Munich

Another of the people I worked with in Korea is now living and working in Germany, in Munich. In fact he arrived in Germany only a few days before I got here myself. Having found that out, I felt it would be almost criminal to be in Germany and not go and see him. So I got myself a ticket to Munich and headed there for a visit.

Sheldon actually lives a little outside Munich in a little town called Starnberg. It's about a 40 minute ride on the suburban train system. Sheldon met me at the little train station and took me to his apartment.

My first day in Starnberg I didn't do much except wander around a little bit. There is a really nice little lake at the south end of the town. Across the lake, the Alps are visible. It's a really nice situation for him to have found himself. If I could choose a place to live and work, Starnberg could well be it.

The sunset over the lake that first day was very beautiful, with the sun going down over the hill and ducks splashing and diving in the water.

Ghost Stations and Broken Lives, The Legacy of the Berlin Wall

Berlin, like many cities, has a city tour bus. Actually, there are four or five companies that offer pretty much the same tour. I had bought a Berlin Welcome Card and one of the many discounts was to take one of the city tours. So I went on one of them. I didn't end up on one of the ones listed in my booklet, but the one I did take offered a discount (because of the discounts offered by the other companies who were listed, I'm sure). I figured they would all be the same, so one was as good as another.

It was an interesting tour and gave me an overview of some of the history of the city, its origins as a tiny little village in the 1300's, 1362, I think. Canada hasn't anything like that. It's weird to be in places with that kind of long history. (However, there are cities in Canada that have 300 and 400 year histories, so I guess we aren't such a slouch either. But still...)

There were Hugenots from France, who were invited to escape persecution. There were monuments to victories that have long been forgotten. There was a park larger than Hyde Park in London, but don't tell the Londoners as it will get their back up. It was an interesting tour overall, but I still found it a bit of a waste of time. I wasn't really in Berlin for that kind of information, but I only realized it while I was on the tour.

When we completed the tour circuit, despite it being a hop on/hop off bus, I decided to be done with it. I wanted to head to the Berlin Wall Memorial area, and the bus wasn't going anywhere near there. I could have spent a while on an interesting street along the route, but I didn't want to miss the chance to investigate the memorial. So off I went.

I had gone to the spot the night before after visiting the Topography of Terrors Museum, but it had been close to dark and it was an outdoor site that was going to be best in the light. When I was in the subway station for the site, I noticed a bunch of signs about what happened to the subway system after the Berlin Wall was erected. And when I read of ghost stations, I knew I also wanted to spend some time in there looking at that information as well.

After the war, when Berlin was split in two, so was the subway system. It had been an integrated system serving the whole city. Now it was quickly set into two systems. Mostly, there was no particular problem. Most lines were only in one part of the city or the other. There were a number of stations that belonged to the West Berlin lines, however, that sat under the territory of East Berlin. These represented a problem for East Berlin, particularly once they were very actively seeking to prevent defections. The subway system tunnels, among other spots, represented a very real way for East Berliners to escape to the west.

The authorities of East Berlin blocked off all the entrances and exits to the stations. They placed guards in the stations to make sure nobody who wasn't supposed to be there entered the stations. They made sure that trains from West Berlin didn't stop in the stations. They placed other safeguards in the stations to prevent the guards from escaping to the west.

These stations, that still existed but were no longer used, came to be called ghost stations. They were remnants of the time when Berlin, and Germany, were whole. In East Berlin, they were hidden with their entrances covered up or changed to try and make them fade from the memories of the people of the city. If the wall had stayed up for long enough, those stations might have become myths and legends, stories of a long forgotten time. It's kind of a romantic notion actually. Except it was real.

There is an exhibition in Nordbahnhof Station showing how the stations were barricaded up, with new additions made every time someone successfully escaped, or even tried, so as to make it harder for the next one. It was an interesting and somewhat distressing presentation.

Then it was outside to the memorial area.

Initially, the Berlin Wall was intended to be a barrier between the two halves of the city. It was to prevent people from leaving the east for the west. It sometimes went just outside the doors of apartment buildings. I don't know if the authorities thought it would prevent people from wanting to leave, whether they thought the simplicity of having a wall would be completely effective. But since it was just outside buildings, that were higher than wall, people tried to escape, to be reunited with their families or friends or loved ones, by using the nearby buildings to jump over the wall.

So windows and doors were blocked up. The wall was made higher. People were made to leave their homes in those nearby buildings so they wouldn't have ready access the wall. So people used the buildings as cover (there couldn't be enough guards to cover every nook and cranny between buildings along the entire length of the wall) to bring other materials, like ladders and such, to aid them in climbing over the wall and barbed wire. So buildings were taken down to give an open space before the wall that would be easier to monitor. So people used the buildings that were left as cover to get a good opportunity to take a running start at the wall to jump/vault/otherwise get over the wall. So more obstacles were put into the cleared space before the wall so running starts were not possible, and more time was needed to get past it and over the wall. So people started digging tunnels to get under the wall from nearby buildings. So...

