Marsa Matrouh

It's not every day you're adopted by a Coptic tour group.

This weekend Chiara and I went to Marsa Matrouh, a town on the Mediterranean five hours away from Alex. It is a popular holiday spot for Egyptians, and we'd heard it was beautiful, so we wanted to see for ourselves. Once we got there on Saturday we were impatient to hit the beach, and decided to go to Cleopatra Beach, which is known to be the most beautiful one. Our hotel confirmed that it was possible swimming there, but they must have misunderstood our question, as the rocky shore and the rough waves render it a quite dangerous place to get in the water. Even so, Cleopatra Beach was well worth a visit, as the colour of the water is incredible: it's so unbelievably blue.

The problem was just that after 10 minutes of taking pictures and admiring the view, there wasn't much more to do there, and our taxi would not come back to pick us up in three hours yet. We had of course not managed to save the number of the taxi driver, and no other taxi was in sight. Pretty much the only other vehicle we could see was a bus in the parking lot, so we decided to approach the people in the bus to ask if they could provide us with the number of any taxi drivers in town. They couldn't, as they were in fact from Upper Egypt, close to Luxor, and were here on a tour with their Coptic church. What they did, however, was offer us to join their tour group. That seemed like our best option, so we accepted, which I'm happy we did, as we had a very nice time with them. They were all extremely welcoming and helpful, and we made some new friends. However, I guess some taxi driver in Matrouh got very disappointed that day.

First we went with our group to another beach, which was less spectacular, but more swimming friendly. Here we spent a few hours, and I enjoyed myself in the water with some other people from the group. I tried to teach one of the girls to swim, and she really made a lot of progress, but I didn't manage to complete my tuition of her as we kept getting interrupted by people who were asking me questions or who also wanted to learn how to swim.

This was a typical Egyptian beach, where most people were quite covered up, so I was swimming in t-shirt and shorts. It felt a bit strange, but I quickly forgot about it. Once I got out of the water I became very cold, however, as it really takes a while for a soaking wet t-shirt to dry. I have to say I do prefer swimming in a bikini, but I had a good time at the beach nonetheless, albeit I guess it is the sort of beach you go to more to see Egyptian beach culture than to relax on the beach yourself. After leaving that beach we went to see the sunset at one of the more spectacular beaches. We didn't quite reach there in time, as the sun had just set when we got there, but it was still beautiful. Thereafter we drove back to town and parted with our new friends, who told us that they come to Alexandria often and promised to take us to some Coptic monasteries in the future.

Chiara and I with some of the Copts

The rest of the weekend we spent on a private hotel beach, where we could tan in the strong sun and swim and just relax in our bikinis. It was very different from our first day in Matrouh, but I'm happy we got to do both: enjoy a beach holiday the way we're used to and experience how many Egyptians enjoy theirs. One of the things I love about Egypt is that you get to know people wherever you go, and on the hotel beach we met a very nice family which turned out to be the family of the hotel's ovwner. Also they go to Alexandria often and promised to contact us, so now it only remains to see if we will actually manage to keep in touch with these new acquaintances.

Chiara's camera can be used underwater, so she took this amazing picture of me

Chiara underwater

Ant and Flynne from our class were in Matrouh with Flynne's mum, so we spent quite a lot of time with them as well. I think we all enjoyed going to the beach, and found the sea in Matrouh incredible. We were maybe not so impressed by the town itself, however. The place has a lot of potential, as it is surrounded by such natural beauty, but it hasn't been put a lot of effort into improving the beaches and building good hotels and restaurants. I guess we came to understand why Egyptians love this place, as it truly is beautiful, but also why foerigners shy away from it, as it doesn't have the facilities we're used to. After struggling the whole weekend to find somewhere to eat, we concluced that Matrouh is not mainly a culinary destination. Last night we ate at a pizza place where our orders became a bit too much to handle for the poor owner, who couldn't fathom how to add olives to a margherita. Our soft drinks were bought from the shop next door, and carried to our table in the plastic bag. At least they didn't put much effort into keeping up appearances.

To be fair, this is not the season for Matrouh, so I guess our experience of the town would have been quite different if we went during the summer months, when it's apparently bustling. I think we would at least have been able to find a decent restaurant then. Off-season Matrouh is pretty dead, and most places are closed. This weekend was a bit more lively than the average autumn weekend, though, as it was Eid. From our hotel room we could hear wedding processions driving up and down the streets honking incessantly, firing rifles in the air now and then to celebrate. I'm sure my dad would approve of that tradition.

