Boarding the Train Bound for Nowhere

After successfully returning Kei to the hotel for his bus, Isis and I had several hours before it was time to go and board our train. We stayed in the hotel for a while, surfing the internet. It was sure nice to be in a country again where they just have wifi available in the bulk of hotels and other places as well. India was sure stingy on that score.

Since we were going to end up in Cairo and Isis' flight was later the day of our arrival, I thought it might be a good opportunity to go shopping for some items of silver. My friend Channa asked me to get a couple of silver pendants with the names of her daughters put on them in hieroglyphics. I wasn't sure how to recognize real silver, nor was I sure I could get a very good deal, being the crack negotiator and haggler that I am. Ahem! With Isis' strong personality and willingness to go to the mat on some things, I thought she could help me with that. So I started looking up silver places in Cairo. Isis began looking up silver places in Luxor. She found a shop that was highly recommended on the internet that was near Luxor Temple. It was frequented by many Taiwanese and they all spoke highly of it. We decided to go down there and have a look, since we had some time.

We arrived in the area and first found the papyrus shop that was also recommended by the Taiwanese netizens. We went in and found a really nice man (whose name was too difficult for me to have a hope of remembering) who was an artist and had a team that painted lots of different papyruses of different sizes and scenes. And they were very reasonably priced. Isis didn't correct the man's thought that she was from Taiwan, and that meant that anything we bought would get 20 percent off, making them even cheaper. I couldn't help but buy some more. These I was sure were going to send the profits to the right people. And the man was so nice. So I now have some nice gifts for some people.

Isis acted as if she was Taiwanese, according to the store owner. She hemmed and hawed and thought things over very carefully and took a lot of time. A LOT. I should have gone out to find the silver shop while she was deciding, because it was supposed to be nearby. But I didn't. I watched her shopping instead.

As our time was closing before we would need to go to the train, the shop owner's friend came in to say hi. His name was Moses. Hmmm... Was he the same Moses as the owner of the silver, which was Moses Jewellery? Yes. Oh!!! I wish I had gone to see him sooner. I had this errand for my friend, but now we were out of time. He said that was nonsense. We still had twenty minutes before we absolutely had to go. He could get the engravings done in ten or fifteen.

I went into his shop and quickly picked out a couple of cartouches and gave him the names of Channa's daughters and he sent them off to be engraved. And Isis came in as well. She saw the silver and her eyes lit up. She wanted to buy some as well. But her style of hemming and hawing and studying gummed things up a bit. She took lots of time and wanted an engraving for herself as well. She had to be rushed to make a choice, as our time was really getting short. We had gone from having about 4 hours of spare time to having about 5 minutes. And that was going to be cutting it very close.

She eventually chose about ten pieces of jewellery for herself and friends and family and we got it all back, polished and finished. We paid and set off for the train station. We had to really get a move on. We were quite possibly going to be late for the departure and have to rely on the train being late. We got to the station right on 10:15, the departure time. We rushed onto the platform and into the train. We got in our cabin and congratulated ourselves on making it. Dinner was served and eaten. Then we got ready for bed and got settled. But the train had not yet departed. Well, I had seen how often that sort of thing happened in India and other places, so I wasn't very concerned.

We went to bed and settled down to sleep. Still the train had not departed. I was starting to think there might be some kind of problem. But nobody was saying anything, so I wasn't sure. It would have been nice to have some kind of information. I have noticed that Egyptians are not long on providing information. I think this as a failing. I like to know what's going on.

After falling asleep, I was awakened to voices in the corridor. I heard someone discussing about why the train was still stopped and that there was only one way for the person he was talking with to really deal with things. She apparently had a flight to catch early the next day, around noon. He was suggesting that she get off the train, go the airport and catch an early flight to Cairo, so that she could make her flight at noon.

At hearing this discussion, I popped out into the corridor to get more information. This man seemed to have some. It seemed that there was trouble down the way to Cairo at a place called Dandara. Apparently there was some kind of protest that involved some kind of fire being set near the railway tracks. There was no danger to the rail line as of yet, but with tensions in the country and the way little protests can quickly turn into something major, the railway had decided to suspend service and delay all trains. Our train had become grounded at Luxor. The man told me (and others who were looking for information) that even if the problem were cleared up right then, at about 2 am, and the trains were to start going immediately, it would still be around 4 the next afternoon before we reached Cairo after all the trains ahead of ours were cleared out of the queue. And there was no indication that the problem was going to be resolved anytime soon. There was no indication that it wouldn't, of course, but in such situations it's best to assume that it won't be the most favourable result.