...and on and on it went in an unending effort on both sides (those who wanted to get away and those who wanted to keep people in) to outwit the other.

Eventually it got so ugly around the wall, it was a bad bit of public relations for the officials in East Berlin. So they put up nicer looking bits of wall and cleared out the ugliest and deadliest of the obstacles. They made it a kinder, gentler barrier between the two halves of the broken city, and of the broken families.

Then in 1989, people took it out. They broke it down and reunited the two halves of the city and of the country. But the stories remained. This park was where many of the stories have been memorialized.

Small parts of the wall remain here...,

...as well as a guard tower that was preserved. (Even though it's inside a protected enclosure and can't be seen very well.

Where the wall has been taken down, there is a representation of it in steel rebar poles along the line of where the wall used to be located.

There is a memorial wall, where the victims of the wall are remembered. These were people who died in their efforts to escape to West Berlin while trying to get past the wall.

There are incident markers showing where someone was captured or killed trying to get past the wall.

There are outlines of where tunnels were dug to try and make escapes.

And there is a memorialization of one building that was a particularly ironic blot on the efforts of the East German authorities to make it all seem reasonable, this reaving of a city in half. When the demarcation line splitting Berlin in two was finalized, the border went right through a church. The name of the church was the Reunification Church. Really.

Much of the congregation came from West Berlin, and initially they were allowed to attend church. However, when the wall was erected, those members of the congregation were no longer allowed to attend their church. They built a new place of worship inside West Berlin's area, but the former church remained standing for many years. And it served as a reminder of who Berlin had been cut in two. Only the authorities know why they allowed it to remain standing for so long, but in January of 1985, the offending reminder was finally taken down. The church was blown up.

Four years later, the wall came down and now there are only a couple of reminders of the old building. There are bells that stayed where they fell after the destruction.

There are outlines, presumably placed after the wall came down. And there is a small building for worship in the place of the old Church Nave.

It's actually a fascinating spot for just walking and reading and learning about the real effects of the Berlin Wall. It's not at all like the area around Checkpoint Charlie, with it kitchsy and crassly touristic portrayal of what the Berlin Wall was. It was a much better way to learn about it all than I had found around Checkpoint Charlie the day before.

Later that night I returned to a couple of spots from the bus tour. It was after dark. The seat of government, the Reichstag looked quite nice, lit up against the night clouds.

So did the Brandenburg Gate.

As far as a short visit to a place steeped in history, my visit to Berlin was successful.

Berlin

I stepped off the train in Berlin, not really knowing what to do to find a place to stay. It was late at night and that has generally meant trouble for me as far as easily finding a hotel or hostel. I have ended up at the mercy of some merciless cab driver or something like that. But that has been in developing countries. This was Germany. And that has advantages.

When I headed up the escalator, at the top there was a big sign at the top of it telling of the A&O Hotel and hostel. And the prices they advertised on the sign seemed, if not cheap, at least reasonable for being in Europe. It also said they were close to the station. I worked out which side of the station to leave, and found my way there. And they were open! Yea!! I registered and went up to my room. It was easy. I like western countries for how easy they are to get around in. Developing countries are good for learning other cultures and getting around cheap and for just learning about what you are capable of. But it sure is nice to come to a place that is just easy for a change.

Now it was time to figure out why I had come to Berlin. Naturally I wanted to learn about the Berlin Wall. And I decided that was going to be my main focus. There are probably other attractions of the city, but my main focus going to be about the war stuff and the divisions that came after.

I got up and went to the tourist information office. And that is exactly what it was. None of this we-are-going-to-call-ourselves-a-tourist-information-office-so-we-can-get-tourists-in-here-and-then-sell-them-a-bunch-of-tour-packages-because-we-really-aren't-a-tourist-information-office crap. They were a tourist information office. However, unlike the one in the station at Frankfurt, where Eunji and I went to get some information, they weren't all that friendly, or out-of-their-way helpful. I would ask a question, and the woman gave me an answer. Knowing I was not from around here, she didn't do anything to give me extra information about what to do or how to do it. But that's okay. I still got a discount card for things and a map and set off. But the public transportation system isn't the most transparent thing in this world. And I had a glitch or two when I began. It would have been nice if the orientation package helped, or the woman in the office helped. But I found a nice guy on the train I started with who helped me learn the ropes. And figure out that I was on the wrong train for where I wanted to go. Oh well.

I got myself sorted out and finally got to Checkpoint Charlie. After the Second World War, Berlin was divvied up kind of as spoils for the victors. The beginnings of the cold war were in place and the west and the east each ended up taking about half of the city. There came to be West Berlin and East Berlin. But the city was located in East Germany. As tensions mounted between the US and the USSR, the divisions between East and West Berlin became more and more exacerbated. In addition the policies of the communists, who controlled East Germany, didn't appeal to many East Berliners. They wanted out. So they started streaming into West Berlin. That part of city, still in East Germany, was nevertheless controlled by the western powers. Naturally, this migration of people to the west pissed off the authorities in the east. More and more controls were put in place to keep people in East Berlin. At one point a blockade was mounted by East German authorities to try and choke out West Berlin. If no supplies could be gotten in, maybe they could gain control over West Berlin and they could have it all. But a provision drop campaign was mounted by the air forces of the west, particularly the United States, and the blockade failed.