It's interesting seeing how each place differs from the others: Matrouh is the first place where we've seen a lot of bedouins. A lot of the men were wearing long white gallabiyas (robes) and head dresses, which I think are called "kaffiyahs". This is something you don't see in Alex, and I would say Matrouh has a completely different feel from the places we've been so far.

All in all we had a great weekend, and came back very refreshed (and tanned). And then we lived happily ever after.

THE END

The view from our hotel room

Between Alex and Matrouh there is mostly desert

Man, I always think I have nothing to write and then the posts end up being so long.

Eid mubarak!

This week I have assisted during camel birth, discovered the tomb of Alexander the Great, and been the first person with freckles to do somersaults across the Sahara. How was your week?

Joking aside, not every week here is just as exciting, and I guess this has been one of the more uneventful ones, at least the beginning of it. Except from spending some time with good friends, I have mostly been doing schoolwork. I have been a bit frustrated with school as I have felt that some classes have been way too difficult and some way too easy, and that the workload has been quite heavy, not leaving me a lot of time to practice my speaking. However, after a few feedback sessions it seems the teachers are beginnning to figure out which level we're actually on, and things are starting to pick up. I am therefore much more optimistic now. Chiara and I have also started taking private lessons in 3ammiya, which I think will be really helpful - if you don't know what 3ammiya means, you haven't been doing your homework and need to read my blog more carefully! Shame on you. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Last Friday I went on a walking tour of our area with a group called "Alexandria Scholars". The idea was to see Alexandria in the relaxed atmosphere of a Friday morning. Friday is a holiday here, and early in the morning the streets are quite deserted, as everyone is at home sleeping. Unfortunately most of the Alexandria Scholars were also at home sleeping, so apart from the woman organising the tour I was the only one to turn up. However, the private tour I got was definitely worth waking up early. The woman giving the tour is  very knowledgeable about the area, and I got to know many interesting facts, for instance that Fouad Street close to where we live is where the Royal Quarters were situated in the Roman era.

It was great getting to know the area a bit more. Our neighbourhood is dominated by Italian architecture, and used to be the Latin Quarter of Alexandria. The houses here were the villas of the rich and cosmopolitan Alexandrians, whereas their servants used to live in the less affluent neighbourhood of Kom El-Dikka, situated on a hilltop nearby. Entering Kom El-Dikka is like entering a completely different world, but even though the buildings of Kom El-Dikka are less extravagant than those of the Latin Quarter, to put it mildly, I still found the houses here far more charming than the houses in many of the newer neighbourhoods. You can say what you want about Kom El-Dikka, but the steep streets here have history - it is an old neighbourhood where several of Alexandria's artists have grown up, the greatest among them Sayed Darwish, the city's big composer.

Steps leading from the Latin Quarter to Kom El-Dikka

Bakery in Kom El-Dikka with proper bread ovens

Italian Architecture in the Latin Quarter

 

After walking around for a bit we went to see the Roman Amphitheatre nearby. The amphitheatre, which is from the 2nd century, is not very big, but it is quite well preserved. It is surrounded by some other ruins, possibly of Alexandria's ancient university. There are believed to be quite a lot of ruins from the Roman era in the city, but as the Romans apparently used to build their houses down into the ground, new buildings have long since been built on top of them, and not many of the old ruins have been excavated so far. People therefore say that there is a whole other Alexandria underground.

The Roman Amphitheatre

I really enjoyed the walking tour, as you see an area in a completely different light after getting to know a bit about it. Alexandria is also extremely peaceful an early Friday morning - such a contrast to the normal hustle and bustle. One of the nicest things about the tour was that it proved a great opportunity for me to practice my Arabic. The woman giving me the tour is a professor at the University of Alexandria, where she among other things teaches 3ammiya to foreigners, so she both had the ability and patience to speak to me in slow, clear and simple 3ammiya. This meant that I could actually understand her quite well, and at times I even caught myself just listening to what she was saying, without thinking about the fact that she was speaking in Arabic. Small victories.