With that information, I headed back into the cabin to wake Isis and let her know. Her flight wasn't until after midnight the next day, so at the present time there was no problem, but if it lasted much longer she would need to start contemplating other options to be there for her flight. She said that she thought would soon start to go and that she would deal with it in the morning.

Morning came and the train bound for Cairo, but really bound for nowhere, was still in Luxor station. When we woke up and got up, I advised Isis that she should make other arrangements. And she should get on it soon because the flights were going to be booking up fairly quickly with all the people wanting to be back in Cairo. She agreed and went off to deal with it. I stayed on the train because I figured that with most of a week before my flight, my best bet in terms of getting a replacement way to Cairo that I wouldn't have to worry about the cost of was to stick it out with the train and wait for them to tell me it was done.

I lounged around in the cabin, had breakfast and wrote my blog stories for later posting. Then another guy woke up. It was about 8:00 or so. He was from Germany. I don't know how he could have slept through all the discussions through the night, or all the people getting off the train that morning to deal with not being in Cairo, but he and his cabin mate managed to do it. And his flight was at noon. The next possible that he could get was around 9:00 and he was still on the train. He would have had to get to airport and on a plane, starting from bed on a train with no plane ticket, in twenty minutes in order to be able to make that flight. And the one after that wasn't until after 11:00. Just hearing that part of things, I knew he was screwed. He held it together for a good while, but wasn't pushing anything with anyone. And he wasn't getting any answers. He also wasn't getting any closer to being on his flight home. Finally he had enough.

In all fairness, he did have a couple of valid points. There was a car attendant for every car. And they knew for a good long time that the train wasn't going anywhere. They also could have been reasonably expected to think that there were some people on the train that would be headed to Cairo to catch a flight. When the guy on the train who was helping the lady get a flight to Cairo was doing that, the officials on the train should have been going around making sure everyone knew there was a delay and that they might want to consider making alternate arrangements. And given that he had made his arrangements to be in Cairo in plenty of time for his flight, and now it wasn't going to turn out that way, it really was up to the railway to make it right, at least according to western ways of thinking.

On the other hand, this was Egypt. It's not a western country where a particular kind of response to this sort of thing can be taken for granted. And he really ought to have been thinking of it those sorts of terms.

Instead he went off on the people representing the train, not the railway company, about German efficiency and how things would be done in Germany. He railed at them about professionalism and the way to effect proper customer service. He wanted answers and he wanted them now. And if he didn't get them, dad gum it, he was going to go back to Germany and tell his national newspaper about how the Egyptian train system works. Then they would see. There would be nobody coming to the country at all, because it was such an influential newspaper. Then to add to it, he demanded from the head guy on the train to have the numbers of his boss. He was going to call him and give him a tongue lashing as well. The guy gave him a phone number, but couldn't give him a name of a boss. This enraged the guy all the more. Why in the world was he not able to give him a name? What kind of operation was this? (Um, not the one you are used to, dummy.) The train head guy couldn't give him a name because there was a team of people at the level above him. He could talk to any of them if he called the number. So the guy demanded all the phone numbers of all the people above the train head honcho. He was going to call them all and yell. It was getting more and more ridiculous. I haven't often heard someone be so ineffective.

I just about peed myself laughing. It was a good thing I wasn't the train head honcho. I would have barked back, letting him that no matter what he told his newspaper, people would still come and he the German twit wasn't about to change anything on that score. He should have been paying more attention in order to be in a better position to be aware of the problems that can arise and to be ready to find solutions. I don't know how much more happened because the German moved off with his indignation to make his phone calls and vent his frustrations.

I decided to start trying to find out more, but there was really no more information. I did see a bunch of Egyptians leaving the trains and going to make alternate arrangements. I decided at that point that it was time to abandon ship as well. If the locals are giving it up, then it's time to face facts oneself.

Just as I was leaving the train to go and try to find a refund, Isis came back. I hadn't expected to see her again. She had gone off and it had been an hour and a half or more since then. I thought she had got a good flight and had left town. But she had booked a flight for the late afternoon, and had come back to find out what I was going to do. I figured my best bet was to try to find a bus. The train staff had given me a bunch of information about where I could go and how long it would take. They were really nice and very apologetic, like it was somehow their fault that their countrymen were upset and had stopped the trains. I told them not to worry, that I was going to tell people that the country was good and there were good people in Egypt. They were grateful for my understanding.