Eventually things proceeded to a somewhat logical conclusion. The authorities of East Germany could not prevent people from going across to West Berlin with simple policies alone. They needed a barricade of some sort. So they put one up. On the 13^th of August in 1961, the East Germans put up barbed wire fences at the dividing line between East and West. This was, in some cases, right outside apartment building doors or even through buildings. One place that straddled the dividing line was a church.

Over the next few days and weeks, the barbed wire fence was changed into an actual wall of concrete and metal and other materials. There were still entrances between the two halves of the city, and there were checkpoints in place at these entrances to make sure that people passing were allowed to be doing so. One of these places was Checkpoint Charlie, arguably one of the most famous spots of the Cold War.

One man, who had been separated from friends and family in East Berlin decided to put in a memorial museum near the wall on the West Berlin side to show the stories of people affected by the Berlin Wall. It is located near Checkpoint Charlie, and has been there since shortly after the wall was erected. It is still there now, twenty-two years later, showing the history of the wall and what has happened after, even as the whole area has been rejuvenated and renewed.

Inside it is a great big jumbled maze of stuff related to the Berlin Wall. It's interesting, but unordered and without too much flow. There are rooms with Ronald Reagan during his speeches and appearances at the wall to convince the USSR to take it down. There are stories of people who risked their lives to save Jews during the war. There are lists and lists of people who died during the war and afterwards in camps and other places, but whose death certificates could never be given to relatives. And it's all just a mish mash.

And the place is huge. It's interesting, but it would take a whole day of being interested to go through it all thoroughly. I found it a good stop, but ultimately not really where I wanted to spend my day.

In particular, although there are pieces of the Berlin Wall in the museum, there is not much and it's out of context. After an hour and a half or so, I headed back out into the cold of the day.

I wandered out and past the remnants of Checkpoint Charlie. Or maybe it's not really. Maybe it's a fake, a mock-up to play to the ridiculous hordes who flock here to see that part of history. It probably really is the old check post, but it has a Christmas tree in front of is and silly soldiers in front of it exhorting people to come and get their passports stamped at the check post. And it sits in the middle of the street, while all around there are no further signs of what was happening twenty years ago. Not except for the twin line of bricks that runs through the street, showing where the Berlin Wall used to sit.

It's a bit tacky. Even while it is showing a valid piece of history.

So I wandered around the streets trying to find some signs of the wall that still existed. I knew they were there. And I knew that one of them was nearby. But I hadn't figured out which direction was which yet and it was a bit of walking around in an ever expanding circle to find... 

...a part of the old Berlin Wall.

When the wall was first breached, back in November of 1989, the first impulse of Berliners was to take it down, to erase its existence as quickly as possible and resume life as a reunified city, and country. Fortunately, someone quickly realized that to do so would be to erase some history and try to hide it, forget it. And no good could come of that.

So in Berlin, there are small sections of the wall that have been preserved. In addition, at this site there was also a museum, the Topography of Terrors museum. On the site of the museum used to stand a bunch of buildings that served as the headquarters of Hitler and his command as they orchestrated the events leading up to the Second World War and into the war, and then to the final stages when the war was lost. Those buildings were damaged severely in the aftermath of everything and were taken down. One sign also states that the German people also did as much as possible to put it out of sight so they could forget that such a horror originated from within their society. Those building are gone now, but some of the foundations have survived.

And on top of it now stands the Topography of Terrors museum which outlines the beginnings of the war, from when Hitler was elected to leadership of Germany, through to the final stages of the war. It's a free museum and is very well presented and organized. There are loads of photos and films that can be viewed and tons of information. I really enjoyed the couple of hours I spent in there, if enjoyed can really be a word applied to an investigation of the horrors of that war and what was going on in the minds of the people who started it.

After that I walked through the streets for a while, getting my bearings. I wanted to find the Brandenburg Gate. I did find it, but then I was unable to head to another section of intact wall, where there was a memorial to victims of the wall and attempts to escape East Berlin for the west. That would have to wait until the next day.

On to Germany!!

Well it didn't work out as I had hoped. I had gone to the bus station and gotten information suggesting that I could catch a bus to the airport every hour on the hour, even through the night. So I got up at four in the morning and headed back down there with all my stuff. One thing I noticed was that taxi drivers were driving right past me and not even attempting to try and get me as a fare. Perhaps things are quite as bad as the situation is made out to be.