The view from our flat in one of the Italian style villas

Wednesday was our last day of school in a week and a half, as we are lucky enough to have an extended Eid holiday. This weekend Muslims all over the world celebrate Eid al-Adha, in remembrance of Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail to God, and of Ismail's stoic acceptance of God's will, even when it meant he had to lose his life. However, God rewarded them for their faith and loyalty, and let Ibrahim sacrifice a ram instead. As a symbol of this each family is to sacrifice a domestic animal on Eid al-Adha. A third of the meat they keep for themselves, a third they give to friends and relatives and the last third is to be given to the poor. You know Eid is coming when truck after truck drive into town with animals on their flatbeds, and you can hear cows lowing through the night. And there's nothing like waking up to people cleaning blood out of the streets and dead sheep hanging everywhere.

Dipping your hand in the blood and putting your fingerprint on the wall is supposed to bring good luck

We spent the day at the villa of Madam Magda, our course director. She has a beautiful holiday villa by the beach on the edge of Alexandria, and had been kind enough to invite us there to have Eid lunch with her and her family. While it might be a little bit of a stretch calling a meal served at 5pm "lunch", we had a wonderful day. Most of the time we spent sitting around in the beautiful garden chatting to people from school and making new friends, and we also went for a swim at the beach. The water was still surprisingly warm, and I think our swim lasted almost an hour. I heard it snowed in Norway yesterday, by the way. How about that.

When the food was finally ready, we had many delicious dishes to choose from, most of them based on the meat from the sheep we had slaughtered in the morning. As the fussy westerner I am, I am of course used to meat being something you get vacuum packed from the supermarket, far removed from any thoughts of real, living animals. Meat comes from animals, you say? What a ridiculous thought! This was therefore my first time seeing an animal being slaughtered. It actually bothered me less than I would have imagined - I guess I figured that this is what has happened to an animal every time I've had meat on my plate, and that it really doesn't make much of a difference to the animal whether I see it or not. The worst part was seeing the sheep lying there scared before being killed: as soon as it was dead, it was much easier to watch. It was a little bit weird having the meat on my plate afterwards, however. Not mainly because I had seen the slaughtering, I think, but because the streets had been smelling strongly of sheep's blood all day, which the heat does not make more appetising, and the smell of the cooked meat faintly reminded me of that sickening smell. The food was very nice, though, and my first experience with the more bloody part of Eid went much more smoothly than expected.

Some of the students who turned up to the Eid lunch

As usual, I enjoyed the drive home quite a lot as well: there's always so much to see from the bus window. Alexandria is squeezed in between the sea and a row of lakes, and our route took us past the lakes on our way home. The view of the thousand lights from the city reflected on the smooth surface of the water was beautiful.

By the time we came back to our flat in the evening, we were full, exhausted and happy. All in all, I think my first Eid can definitely be called a success. The celebrations go on for two more days, but they will have to go on without us, as we will be going on holiday tomorrow.

Me dressed up for Eid in a gallabiya Chiara lent me. A gallabiya is a traditional garment worn many places in the Middle East

Now excuse me while I go chill on the beach for a week.

The voice of freedom is calling

This beautiful song was written during the Egyptian revolution, and is absolutely worth watching. The video is subtitled in English.

"We're in the city. Can't you see the cows?"

Last weekend we went on our first trip to Cairo. The family of my flatmate Sara is from Cairo, and they have a lovely flat there, which we are lucky to get to stay in. The first day of our weekend we didn't stay in Cairo, however, but went on a daytrip with an Egyptian travel agency to Al-Fayoum, a fertile area in the desert a couple of hours south of Cairo. If you are ever unsure whether the other passengers on your bus are Egyptian or not, here is an easy way to tell: if they don't even bother looking up when the pyramids appear right outside the window, then you are dealing with true Egyptians, my friend. The level of noise in our bus would suggest that it contained the supporter group of a football team rather than a tour group, and it is hard to whole-heartedly take part in charades while being slightly car sick. However it was still a pleasure to travel with this group, as we got to know some really nice people. The tour guide volunteered me to sing a Norwegian song to the whole bus, so while the bus was bumping along the desert roads, I sang "Du ska ikkje sova bort sumarnatta" ("You must not sleep away the summer night"), which I've sung to people here on a couple of occasions already. I think I might as well just take it on tour.

