Its all happening - maybe

Well its all happening round these parts and we feel we have been making at least some progress but we have come to learn it ain't over in Egypt till the Obese Cleopatra is singing.

On the housing front the negotiations have started yet again. We decided to try and spend the greenbacks and are attempting to get the house that is at the breaking point of our limit (read beyond our budget). P keeps walking around mumbling "its only money". We decided the house was by far the best we have seen and although a few hundred more than we were willing to pay pre-house hunting, it is worth it. Unfortunately it does not have a pool, however it is walking distance to the heated pool at the club and a friend has offered their above ground pool (they have just moved). We should know by Sunday next if we can sign the contract. P was wanted at a meeting in Damascus but refused to go as this was radically more important than work. More later......either from an estatic, or suicidal family!

In the meantime we are leaving (again we say this with an air of the definite, however....) our 5* luxury at the Intercon to the Egyptian "transit flat", an apartment complex close to Kattameya, which J calls "Safari" but is really Safwa Resort. Unlike the transit flats in the Hague this one, according to Mrs T, for she has been, is "fantastic". Apparently it makes Bachmanstraat (for non-Shellies, company transit flats in NL) look like a broom cupboard - I actually thought Bachmanstraat was a broom cupboard. According to the boys the pool is the size of the North Atlantic and so they are wisely "investing" their pocket money in a rubber dinghy or two!

It will a nice change to eat at home, don't get us wrong, we love eating out but 4 straight weeks is getting a little tedious, and even J is looking forward to good home cookin' (no.443 of things you thought you would never hear: J "Mum, I really want your pasta cooked with garlic and spinach dinner"). Apart from the cost-saving and the sanity-saving, the apartments are 5 mins on low traffic roads to school which minimises the travel for the kids, only issue is P will start travelling on the RING OF DEATH (the Cairo ring road), initially with Ahmed "D" (Da Driver, init).

Moving out of town and school starting means the next job on the to-do-list is Cars. Egypt has enormous tax on imported cars, thus tax-paid cars are extortionately more expensive than we are used to. In the US and Holland P had his beloved sexy Male menopause Mazda RX8 sports car which he had to reluctantly sell. He is not so much coming down to earth now but colliding with it like an rather large asteroid. He has been browsing around looking at Diahatsus, Hyundais, and Toyotas etc. although he refuses to contemplate the Geeleys, Splendors and Daewoos, car makes with dubious genetic lineage, designed in Korea, made in India, put together in Egypt, whatever could go wrong. Style, sex appeal and excitment have been replaced by "anything with an airbag or two is a go-er". Favourite choice at the moment is the Diahatsu Terios, a little Postman Pat van shaped 4wd. Its not all doom and gloom on the car front as we can also order a tax-free car as we are in the petroleum sector and can only sell it to someone in petroleum sector when we leave. Looks like we are going back to our Omani friend, the Toyota Prado. Order now, "guareented" to be here is 4-8 weeks inshallah (god willing) which means it could be here in time for Christmas. You have to give them a choice of three colours and then apparently you get whatever comes anyway, or wait another 4-8 weeks for the next one.

Ramadan Karim - Happy Ramandan, the Islamic Holy month is here and the muslims are fasting during the daylight hours. T and J were a little worried they would have to as well. The first few days the restaurants were empty in the evenings so we could just go anywhere, however tonight we went to our favourite Mexican and it was packed with people waiting for Iftar (the breaking of the fast) and we were lucky to get a table. This is because the first few days Iftar is taken with the family, but after a while you just want to go get away from them and eat with friends - sounds very like Chritsmas!! Normally we order and our food comes but tonight we had to wait until the fast was broken and the whole resturant was served at once, an impressive operation.

Other little snippets of news: Boys and Mrs T visited the school, liked what they saw, got the uniform and met one of the teachers, an Aussie, the day after England beat them to win the Ashes (for our American friends this is Cricket - I will not bother to try and explain, its like the superbowl of baseball played over 25 days only between England and Aus). T, with abnormal restraint declined to mention Englands win.

After months of waiting and hasseling J has finally got a phone, I've never seen him so excited. However it took us a few days to arrange a pre-paid sim card but that did not stop him walking around City Stars mall with his phone to his ear most of the time! He is also looking forward to his Ramadan birthday, as he is an Omani, not really, but he was born in Oman. His birth cert. has 9th day of Ramadan on it - so he is getting all excited for his second birthday!