I got to the bus station and sat down to wait. The bus was supposed tom come at about five. I was there at about 4:30. So I had a good long wait ahead of me. The worrying thing was that there was nobody else there. Then finally at about ten to five another man with a big suitcase came along. I figured for sure he was going to the airport. That was very encouraging. Five o'clock came with no bus. Five fifteen. No bus. Five twenty. No bus. At five thirty people started coming to open the ticket office, but still no bus. Finally, at five forty, I went over and asked when the bus was going to come. Six o'clock, I was told. That meant that I had been given the wrong information. Now I had to make decisions. Should I wait for the bus, or should I hail a dreaded taxi? I finally got the next question asked in the correct way so that the man understood. What time would the bus get to the airport? Seven o'clock. That finished it. I wasn't willing to play chicken with the departure time. I left and got in a cab.

Initially the cabbie was unsure where I wanted to go. He stopped to find someone who spoke English and asked me where I wanted to go. I had asked him if he would go to the airport when I first got in. He said yes. I thought he understood. Then I asked how much. He pointed to the meter. So I thought he was going to take me on the meter. Then when he found the guy who spoke English and found out again that I wanted to go to the airport, he turned off the meter. Damn cabbies!!!! He asked me what I was going to pay him. Shouldn't it be the other way around? How much did he want? I was in a hurry by now and so I just told him I had 50 pounds. That ought to have made him glint with joy because I am fairly certain that the metered fare would be far less. He accepted immediately, which just suggested that it would indeed have been much cheaper on the meter. Damn cabbies!!!!

But I was ready to be done with the whole sordid country. I just swallowed my annoyance and sat back for the ride. He drove a bit like a maniac. If I was worried about getting there in time, I needn't have. The only wrinkle was which terminal, which is what I was asked by the guy who spoke English. I didn't know. How am I supposed to know which terminal I am going to be leaving from?

Well the cabbie took me to terminal 3. And just before we got there, he asked me for 5 pounds for the parking fee. EFFING CABBIES!!! I really hate the lot of them. Well, I wasn't about to give him that money. He got a handsome sum for taking me to the airport and it's his problem to pay for parking. And to top it all off, I got out at terminal 3 and he left. Then I found out that I needed to be at terminal 1. EFFING, EFFING, TRIPLE EFFING, DOUBLE EFFING, EFFING, EFFING CABBIES!!!

Well, it did no good to be annoyed with the twit now. I had to get to terminal 1. I knew there was shuttle bus to go between the terminals, so I walked out to the curb to wait for it. I had plenty of time because the twit cabbie was also a maniac driver and it had only taken about 20 minutes to get to the airport. But as I hit the curb, first one, then another different “special” cabbie approached me. Did I want to go to terminal 1? At this time of day (6 am) it was iffy. If I had lots of time, it would be all right, but I might want to avail myself of their services to get to terminal 1 quickly. It would only be 5 dollars. Not 5 pounds, dollars. Or 30 pounds. I just laughed at the first one. And I told him that that was ridiculous. And even if it wasn't, I didn't have the money anyway to pay that. He looked at me hopefully and asked again, “Not even 5 dollars?” No. And I'm going to wait for the shuttle.

The second guy was just sleazy, even though he was well-dressed. He was once of those oily types that just oozes up to you with a slick spin on things. And he made the same offer. And I told him the same thing. It was too much and I didn't have the money anyway, so it was moot. But he wouldn't let go. He told me it wasn't too much, that this was a premium service he was offering, and I didn't know what it was worth. Then I started getting annoyed. It didn't help that I had only had about 4 hours sleep. It didn't help that I had spent more than two weeks dealing with these shady types who thought they were more worth more than they really were simply because I come from a “rich” country. It didn't help that I had just had the cabbie ask me for parking money after agreeing to a princely sum to take me to the airport. So I laid into the guy. I ended up telling him to leave me alone and stop hassling me and people who were just trying to get the hell out of the country and away from people like him who were giving Egypt a bad name. I think there was another foreigner there and may have found the exchange quite amusing. I wasn't sure because the shuttle that the first guy told me might come in about 40 minutes, showed up after about 3 (EFFING, EFFING, DOUBLE EFFING, DAMN DOUBLE DUTCH EFFING LYING CABBIES!!!!). I got on and left them behind. The shuttle went to the bus stand, and stopped. I had to transfer to the next shuttle in the queue and wait for about ten minutes before it headed off to terminal 1, where I arrived with still lots and lots of time to spare.

I followed a couple of guys in who had been latched onto by “helpers,” (but you can think of them more as leeches or some equally disgusting slimy bits of low life that hang around looking for a free ride) who helped them get their bags into the terminal. As I passed by them, I heard one of the slime molds start pestering the guys for baksheesh (tips). I don't know what happened, but they should be very, very glad they hadn't tried to help me. They would have been searching for their strips of skin that my scathing rebuke would have taken from their hides.

I went to the information desk to find out where to check in. Then I headed for the security scanner gate in front of the check in area. And I was latched onto by another of the leeches. He attempted to help me to the scanner and help me get my bags onto the scanner belt. Then he asked me for a tip. I just looked at him. I felt like laughing in his face and asking, “For what?” But I'm quite sure that would have been a waste of effort and breath. So I just told him no and walked through the metal detector to safety.