Al-Fayoum is a huge area, so we didn't have time to see all the sights in a day, and this trip definitely left us wanting to go back. We visited some of Al-Fayoum's lakes, and I can assure you that the sight of clear blue water is all the more stunning when surrounded by desert. By one of the lakes you can find Egypt's only waterfalls, which are not very big, but still quite picturesque. For some reason I felt strangely at home in the sand dunes - it reminded me of being in the snow in the mountains, maybe due to the fact that as far as you can see the whole world is one colour, or maybe due to the sharp light. I am really looking forward to visiting Egypt's beautiful deserts more properly later.

We also stopped in a little village called Tunis, home to several artists, more specifically potters. Some people took part in a pottery workshop, whereas we joined a walk around the village. It is the sort of tranquil and peaceful place where you would just like to relax for a few days in the beautiful little guesthouse. I couldn't help thinking that my aunt Mette would have loved this place.

Many Cairenes come to Al-Fayoum on weekends, and it was interesting seeing somewhere Egyptians like to holiday, but where there aren't too many tourists. One of the things I enjoyed the most about the trip was getting a peak into daily life in Al-Fayoum from the bus window. It is a very agricultural area, and even in the big cities there are tons of cattle, as the title of this post suggests. I will forever be impressed by how a little boy and an old man managed to get 50 sheep and a couple of donkeys to stand patiently on the central reserve in the road, waiting for an opportunity to cross. I also discovered the advantage of being a tourist attraction (or rather the opposite, I guess, as it is locals I attract): I get ample opportunity to practice my Arabic. So all in all it was a very successful trip. However, something went wrong with most of the pictures I took, so I couldn't upload them to my computer. You'll have to make do with the ones below.

Driving along the desert road

Me in the sand dunes, accompanied by some of the lovely girls we got to know

Sara, Chiara and I by the waterfalls

Tunis

The next day was spent in Cairo's old souq (market), Khan al-Khalili. Even though over-enthusiastic sellers were fighting for our attention ("Small shob! Small brices!" "I don't know what you want, but I have it!"), it was much less crowded and stressful than I'd imagined. We found many nice things for low prices, and after a while I was haggling in Arabic without even realising. In the evening we met up with some friends of Sara's in City Stars, Africa's biggest mall. Let's just say it felt like a completely different world after Khan al-Khalili's small shops and narrow streets. But the important thing is that we had a great time with Sara's friends - it really feels good to start getting to know some people here.

The buildings in Cairo seemed nicer than those of Alexandria - they have a bit more character - , and I really liked the atmosphere of the city. I think we can all hardly wait to go back to Cairo. However, it is a city which demands a lot of patience: literally half of the 5 hour bus journey back to Alex was spent getting out of Cairo. Yes, that means 2,5 hours. TWO AND A HALF HOURS. This gigantic city houses more than 20 million people and makes London seem small and calm, so even though I loved Cairo, I am happy to study in Alexandria. I think on a daily basis Cairo would get a bit too busy and overwhelming, and I do love having the sea so near.

In other news, my flatmates rescued the tiniest kitten yesterday. We heard it crying in the stairs for ages, so they went to find it, and it turned out something was wrong with one of its eyes, causing it a lot of pain. It had been abandoned by its mum, and it also seems someone had treated it quite badly, as it was very afraid of people. My flatmates managed to get it into a birdcage our landlady had left us (you never know when a birdcage might come in handy!), took it to the vet, and got medicines for it. It stayed the night in our flat and has become quite sociable, but due to my allergy I can't really socialise with it. My flatmates are looking to find a good home for it, so hopefully there will be a happy ending to the story of our abandoned kitten.

The last days we have had our first experience of the Alexandrian rain. When water started dripping on us yesterday, we all assumed it was from some air conditioner, and only after a long while did we realise it was actually that strange thing called rain. Today we woke up to a thunderstorm - I don't think I've ever heard such loud peals of thunder in my life, and the lightning was pretty spectacular. It was raining heavily, and for maybe the first time ever I was actually excited about the rain. It was as though the world let out a heavy sigh which it had kept in for far too long. Unfortunately the rain didn't continue for long enough, and only left the air more humid than it had been to start with.

I have always been known to be a fan of the comma, but the fusha texts we are reading now have made me appreciate the full stop more. There is a limit to everything - or should be, at least -, and I would dare to claim that four full stops in a text which goes over three pages is a little scant. When one sentence is 30 lines long, it does become a bit hard to follow. I know I use a lot of commas, but please: shoot me before it becomes that extreme.

