination of exhaustion and quiet satisfaction. We've covered the whole world visiting everything left and right, we dodged all the road blocks of the last few miles, fended off the aggressive camel herders and the noisy tourist groups and we got here. It was an extraordinary achievement, but for a moment the weight of this whole trip came over me, I couldn't rejoice, I was surprised by my blasé reaction. For a split second a million images passed through my eyes, from the wonders of Asia, the beauties of Australia and Africa and the treasures of Europe, and this was here all along, some pyramids from 5000 years ago. Why did we bother to travel the long way, but even more, why does the humanity bother at all now and why did it bother for the past 5000 years?

The sun was getting ready for setting. We watched in the distance the buses pulling away and the hordes clearing up. Soon it seemed that we were the only one left. Only then we realized how far we are from the main road and that we are in danger of being closed in without even seeing the sphinx. We started to hurry, crossing over the dunes. We stopped for a little for the children to marvel at the decaying carcass of a horse. We took a little detour to avoid a pack of hungry aggressive dogs. We eventually made it on a path and saw the sphinx, we found a guardian and asked for directions of how to access the enclosure. He was not a guard, he was a policeman, so he really wanted to help, but he wanted a backsheeh first! Sorry, come on! In the last few minutes we got in close to the sphinx, we took some more pictures and started to walk toward the exit, along with everybody else.

Nice wallpaper in the studio!

Taking an unusual picture of the pyramids

No jealousy here, my nose is cutter... 

But we couldn't just leave. We turned around every few steps, we looked some more, from different angles, and with every minute we witnessed a different hue of sunset. They locked the gates in front of us and still we stayed a minute more. Eventually out in the street, we decided to stay some more, entered an almost empty Pizza Hut and found a table with the view of the pyramids and lingered an hour more until it was dark...

You never knew that Pizza Hut can be so good

After a lot of research we decided that we are not going to take chances and we are leaving the cameras in the hotel. The website of the Egyptian Museum was last updated in 2003 when they had a special fee for photography, but since then they decided that they just keep all the cameras at the entrance. We took a cab to the subway stop and a few stops later we were in Tahir Square.

Tahir Square, in between clashes

There was some movement and some noise as we got out of the subway but we oriented pretty fast and took a side street out of the plaza. Burned down buildings around us, a few hundred meters away we entered the busy but safe grounds of the Egyptian Museum. Constructed in 1902 as a magnificent neoclassical building that was to house the treasures of ancient Egypt, the museum long surpassed its capacity and is described as a mess even by its fans and curators. The country leadership took a keen interest in its collections and displays and political decisions affected the experience, including the "no photo" policy. Famously, the first president of the republic, regarded the exhibition of the mummies as indecent or disrespectful and he forbade that. But soon he changed his mind when he realized how much rich foreigners would pay for that, so the mummies are displayed in several rooms in the museum with a special entrance fee that is double the main ticket. We asked each other and realized that we have no special interest in the mummies, we'd rather save the money and focus on the most important art exhibits. Ileana Ruxandra took the lead and through the lateral stairs forced us not to stop at all and go to the best end, Tutankhamun's treasure. But as we entered the building, I was shocked. I was walking almost backwards not being able to take my eyes away. A strange feeling got hold of me, "this is the most amazing museum I've ever seen." The experience cannot be properly described. Our six hours there brought indescribable joy and awe mixed with the feeling that still haunts me that it was not real, something so good doesn't really exist, maybe it was just a well done Hollywood set or an elaborate virtual reality computer program! It gave me such a high that maybe it should be illegal.

How does someone decide which is the best museum in the world? One way could be to do what we did, go around the world and see them all. It is a lot of work, it is expensive, I cannot recommend that, it might not be a realistic approach. Another way could be to search on Google. You would get the usual million of results, basically lists made by various travelers or articles from magazines. The lists are decent, they account for the typical variance in individual taste and interests and occasionally the Egypt Museum would make it in the top ten. I see their point, but they are all wrong! I struggled to figure a way of transforming my subjective feeling into an objective, indisputable argument. I have it. There is a website, http://www.hillmanwonders.com/, an older guy who visited more than 100 countries and travelled more than a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) starting a list of the best wonders of the world in 1968! He says he is the "world's leading wonder authority" and I do believe him. On his site he has short descriptions of 1000 places and a ranking of the top 100 wonders of this world. There are six museum listed, Egypt Museum at number 34, Louvre at 41, Metropolitan at 47, Ufizzi Gallery at number 61, British Museum at 89 and Hermitage at number 94. He is right and then I understood. The Egyptian Museum is not just that, it is a wonder in itself. It is the classical monumental building with 100 huge rooms. It is Alladin's cave, with countless blinding riches and narrow dark dusty corridors full of spider webs. It is an exhibition of typewriting styles and papers, shelves and cabinets that have been in use in the last hundred years. Behind a column you can find unopened crates that nobody knows what might contain and a few meters away the most modern case and sensors around a piece returned from Metropolitan a few years ago. There are a few exhibits that are labeled with decent explanations but the most fantastic are nearby, statues or sarcophagi from 3000 years ago without any explanation whatsoever. I doubt that anybody knows what most of the objects represent and that makes it much more exciting. Every few steps we found something beautiful and amazing. We started with the mapped, labeled attractions. Obviously, the Tutankhamun room is the best, the most fantastic thing that ever existed. The main room is small, the walls are covered in dirty blue cloth so full of dust that some have traced their name in it. It might take a few minutes to dust it, but it looks like nobody has ever thought of that. It doesn't matter. The 120-kilogram gold sarcophagus or the funeral mask spark through all the dust, undisturbed. We visited the adjacent rooms and then spread around moving at our own pace but in the same general direction. Occasionally we ran into each other and had a chance to share some discovery. Supposedly there are 120,000 objects exhibited, we might have seen most of them, but it wasn't too much. There was some chronological order that gave some logical sense and the occasional treasure with a brief explanation punctuated our tour and helped us progress through the 3000-year Egyptian history. Distractions became attractions, the guard and the curator going around with a list and changing the lead seals (!) on some case doors or a team of 11 people moving a small vase. There was a guard with a post-it note with something on it, a couple of others watching him, seven women, some nicely dressed and some from the cleaning crew plus a very courageous man who took a dust cloth and after putting the vase on a shelf, stepped up on it and stretched to get behind some glass panes and clean the dust. I watched him for a few minutes amazed at the risk he was taking, up above some exhibits, stretching his hand to reach further behind some little 3000 year old objects. Then, more then ever, I felt the pain of not being able to photograph, that is the kind of shot that you don't believe even when you see it. Not to mention the incredible Egyptian inefficiency, 11 people immobilized for 20 minutes to dust one shelf! To top it all, at the end, to get out, we had to open our bag so they could check that we didn't grab anything to take home!

The Egyptian Museum

It might sound bad, but I am glad that they never got going with the plan of opening a much bigger, modern site for the Egyptian museum. With the revolution and the mess that will encroach this country for the next 20 years, I am sure they'll never have time and money to modernize this place and as long as that won't happen it will remain without question the best museum in the world.

Sculpture at the airport. Good Bye Egypt