The rest of the airport stuff was fairly easy. I checked in and it took all of about 8 minutes. Then I went to the immigration station and was through there in about 7 minutes. Then I was to the gate area. I still had lots more than an hour before the flight. I could really have taken the bus I guess. But I just didn't want to play chicken with that departure time. I really had had enough of Egypt with it's money grubbing hand out for hand-outs. And after only one day, 12 hours really, back in Cairo, I really missed the nice people from the delta of only the day before. Sigh!!

The flight to Jordan was fairly uneventful, except for the guy seated next to me. I guess he just hadn't flown that much. But I would think the whole prohibition against cell phone use is loud enough and often enough for anyone to know. But as we were landing, he was trying to phone someone on the ground. I really wish I was the type of person who stares at a bozo like that long and hard until they get uncomfortable. Or someone who just tells them to desist as they are risking my life with their unbelievable stupidity. But I'm not. And I didn't. I just thought it silently to myself.

The second flight, from Jordan to Frankfurt, was awful. In the seat in front of me there was a baby that was being a baby, crying fairly often. That's not too bad. Babies do that and there is a timbre to such a baby's crying that isn't all that cringe-worthy. But there was another child with its mother in the seats beside me. And he was just being bad because he wanted to be. He played with the seat tray. It fell on his head, so he threw a tantrum. His mother fell asleep. He wanted attention, so he threw a tantrum. He threw lots of tantrums, and it often included a high-pitched scream. He threw stuff around, some of which landed on me. And this was regular behaviour throughout the four hour flight. Again, I wished I was the type of person to say something to the mother. Or to call the staff and ask that I be moved so as to preserve my sanity. But I'm not. And nobody did anything. Not the staff. Not the mother. Not me. And despite the in-flight entertainment system that included lots of movies and television programs, I couldn't really watch any of it because I had no earphones and when I asked about them, I was ignored. It was the worst flight I have taken in a long time.

But in the end, it was over. I arrived in Frankfurt and cleared customs without so much as a paperclip glitch. A quick stamp in the passport and I was in Germany officially.

Then I got my bag and went out to meet my friend. The main reason for coming to Frankfurt is my former nurse in the back clinic I was attending. Eunji worked there at the time, but shortly after I left Korea, she decided she needed a big change and applied to be a flight attendant. Her application was accepted by Lufthansa and she moved to Germany to take the training and start her new job. She kind of pooh-poohed the idea that I thought that was brave. But having done something like that myself when I went to work in Korea, I think differently. Very brave, Eunji!!

When I told I would come for a visit, as I was passing this way, she said she would meet me at the airport. And when I walked out of the customs and immigration area, she was there waiting. She was a sight for sore eyes, I'll tell you. After the horrible flight, after months of not seeing anyone that I knew beforehand, after all the hassles of travelling on my own and figuring it all out on my own, and the time in Egypt where even when I paid a fair amount of money to not be hassled, to still have hassles, I came out of the airport and had someone there to meet me and get me even a little bit oriented to the where I had arrived. That was soooo nice.

Unfortunately, Frankfurt is having some kind of trade fair at the moment and it's quite large. And in the true spirit of taking advantage of such an opportunity to truly rip people off, all the accommodation in the city is three and four times as expensive as at other times. Expensive at the best of times, it really is too expensive for me. In addition, Eunji is leaving for her run to Korea in a couple of days, and will be gone for four days. By the time she gets back the trade show will be finished and accommodation will be back to merely quite expensive, instead of ridiculously and prohibitively expensive. So we decided that I should go somewhere else for a few days and come back. Eunji will be back from Korea, and we can spend a day or two exploring the city and catching up. So we went to the train ticket office and I bought a ticket for Berlin. This is going to be another expensive period. Hopefully it won't as expensive as Egypt, though.

She bought me a pretzel, and a sausage. (Ah! Good western food again, and good German food to boot.) Then we took a walk to the river. It was dark, but the city still seemed quite pretty.

Then we went back to the train station and I got on my train. I'd be off to Berlin, and maybe another spot as well, for five days and then return to meet Eunji again for a couple of days before heading into France and then England and then home.

Thanks for being there, Eunji!!!

The End of the Road in Egypt

I awakened to a bit of a rainy morning in Port Said. All in all, I haven't had too much to deal with in terms of rain and such all the way along, and this was only a bit of a sprinkle of rain. I thought I would head out for a look around in the daylight before I headed back to Cairo. I headed to the canal and had a look in the light. It was still pretty impressive, at least in my mind. As I was approaching the canal, there was a large ship passing the spot I was approaching. It is always an impressive sight when I see a big ship passing such a short distance from the shore. I don't know how deep the channel is, but it must be quite deep. And it left me wondering again how one engineers and then accomplishes such a feat as a canal, when water is fighting to get in.

I went up on the walkway and was walking along the path when I happened to pass a bunch of young people. They got my attention and beckoned me over. We chatted for a while. They were really friendly. We took some photos together before I headed off on my way. The boys were both named Mohammed. The girls in the photo with me are Summer, Rayid, Shushu, and Aya. After a while it was time to head off.