Because we have to be together

Here is a song we listened to in 3ammiya class, the first line translates to "Because we have to be together". This song is from the phone company Mobinil's campaign, and different parts of the song represent Egypt's different regions and social classes. The rap on the tram represents Alex!

Rosetta

Last Friday we went to the catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa in Alexandria, which was very interesting. This underground network of burial chambers was built in the 2nd century AD, and is a testament to the coexistence of cultures which has been so characteristic of Alexandria throughout the ages. The only thing of real interest is the principal tomb, which is decorated in a mix of Egyptian, Greek and Roman style. What fascinated me the most were some figures of the Egyptian god Anubis, with the serpent tail of the Greek god Agathos Daimon, dressed as a Roman legionary. That is a combination I don't think you can find anywhere but in Alexandria. Unfortunately it was not possible to take pictures in the catacombs, but you can see a picture of this hybrid god here: http://blog.otel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Catacombs-of-Kom-el-Shoqafa.jpg, and some more pictures from the catacombs here: http://photosbyehab.com/catacombs.html.

Apart from the one night I stayed in Cairo when I first got here, I had not been outside of Alexandria until Chiara and I made a day trip to Rosetta on Sunday. Tired of sticking out so much in the crowd, and of people always feeling the need to point it out, I decided to wear a hijab. Most people here don't seem to understand that it is possible asking the question "Where are you from?" without enthusiastically introducing it with "You really don't look Egyptian! Wow, you definitely don't look Egyptian! She looks Egyptian, and she could be Egyptian, but you don't look Egyptian AT ALL!". So this was my attempt at changing my SO-NOT-Egyptian look.

Rosetta is a small city in the Nile delta, situated where one of the branches of the Nile meets the Mediterranean. It was here the Rosetta Stone was found, but as it now resides in the British Museum, Rosetta's main attraction is the Ottoman architecture of several of its houses.

As the streets are so narrow, it was hard getting a good picture of the houses, but they are really lovely. One of them was open to visitors, and several of the very eager staff gave us a tour of it. Before the tour they served us cookies, and afterwards we were offered red dates, which they stuffed my whole bag with. 

Chiara in one of the Ottoman houses

Me and one of the girls who showed us around

Rosetta is only an hour away from Alex by bus, but is still so different. It has a very relaxed atmosphere, and even though most of the houses are quite simple, some thought seems to have gone into building them, which cannot be said for most buildings in Alex. I found it a very charming city. All the people we met were extremely friendly, and willingly helped us out without expecting any money for it. There were no other foreigners around, and the amount of horses and donkeys in the traffic made it clear that we were now in the countryside. It is the sort of place where you're bound to end up with half a horse in at least one of your pictures.

The Rosetta Stone was actually found in a fort a bit outside of the city, which we also went to visit. Even though there was not a lot to see at the fort itself, except for the very exciting naked brick wall where the stone used to be, I quite enjoyed the drive along the Nile, and the view over it from the fort. I also found the bus ride to and from Rosetta very enjoyable, as I was astonished by how lush and green the landscape was. I've never seen so many palms in my life. The life-giving powers of the Nile are truly amazing. I don't have any picture of this landscape, though, as my guidebook informs me taking pictures from a bus window is considered very suspicious activity.

The fort

Where the Nile meets the sea

The surroundings of the fort

 

Some boys who really wanted their picture taken

However, we don't just live a life of leisure. After two weeks of classes I'm already quite overwhelmed by the amount of homework we're given, and by the fact that I have more classes here (18 hours a week) than I had at SOAS last year. Everyone keeps telling us how this year is our chance to learn how to speak properly, and that the most important thing is that we get Egyptian friends and get involved in life here and practice our Arabic, but I don't understand how they expect us to take so many classes and do so much homework, and in addition have time for extensive socialising. I also find it a bit frustrating that most of our classes are on fusha (Modern Standard Arabic), which is what we focused on at SOAS and which you can study just as easily in England as in Egypt. The 3ammiya (colloquial), on the other hand, is difficult to learn properly if you're not surrounded by it. If we want to learn it, now is the time, and still we only have 4 hours on it a week. As I see it, it doesn't all add up, but I guess after a while I will work out the right balance. One thing is  for sure, though: this year, I'm going to learn how to speak Arabic confidently, no matter what.

