Egypt summer 2011, CAIRO part 4

The view from our hostel to the other direction

In the morning of second of June me and Saija left out to shop around the famous Talaat Harb square which was very near our hostel. I don't even know its history and why its famous but that's what we were told. Talaat Harb square is also very big traffic circle with many streets aparting to different directions from the sq. So lots and lots of streets to shop and to get lost into. First we tried to wander around looking for postcards, stamps and a mailbox. When this man called Kimo started talking with us and offered to help us. I was a bit cautious 'cause I somehow automatically thought that he would want something like money from us for helping us out. He offered to show us were to get what we were looking for. He seemed like a really nice guy. After getting what we had been looking for he showed us a nice juice place, where we had mango and some other fruit juices. Egyptians drank a lot of mango and other juices that were self made from the real fruits. 

From Cairo Inn-hotel. Talaat Harb sq behind us

Then he offered to show us the place he worked at, Cairo Inn hotel. That started to be a bit distressing and when we were introduced to his boss who started to show his hotel to us we both had fake smiles on and promised to tell about the hotel to our friends.. When we got back to the street they told us that the hotel also had a shop with papyrus papers and upstairs was this bottled parfume shop. Kimo got us upstairs and the boss came there also and Kimo left and the boss started to sell us parfumes.. I felt really uneasy there! I felt like they trciked us there which they had done! Saija wasn't that worried and offered to buy something from the man for us to get out from there! That was the first and the only time we were kind of fooled.

After the incidentwe started shopping but didn't find that much stuff to buy. I bought couple of shirts and Saija also bought some clothes. "We don't desing clothes, we desing dreams" was the name of one clothes shop. It took us some time to find the right familiar street to get to our hostel but first we went to eat at the same koshary place we had already been at before. Then it was a nap time and after that we left for the light show to Giza.

Me, Greg, Marc and Kurt

We had our own driver from the hostel that took us to Giza to see the light show. There were seats and seats of empty space there. It was like watching a movie outdoors. They reflected lights and hieroglyphs to the walls of the pyramids. It told a story about the construction of the pyramids and also other stuff too. On our way back we drove through the Tahrir sq and in the evening it was a bit more exciting than it had been before.

The light show

Tahrir square

Zoora

Back at the hostel we went out to buy some water from the nearest kiosk when these young shy girls came to shake hands with us. We were shocked. Their mother saw us on the streets and called for the girls who came running to us. They had obviously wanted to talk with us and had been watchind us. Their mom was this egyptian woman wearing the gown and the niqab. I really don't know the real term for the clothes. Her daughters were Fatima 9-year-old and Shoora 16-year-old. The didn't speak english at all. It all happened so quicly. Suddenly they had carried chairs for us to sit with them next to the street. Their mom looked so happy. We had an old translator man who had been studying in England many years ago. Shoora was the most real and beuatiful young woman I've ever met! She was so full of life that it was unbelievable. Shoora told us that we were the most beautiful women from the westerner countries she had ever seen. Turned out that she had watched us walk past the street almost everytime we had past it. Children gathered around us and wanted to shake hands with us and get a smile from us. Shoora and her little sister wanted to take photos with us. She was so beautiful we couldn't get our eyes of from her. Her father had passed away so she had had to drop out from school and get a job to help her family. She made this arm bracelets for living that she sold on some small bazaar. The place she worked at was already clossed and we really would have wanted to buy stuff from her to support her. All of the people there hugged us when we said we needed to go. The children walked us to the front door of our hostel. 

Back at the hostel in our room we started talking with Kurt, a man called Greg from Canada and with Alain. Kurt started to conversation asking what did we think about Marc? (He had already left to the city of Luxor to the same hotel we were supposed to arrive the next day.) We looked at each other with Saija and started laughing.. We spent almost three hours talking about him. They started talking how weird and glingy the Einstein was. He didn't want to do anything on his own and wanted always someone to come with him. The guys also said that he could be really manipulative. The australian guys had been trying to avoid him and had been glab since he had spent so much time with me and Saija. The boys had been watching our face expressions and gestures when Marc had been present and the way we had acted around him had been really cold. When me and Saija had left out with Mohammed Marc had said to the guys: hopefully he doesn't steal my girlfriend! Like what a fuck?! :D Or at the Citadel fortification he had somewhere asked from Kurt if he taught that he had a chance with me?! At this point I was really disgusted. Gross. The conversation went on and we started thinking about his stomach and his age. He just couldn't be 29 with a stomach like that. Then it hit me! He had once shown me his passport but he covered his details and I even joked about it to him like are you hiding your real name or your age.. The guys one by one went to the reception to ask around if the guy was 29 or not. They of course couldn't tell anything at the reception but to nod or something. Turned out that he was over 35-years-old! We were freaking out with Saija! The boys started teasing us about Marc being a serial killer who kills girls all over the world. That wasn't funny since we knew that he would be waiting for us at the next city. Boys told us not to go there but we didn't want to change our plans because of one crazy man. Afterall we knew that he was not dangerous or anything, just a bit nuts. We went to bed around 3 am.

Learnt in Cairo:

• traffic is insane
• all the women don't wear the scarf and other covering clothes. 
• the head scarf can be worn in many different ways. It's part of the fashion. It can be matched with nails or other clothes with colour etc.
• people are really friendly
• you must haggle the prices. It's the way they do business.
• women are really fashioned, they smile a lot and are friendly.
• Alcohol is not drinken. But people do drink it anyways. especially young people.
• Shisha
• to drive a car you need to be 18 but we saw much younger drivers also.
• donkeys, camels, horses and oxes are on the street. especially at the countryside.

Oh, and we met a man at the hostel who is married to a finnish girl named Johanna and they've been on the finnish tv show called Satuhäät. Is the world small or what?