I walked around for a while longer before refinding the candy store I visited the night before. I couldn't help it. I wanted a bit more. I got some gummy worms and coke bottles as well as some fuzzy peaches. Heaven!!! I want them to be famous. They were another little taste of what I know. I was glad to see them.

Then I headed to the bus station. What had been supposed to cost me 10 pounds the evening before, but had really cost 20, today cost me 5 to get back. I hate taxi drivers who prey on those who don't know the area and are visiting. I hate them!!!

My taxi driver on the way back was really nice. He talked to me and told me about his family. Because he was such a nice guy, I gave him my change as a tip. He appreciated it.

I walked into the bus station and the same guy from the night before, the damn taxi driver, was in the station. He came up to me like we were friends. Apparently he really had missed the part where I was supremely pissed off at him. He made to ask if I remembered him. Heh heh, yeah, I remember you, uh huh, right. Get away from me. But he pulled me to one of the kiosks to “help” me get a ticket to Cairo. I imagine he was fishing for more money, but I just resisted his help as much as possible. Then he tried to get me to follow him to the waiting lounge. I stopped and figured where I was was good enough. He got a bit surly and had someone come over who could speak English and ask me what I needed. I told him to make the bozo go away because he was annoying me and I didn't like him much. I think the message even got relayed because the taxi asshole kind of slouched angrily away.

I sat in the coffee shop and waited for my bus. Eventually it came up and I got on and headed back to Cairo. On the way, I saw a rather astonishing sight. It looked as though a bunch of ships were cruising through the desert. I knew it was in all likelihood ships in the Suez Canal, which cuts right through the desert, but it really did look like they were just sitting in the sand. It was eerie even though I knew the real story.

It was only 180 kilometers to Cairo, which should have come to about 2 and a half hours all things considered. It took three and a half, although we were back in the Cairo area after about 2 and a quarter. The rest of the time was spent getting through the very crowded streets of Cairo.

From where the bus let me off, I walked back to Brothers Hostel. They didn't recognize me at first, as I had gotten a haircut, but they were happy to see me again. Or at least that was how it seemed. With all that I had paid them and experienced because of that, I was on guard. When I said I needed to get to the airport early in the morning, they told me that the only way would be to take a taxi. But they could arrange a car for 70 pounds. I questioned the amount, and they told me that because of the early morning and the fact they were going to the airport with no guarantee of a fare back, they would charge about double getting in from the airport. Baloney!!! I call BS. There is no cabbie in the world who will take a trip to an airport, where people are arriving all the time, and not return with a fare. He was just spinning a story to be able to get as much money from me in their own transport as possible. They really were all about the money.

Another thing that showed that was that despite all the money I paid for them to set three different excursions during my time in Egypt, not one of them asked how it went. And that speaks volumes to me about what they considered the most important part of “helping” me get out and see Egypt. It's kind of sad really. They won't ever know, or probably even care, that they screwed up and that they are just having more and more people trash them. It's not something they will probably ever realize that they could be having a soaring reputation and people telling all their friends about the hostel. And all it would take is just some customer focus, instead of money focus, which is how it feels after having dealt with them. It's too bad.

Rosetta, Port Said, and Another Smooth Flowing Day

The brochure that I got from the tourist information office in the train station in Alexandria had little maps of each area of the Nile River. I had a look at the north coast map and discovered that Rosetta was on the coast, not far from Alexandria. I was also reading that another town was at the mouth of the Suez Canal at the entrance to the Mediterranean. I had thought to go to Suez to have a look at the canal, but this other town, Port Said, would do as well. So I made a plan. I would go to Rosetta and have a look around for the spot where the Rosetta Stone was discovered. Then I to Cairo and prepare to vacate the country.

I got up and had breakfast. There were some people eating their breakfast in the dining area already and we got to chatting about what they could do in Alexandria. Eventually I decided I needed to get a move on if I was going to accomplish all my plan. So I headed out and hopped in a taxi. He took me a long way to the bus station. I wish I had thought to take a photo of that depot. It was about 40 rain cover sheds with a bunch of minibuses under each waiting their turn to go to the destination. I can only assume that each cover was for a different destination. Nothing was in English, so I had no real idea. I had been told that Rosetta was in there somewhere, but because I don't read or speak Arabic, it was like a giant physical version of “Guess the number between 1 and 40.” I guessed the first time at around 5. They told me it was way farther on. So I went to about 33. They told me that it was back a ways. So I went back to about 20, narrowing in on the correct spot. I like the spoken version better. It didn't help that I was asking for Rosetta, but they all knew it by its Arabic name of Rashid. It got a lot easier once I started asking for the right place.

I did eventually get on the correct bus and once it was full, it headed out. It took about an hour to get to Rosetta and cost the grand sum of 4 pounds, about 60 cents.