Settling in

The biggest part of the last weeks has been spent flat hunting. I was looking for flats together with Sara, Chiara and Rachel from my class, and finding a suitable furnished flat with four bedrooms proved to be quite a challenge. Most times we would be shown flats with the wrong number of rooms: we would ask for four bedrooms, the simsars (brokers) would insist on taking us to what they claimed were 8-bedroom flats, which would of course turn out to have 8 rooms in total, only two of them bedrooms. Or they would take us to unfurnished flats, some of them not even equipped with as much as a toilet. Or they would show us really nice flats, with the only drawback of being situated right next to the American consulate, with wagonloads of restless soldiers right outside the door. My personal favourite, however, was the one where the landlady eagerly tried to persuade us not to take the flat, stating that it was very bad and expensive: it was clear she did not want us there. Judging from our flat hunting experience the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. In order to become a simsar in Egypt you must lack either the ability or the inclination to count rooms and beds.
2. It is important to Egyptians to have many living rooms and sitting areas; whether everyone has their own room or bed is secondary.
3. Bookhshelves are superfluous.

However, in the sea of hopeless simsars we managed to find a very helpful and honest bawwab (doorman) called Karim, who would actually tell us exactly what the flats he could show us was like, so that we didn't need to waste time looking at more flats unsuitable to us. In the end he managed to find us a flat in a quiet, green area in inland Alexandria, close to where we need to get the bus to school. It is a spacious flat in a nice, old building. It only had three bedrooms, though, but we converted a sitting room into a bedroom - I think we will still manage to fit our guests into the two sitting areas and the one dining area. This flat came a little too complete, but after cleaning out dirty socks, whitening creams and broken kitchen utensils enough to fill 30 bin bags, the place actually became quite livable. We still have the black-and-white picture of our landlord's father trying to look sexy with his moustache, but I guess we can learn to live with that. And once we find a decent place to buy our groceries around here, our lives will be complete. I only hope that my grandfather can forgive me for the weird positioning of the posters in my room: I wanted something other than Mickey Mouse stickers to cover the holes in the wall.

The TV room in our flat

The living room

The dining area

The corridor leading to our rooms

The bathroom

My room

The kitchen

The view from one of our balconies

After finally settling into our flat, we started school this week. Originally we were supposed to study at a language centre at the University of Alexandria, but as they quadrupled the fees less than a month before we were supposed to start, other arrangements had to be made. Madam Magda, the professor who used to be responsible for the British students at the university, runs a centre called the Alexandria Center for Languages (ACL), which is where we have ended up going. We have mostly the same teachers we would have had at the university, and the ACL compound is very green and nice, but the biggest drawback is that we will not be part of Egyptian student life. In addition, the centre is situated pretty much in the middle of nowhere, by the Cairo-Alexandria desert road. Oh well, I guess we get to know an area we definitely wouldn't have visited otherwise. 

Inside the ACL compound

The classes so far seem good, although there is less focus on spoken Arabic than I'd hoped. That means we will have to be make a bigger effort ourselves to find ways to practice our speaking. I've already met up a couple of times for language exchange with an Alexandrian girl called Tigu, who is really nice. The first time we met we mostly spoke English, whereas we managed to keep to Arabic virtually all the time the second time, which made me very proud. I will definitely be looking to do more stuff like that.

As most of our time so far has been spent settling in and getting used to the way things work here, I can't say we have really enjoyed Alexandrian life to the fullest. I hope that we now will get more time to explore Alexandria and travel in Egypt. However, we have done quite a few pleasant things already. Last weekend we went to the beach, and by the end of the day I had already gotten a tan. The water was warm and clear and beautiful, and I had a great time. You can meditate over that where you're sitting in rainy, cold Norway or England. There is a Norwegian saying which translates to something like "There's no such pleasure as malicious pleasure". You are welcome to meditate over that as well. Meanwhile, here are pictures from the beach:

We also went to a concert in the opera the other night. Young, talented musicians from Germany, called the Munich Ensemble, performed with well-known Egyptian musicians. Most of the performance I really enjoyed, and the opera house in itself is also quite nice. Plus, we got free tickets, so all in all we got very good value for our money.

The opera

Apart from that, hanging out at cafés along the Corniche is always nice. In the laid-back atmosphere of these places time stands still - this is how Alex should be experienced.

Relaxing in a café in the area Stanley

Sunset over the Corniche

Chilling in a juice bar

Ahmed, Rachel, Sara, Nick, Jake and Nazmul

Saad Zaghloul Square in central Alex

I will stop now, before I make you all too jealous.