The airfreight has finally arrived and has only just beaten the sea freight. The seafreight should be in the Mediterranian now, hopefully not literally. The more geographically challenged members of the family are worried about Somali prirates! The more realistic amoungst us are concerned about Egyptian dockers!

Huntin' for a home....Edition number 371

Apparently if you fall off a horse you should get straight back on one again. Yesterday after the diasppointment of losing house number 2 (which went the way of house number 1), we dusted ourselves off and got back on the house-huntin' trail and started the search for house number 3. Caused a major fracas between the real estate agents over one house as we had two agents showing us it at the same time and we had previously seen the house with a third agent, so who gets the commission???

Saw a couple of strong possibilies around our budget. We also saw one that if we stretched the budget thinner than Victoria Beckham on a crash diet we could just, just manage. We have some thinking to do.....................

Starting from scratch - again

Everyone is a little down as we heard today we have been guzzumped on the house and so have to start looking again.

Today was very very quite on the roads so we went down to Maadi and registered the boys to play "soccer", well Football. On the way back we stopped off to look at a shop close by selling Fanoushes (or Fanoushi, not sure of the plural), the Ramadan laterns. Can you spot the potential hazard, and im not talking about the 200 plugs all going into one socket!!

The day before Ramadan.....

Heres a quick update of a few days activities.

T and the boys went up to Muqattam Hill in Cairo for both the view and to find the Monastary of St Simian the Tanner. They found the hill, however a very hazy day meant that not much could be seen of the metropolis below. The monastary is in "garbage city". Cairo, due to necessity and the absence of anything else, has an area where people collect rubbish from the city and in a "green" way recycle anything of value, carboard, cloth, metals anything. They do it not for their membership of the Green Party or global warming concerns but due to poverty. Unfortunately the driver could not find the monastary and we will have to leave this for another day. Most exciting thing was getting rear ended by a clapped-out 1970s lada, that hooted at us as it it was our fault and just shot off into the distance. Obiviously swapping insurance company details here is not a common occurence. Still no damage and we have broken our Cairo duck on bumps and scratches, like the pyramid visits more to come I'm sure.

Last night we visited the Kattameya club, booked the kids a Cabin-Fever-busting golf lesson and had a meal by the pool. Very nice indeed. Trip back was exciting, the ring road is "entertaining" during the day, a bit like being in Wacky Races alongside Dastardly & Muttley, the Ant Hill mob and Penelope Pitstop. At night it turns into a "spot the 1001 Heath and Safety incidents" competition. Most are easy to identify, like the three cars driving toward you the wrong way after missing their turn, the 16 chaps hanging on for dear life from a small suzuki pickup, wheels and containers variously coming off vehicles. Got back safely anyway.

Today we had an informal drive around with our incredibly reliable (so far......) driver Ahmed. First we went down to Maadi. Due to the location of the America school Maadi is home to the greatest concentration of donut shops in North Africa! Unfortunately we were to unable to locate a Krispi Kreme - but theres always hope. The supermakets here are great because not only can we get our longed for UK brands but re-acquaint ourselves with food long forgotten from New Orleans, Teddy Grahams, Goldfish, Hersey Kisses and Crystal Hot Sauce - the business.

From Maadi we drove up the Corniche following the Nile, and cut into town past some really awesome mosques and old islamic buildings. We made out way slowly through busy streets selling everything from fabrics to copper to the Ramadan Laterns that are popular now as the holy month starts tonight if the new moon is spotted. On some streets hundreds of the faithful were sitting on the road listening to the sermon amid the general hustle and bustle of a market day. At midday hunger got the best of the boys and we stopped off at a recommended resturant the "Blue Nile Boat" - one of a few floating resturants tied to the shores of the large island in the river called Zamelak. We plumped for the Asian resturant out of the 8 on board and had a light lunch, the fried calamari recommended by the waiter was indeed voted "top Cephalpod-based dish of the posting so far" by the boys, who wanted to order a second.




Back in the car we continued north into the Shura district, which has a lot of Coptic Chrisitians mixed in with the Muslims, it was interesting seeing the large mosques sitting next to the large coptic churches. The streets here were quite narrow and now very busy as friday prayers were finished. We shared the road with a typical array of Egyptian traffic, donkeys, carts, horses, old battered taxis, large overcrowded buses that should have died long ago. Best were the first cyclists we have seen, kamakazies on two wheels carrying pallets of bread on their head (the bread-heads), more skill than the pizza delivery guys but the same life expectancy! - you never see an old one. Somehow whistling the Hovis advert music did not seem to fit in downtown Cairo, not a flat cap in sight.