Rosetta is the place where the famous Rosetta Stone was discovered in about 1798. When Egypt was first being explored, they found all these tombs with all these nice pictures all over the walls. But nobody knew what they meant. They were pretty sure they did have a meaning, but there was nothing showing what meant which. Maybe it was a phonetic alphabet of some kind, or maybe it was more pictorial, like Chinese. But there was nobody around who spoke or knew the language any longer, so hieroglyphics remained a mystery.

Until the Rosetta Stone was discovered.

In 1798 or so, French soldiers were told to demolish a house. As they did so, someone noticed a strange stone that had been part of the foundations or maybe the walls. It had a bunch of writing on it, and symbols. There were three inscriptions. One was in Greek, and two were in Egyptian. One of the Egyptian inscriptions was in hieroglyphics. I'm not sure if the other one was in a language that could be read or not. But the Greek inscription was definitely something someone knew how to read. It was an edict from some government. And since there were three inscriptions and they were together, someone thought that maybe they all said the same thing. So they sent it to a specialist in translation and decryption. (I'm not sure if decryption would be an apt characterization though, as that refers more to codes and cyphers nowadays.) He went to work and eventually had success in cracking the mystery of hieroglyphics. This unlocked all the knowledge and cosmology and everything that had been unearthed of the ancient Egyptians. It was a fantastic discovery and one of the most significant, ever. And it was all because of some eagle-eyed soldier demolishing a house in the small town of Rosetta.

I have always liked the story of the Rosetta Stone and, since it was so close by Alexandria, I figured it would be criminal not to go and have a look around. Of course, it could also be considered criminal to and have a look around without being really sure of how to find what I was looking for. And I didn't.

I got to Rosetta and off the bus, with my pack on my back and started wandering around. I wasn't even sure which way led to the sea. There were no tourist information offices and not many people spoke any English, so I couldn't just ask around. And so, I walked around. Aimlessly. I'm good at that, but given I had a bunch of things that I wanted to get done, that wasn't the most effective way to go about things. I decided that I would give myself about half an hour to make progress and then give it up and head off to Port Said. But the town was really quite interesting in a medieval kind of way. The roads were muddy and mucky and wet. There were horse and donkey carts all over and it just called out, “old.”

Eventually I was making no progress on either finding any spot connected with the Rosetta Stone or the waterfront, so I had turned around to go and find a bus out. A man saw me and, I assume it was the big pack on my back that gave me away, pointed down a street indicating that what I wanted lay in that direction. With nothing more than that and the thought that I really shouldn't be giving up so easily, I followed his finger. As I was walking, a man popped out of a shop and jabbered at me a bit. I said something about the Rosetta Stone and he bobbed his head and pointed down the street. Then he invited me into his shop, a barber shop, to get a haircut. I initially declined, but then changed my mind. My hair had been getting unruly lately and it had been a long time since my last haircut, so I went in and got the full treatment. There was a haircut, and a shave. He did something with this string all over my face and ears that seemed to be pulling little hairs out (painfully). He greased and slicked what was left of the hair on my head once he had cut a bunch off. It was amazing. When he was shaving me, he made a great show of putting the straight blade in front of my face as he removed the blade. Then he sprayed it with disinfectant. And finally he selected a new blade, in paper to show it was really new, and placed it in the shaver. I appreciated the gesture to know it was all clean, but I almost laughed out loud at the way he flourished when he was showing me. Even when he was done and allowed me to take a photo, he had a certain flair to his stance.

Then it was off down the street once more. And very quickly I reached the waterfront, and a monument to the Rosetta Stone. I had found what I was looking for, despite having no clear idea how to find it.

I was on a roll. There was a museum as well, inside what was apparently the house where the stone had been found. I doubted it was the actual house because it looked quite new and because the story was that the stone was found while the house was being demolished, and it looked in rather good shape for a demolished house.

Inside, it wasn't that great a museum, but it did give the explanation of how the stone had been found. There was also a bunch of rooms with furniture set up as I would presume the owner at the time had had his house set.

When I first went into the museum, a police officer came up to me and asked where I was from, where I had come from that day, and where I was going to go. It was a bit difficult because he didn't speak much English, and I don't speak Arabic. But he seemed satisfied. Then a short while later, another police officer came and asked me the same things. I was a bit curious about what was up. Then the officer had someone from nearby who spoke English come and talk to me as well. I took the opportunity to find out how to get to Port Said and found out that it wasn't actually possible to get directly there from Rosetta. The best way was going to be to go back to Alexandria and go from there. Hmmm... But in answer to my query about why the interest in where I was going, he said it was just to make sure I was safe and to keep track of me for that purpose. But when I asked if there was any problem with my planning to go to Port Said, he said it was nothing like that. All right, I thought.

Across the street from the museum there was a small park. I went in there and had a look around. There were a couple of old cannons and some kids running around as well.