Isis and I went to the ticket office in the station and got an immediate refund with no questions asked. I figured it was going to be easy, but I had been told I would have to go to the station in Cairo to deal with. It was very nice that it was done right there in Luxor. Then we walked out of the station and saw dozens of minibuses ready and loading people to take them where they were headed. And with the people who were approaching us, they weren't even taking advantage of the situation by charging an arm and a leg. I really saw the kind and helpful side of Egyptians through that morning. It seemed everyone in the area, including those drivers who would normally have been trying to take a bit of advantage of tourists, were genuinely trying to help. It was really nice to see.

Isis thought maybe she would try to cancel her ticket, which was quite expensive (it was a last minute ticket, after all), and catch a bus, which was my intention. But she couldn't find anyone who knew the phone number of EgyptAir. We went to try to find it on the internet. Then we tried to make the cancellation at the tourist information office there in at the train station. But they were unable to do it. We were going to have to get to the main office in town to do that. Time was slipping away and with a nine hour bus ride to Cairo in a kind of anything can happen feel to the situation, in the end, I advised her to keep her flight ticket because it was better to pay a bunch for the flight and be on time than to waste too much time cancelling it and not making it back on the bus in time.

She was looking a bit freaked out by all of this. I had been very impressed by what she had accomplished. She had visited Syria a couple weeks earlier, and then Jordan, both (particularly Syria) being a bit hot at the moment. And she had done all that on her own. But she seemed a bit shell-shocked at that moment. She wanted me to come with her. I wasn't really sure about why, if I was some kind of stablizing influence or something. But I figured if I could get a cheap enough ticket, there was no harm in being in Cairo. I didn't really relish the thought of a nine hour bus ride back to Cairo, even though I had by this time spent way more money than I really wanted to spend in Egypt. So I agreed. We got a good ticket in the end and were on the same flight to Cairo.

Then we had a few hours to kill before our flight. So we decided to pick up where she had left off the night before. With Moses. She wanted more silver. So we headed back to that spot. Moses actually had another store, and after a while (and another silver store in between, where Isis bought a couple of other things), we found Moses, who was very glad to see us.

She browsed and bought a few more pieces of silver and Moses gave us a pizza, Egyptian style, that was delicious. And we whiled away the time until we had to go catch our flight. And again, Isis took a lot of time browsing, to the point that we almost ran out of time again. She was very good at that.

At length it was time to leave and we went out to find a taxi to take us to the airport. This was accomplished and we made good time, arriving this time in plenty of time for the flight.

When we got to Cairo, we went into town to pick up her stuff from the hotel where she had left it while she was in the south. And she gave them a piece of her mind. They had sold her her package to visit the sights in the south, but they had told her she would be having particular conditions, like private cars and guides, and various other things. Obviously, since I met her on the tours, she was lied to on that stuff. So she was mad, and her strong approach to such things came out again. She was really hard on the guy at the hotel. And he had a point. She hadn't gotten in touch with them to straighten things out. He couldn't do anything about things going wrong if he didn't know smething had gone wrong. I don't know the whole story, but she apparently did try to contact them, but had the wrong number. They fought it out for a while, with the guy capitulating in the end and offering her a room until she had to leave and a free ride to the airport. Not much consolation, but she was partially mollified. She was able to let go once she bullied the guy into a room for the whole night and when she left, I could stay there gratis. I resolved to pay them something the next morning, as I didn't like the guy being bullied into it.

But Isis also had a point. She had tried to contact them. And she had written proof that things had not come out the way they were supposed to come out. And the guy was so intent on justifying himself and his position that he wasn't really listening to her and working on a customer service solution to the issue. That would have meant first hearing her out properly. Not many Egyptians that I have encountered have this art mastered. It's sad. They are going to hurt their tourist trade at this critical time if they don't learn how to listen to their clients.

However, in the end, we ended up in Cairo in time. I had a place to stay that was going to cost more than I wanted, but less than it could have cost. And Isis got to the airport on time. All was well that ended well.

And if you ever come to Egypt and go to Luxor, if you want papyrus scrolls, visit Lotus Papyrus. If you want silver at good prices and great quality, visit Moses Jewellery.