Day of Excitement

Yesterday was an event-filled day. It all began in the morning in the ratty confines of an "A/C" room in the New Capry hotel just off Saad Zaghoul square in Alexandria. We took our time rising in the morning, then set out on an adventure to one of the beaches east of Alexandria's sprawling downtown area. Tim and I left our bags at the hotel, and caught a servees to Miami Beach, which one would immediately associate with its famous counterpart in the namesake city. Nevertheless, it is quite different than the Western-style beach we had anticipated. As with most every other activity in Egypt, a fee (albeit nominal) is charged to use a public beach. After considering the crowded confines and rubbish filled shoreline, we opted to backtrack to one of the quieter, less crowded beaches we passed in the servees. I'm not sure the name of the beach we actually visited, but it was anything but quiet. Again, as with most things in Egypt, hawkers are drawn to tourists. So after we paid to enter the beach, and were given a table with an umbrella a few feet from the water. I really had little inclination to go in the water, so Tim and I just sat and spoke. In the midst of this, we were bombarded by a parade of youths and adolescents touting everything from sandals to shirts. It seemed that about every minute or two we would be saying, "la" to another burgeoning salesman.

After a few hours of chatting and denying things such as a box of towels with a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack from Titanic), we decided it necessary to jump in, although the prospect wasn't too enticing, since I'd seen a dead fish floating with the waves about an hour before. We eventually did jump in.

Not long after we caught the servees to take us back to Saad Zaghoul, by our hotel, but before entering we decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to get haircuts (there was a place not far that was crowded the day before). Anyway, there were no customers, so we thought our multi-week beards and shaggy hair would benefit from a trim.
Enter Hamedi: the crazy barber who cut our hair. He was a nice enough guy who spoke very little English, but we managed to make each other laugh a bit.

I went first. All I wanted was about a buzz. It's simple, right? Well, not there. Hamedi buzzed all of my hair, then left flock of seagulls bangs, when he decided to give me a shave. The madman finished shaving, while I continually acted like I was gripping a trimmer and made a "buzz" sound over the FOSbangs. "Ok, OK" was his curt reply. After shaving me, he busted out a white string. I wanted to know what this was about, but he told me to wait. He immediately began rolling it around my face pulling the hairs out on my face and nose. Needless to say, this sent me into painful gesticulations. I didn't have the heart to tell him to quit the nonsensical, pain-inducing string-wielding, so he continued. After that was over, he began applying a brown facial mud to my face. I stopped him, but he said it was good. "Just wait 10 minutes". ""Whatever, buddy.""-my response. After applying the goop, he finally finished off the bangs with scissors, which simply wasted more time. He told me it is not good to buzz them off, but he cut them virtually the same length with the scissors. I thought to myself, "whatever", as I looked at my mud-filled face in the large mirror.

Tim was up next. Hamedi by now had proven his dicing skills-looking at nearly every passerby as he both shaved and trimmed my hair. Tim remained optimistic, though, and went ahead with both the shave and the haircut. "Just a shave turned into "a little off the top"", and eventually became the string hair-plucking, mud-filled face and a butchering of Tim's hair. I simply sat in awe as I watched the madman pluck, chop and knick up Tim's neck. The most alarming bit about the experience that somewhere in the course of shaving Tim's neck, the madman somehow got blood all over his hands. Tim and I were not sure whether it was from his neck or whether the jumpy lunatic had sliced his hand while staring at each passerby. THe likely unfortunate culprit would be Tim's neck, as he told me it hurt two days later.

After all was said and done, we asked how much we owed him. I thought he'd charge us a few extra pounds for all of the services we didn't ask for. Instead, he told us we each owed him 115 LE, which is the equivalent to 23USD. This all should've costed somewhere between 10-15USD, but instead he quoted an absurd amount. This infuriated me. My argument. If it were this much, then he should've told us prior to applying the king's treatment. Anyway, I argued with him for a few minutes (I think I may have scared Tim as I was quite fervent), then told him I was only paying him 100 LE, which is an exorbitant amount of money here.

If you've been to Egypt or India, you will have found it necessary to build up a wall to prevent people from ripping you off, because virtually everyone. I mean, everyone tries to do so. As a result, most travellers develop a kind of thick skin to avoid countless touts and hawkers approaching you. Sure, this isn't the most healthy approach to the situation, but it's practially unavoidable. At least that's how I coped with travelling in both of those places. Perhaps others do it differently.

Anyway, due to the haircuts we received, we found that every train from Alexandria to Cairo was full for the rest of the evening. This meant we had to find another mode of transit to Cairo, so we tried to take a minibus to the bus station, but unfortunately, we got on the wrong servees, and the result was that we were taken miles from the city, but the good news was we were dropped off at another servees station, where we caught a minibus to Cairo. The bad news was that Tim was so uncomfortable that I thought he was going to pass out from it. While it wasn't exactly funny at the time, it is hilarious as I look back now. Here's a mental picture. Tim, a Danish Daniel Craig look-alike, and I were sitting in the back seat. Tim was in the middle, and the Daniel Craig look-alike was comfortably sprawled out on the back seat. This meant that Tim was crushed in the middle with his oversized bag resting on his lap, because there was no room left in the sardine can. At one comedic point, I tried to convince Tim that he could wedge his bag behind his head. Of course, this didn't work, so the bag went right back on his lap.

Since my bag is quite small, I didn't have the same troubles Tim did. For me, the trip was par for the course, but actually there were some fascinating bits. At one point we passed through an oasis, then the highway we were on passed by the silhouettes of the pyramids. And I was able to watch the sun setting out the window, however, the most amazing bit of the ride was watching the colorful kites dance in the air above the bland, red-brick slums of on the outskirts of the city. It was all so inspiring. I wish Tim could've appreciated as I did, but I understood his situation.

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