After a few minutes I decided to make tracks as I was going to have to return to Alexandria before heading to Port Said. That was going to take some time. As I got to the exit, the two policemen who had talked to me were there as well as a couple of others. One of the policemen introduced one of the other men as a detective (I presume of the police force). He told me that they wanted to have the detective walk with me around town. He would show me a couple of interesting places and take me to the bus station. I wondered at this, and I thought they were offering him as a guide. I told them I hadn't the money to take a tour. They immediately reassured me that I wouldn't pay him anything and I wouldn't be tipping him either. They wanted to make sure I got to the bus all right, and then the detective would take the licence bus of the I rode so that if anything happened, they could begin to track me down to bring me to safety. I wasn't sure what town they thought it was, but I hadn't been feeling at all threatened. I didn't fuss about it though and accepted.

The detective showed me the way back to the bus station. I saw a mosque.

And a street market.

Then he took me to an old house, that looked like the outside was fairly new. Inside it though the floors were sloping and it seemed it could actually fall down at any time. But the people there were friendly and helpful as they explained how the house had been in the old times.

Next to it was a mill that was operated by animals. That too was interesting. I could have done with keeping the 16 pounds I paid for going into the two places, but I didn't see the need to make a big deal. I was being looked after and that was enough. I did have to pay the guy at the mill 5 pounds as a tip, but that might have been because I was allowed to sit on his chair and eat my lunch.

After that, the detective led me to the bus station, put me on a bus, took the bus driver's information (and I think offended the bus driver in the process by assuming he would have nefarious intentions), and waved goodbye. There was not a cent asked of me in return. If it weren't so ludicrous to me to think that I was in any sort of danger, I would be far more touched by how well they were trying to treat me in that small town. (And I was touched by their concern for a visitor.) It just points up the way people treat visitors to their lives, when it is far away from the big tourist areas.

I got back to Alexandria and got a ticket for a bus to Port Said. It was later in the afternoon, leaving at 4. By the time I would reach Port Said, therefore it would be well after dark. I thought about just staying in Alexandria, but decided that I wanted to see the Suez Canal and if worst came to worst, I could just hop another bus to Cairo and be done with it all.

While I was waiting at the bus station for my bus to show up, I was distracted by a girl with probably the most amazing eyes I have ever seen.  I couldn't look anywhere near her without my gaze being drawn by her eyes.  They were a piercing blue.  On the premise that she could only say no, I went and asked if I could take her photo.  She said yes.

The bus left and the sun set and I witnessed an amazing moonrise over the Nile Delta, all orange and flitting amongst the clouds. It was magical and I sincerely wished I were stationary so that I could have taken a few photos.

The trip took about 3 and a half hours and I arrived in Port Said at about 7:30. I kept hoping it was going to be easy to deal with once there. And it mostly was. I got off the bus and, as usual, had to deal with taxi drivers wanting to take me somewhere. Of course, I had no idea where to go or what hotels I might be able to check into. So I ended up with a taxi guy who told me he could take me to a cheap-ish hotel for 10 pounds. I was down to where I had only about 300 pounds in my pocket and that was going to have to last me through the next day and night until I got to the airport and my plane. I wasn't going to the bank again. Once in the taxi, the driver asked for his money. I pulled money out of my pocket and went to give him 10 pounds, but he saw the twenty in amongst it all and took that instead. I protested, but he just smiled, patted me on the knee and made like we were great friends. He got instead a, “Don't touch me, you thief.” But he didn't speak much English, so he didn't understand, although he should have been able to tell I was angry. I don't think he even got it when he asked me if I wanted to get something to eat after the bus ride and he got a clipped, “No!” in response. Nor did he seem to understand when he asked if I needed money changed, and got the same no in response. And he definitely didn't get it when I said he was only getting one shot to take me to a reasonably priced place. I was almost certain that I was going to somewhere expensive, but he surprised me. I ended up in a hotel that cost 85 pounds. More that I really wanted but well within the 100 pound limit I had set for him. So it had worked out, even if the guy was a dink and a thief. I should have got out of the cab when he did, or kicked up way more of a fuss, but in the end it was a buck and a half, and it just wasn't worth it.

After checking in, I went for a walk. Again I wasn't exactly sure where I should look to find the canal. But this time, I had a plan. The canal was to the east, so I got out my compass and made sure of where east was. Then I headed that way. It wasn't too long before I hit a long row of shops with a walkway on top. I thought that might be it, but I had also found a pizza place. And I was hungry. I went in and had a very, very good pizza at Lorenzo's Pizza place. And Lorenzo told me that, yes, the canal was on the other side of the shops. He told me how to get a look and after my meal, I headed down the street to a place where I could get up to the walkway and see the canal at night. And it was a very nice sight, at least as far as sights of canals, which are just trenches filled with water, can be.

I had been very satisfied with how the day went. I did actually find everything I was searching for, despite having almost no plan beyond, “Well, I will just go and see what happens.” It was something of a miracle, in many respects, that I managed to find everything, so quickly, with so little preparation. It was just one of those days when things work out, I guess.

And I also found a great pizza place, and a candy store with things like Werther's. Candy I haven't seen in a long, long time was in that store, and I could have spent a bundle. But I didn't have a bundle to spend, so I was content with a chocolate bar and knowing that it was there.