I need to take the camera more often in the front seat of the car - Im going to do a photo-documentary arty thing called From the Passenger Seat. Its just amazing what you see on a minute by minute basis on the roads here.

My work permit has come through this week and so we can now buy a car and join the merry folk of Cairo in their daily quest to sit honking horns and gesticulating at each other. Sure that will provide the material for a few blogs.......






We got back to the hotel and the preparations for Ramadan are well underway, more the Ramadan laterns (think they are called Fanush) have turned up, need to but a few for the garden (if we ever get one).......

House negotiation update

Forget the Camp David Agreement, the Good Friday Peace Accord or the Obama Middle East Roadmap discussions we are still negotiating and waiting for the housing contract to be agreed.

IF.

Should be all over next week or maybe we roll a six and slide down a ruddy big snake and start at the bottom again.

Pyramid-Fest

There used to be seven wonders of the world, and now there is only 1 left (2 if you count Tinas shoe collection - "Not, true" protests Tina, "more like your odd socks"). If you have visited the famous Giza pyramids you will know that Cairos expansion has reached them and they are literally on the edge of the city. If they were in London they would be well within the M25 (in which case they would be called the Diamond Geezer pyramids). Having not visited a pyramid or ancient funery complex for over 6 days we felt the compulsion to join the merry throngs of tourists and run the gauntlet of internationally renown hawkers and scammers to stand next to these geometry wonders. When we lived in New Orleans there was always a "-fest" on, no matter what time of year; Swampfest, Gatorfest, you name it. We are now developing pyramid-fest as we get to know these magnificent pointy buildings.

We picked up our Egyptologist Mustapha (everyone should get one, they are sooooo useful), he of funny joke fame - see previous pyramid post, and crossed the city to find the pyramids rising out of the Friday morning haze (or was it pollution/smog) just across the river in the suburb of Giza on the Westbank.

First stop was to the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Standing at the base of this 4600 year old building is indeed incredible, in a word "awesome" or "majestic" or as Joe eloquently put it,"big".

The building blocks are much bigger than lego size, or even duplo, being several tons. Originally the pyramid would have been encased in nice flat limestone outer cladding, all of which has been removed from this one, with the entrance hidden. We decided not to go in as we had at the Red Pyramid the week before due to 1) time, 2) cost and 3) risk of jelly legs. There is a metal pole on the top of 9m height to show the original size which looks about 30cm talk from the bottom!

We moved onto Cheops sons place, the pyramid of Chephren, sneakily the bottom is built slightly into the limestone bedrock, good to see the ancients had an appreciation of geology. Aim was to make it look bigger than his fathers - sons eh?! This one has a bit of cladding still left on the top. We made our was past the last of the main pyramids, Mycerinous (tihnk the spelling went) to a nice viewing point, very romantic just the two of us, oh and the kids and 70 camels plus drivers waiting for fares. Still Nice view.

We made our way back to Cheops place and went in the Solar Boat museum. Doing some clean-up work years ago in the 30s they came across a pit containing the boat probably used to bring the the Big across the Nile. It was so well preserved they put the jigsaw back together and now have a full size ancient boat.

The kids loved it as well as the ropes and knots etc that were preserved, in its way as impressive as the buildings. Best bit was we had to wear these natty little overshoes so we could shuffle about on the wooden floor like speed skaters.

Last stop was the Sphinx and the Chephren Valley temple. The waters of the River Nile used to lap against the buildings here, the boat with dead Pharaoh ("he's not dead he's only sleeping") would arrive, they would pop him into the temple, do the mummification business and after a time take him up to the just completed pyramid, stick him in the middle, lock the door cover it over with the last remaining cladding and bish bosh, start building the next one for the new big cheese in town. Im sure the limestone quarry owners were happy at the situation, at least.

Theres a few stories surrounding the absents of the nose of the Sphinx, one we liked, that Napoleon shot it off sound a little like Brit propaganda, but its good anyway. Probably just erosion.

So another successful day out, managed to avoid having the wife carted off by some beduin for an expensive photo or camel ride, which was quite a victory, she and the boys are becoming a bit more savvy, bless their innocent western ways. I'm sure the pyramids are impressive enough that we will be happy to take our visitors there and not get too bored, at least for the next 6-7 times.

Tales from the Riverbank

Spent Thursday evening having a Chinese meal down on the banks of the river. We sat watching the kingfishers fish, dive-bombing minnows in the Nile from the tree next to us. The fellucas (the local boats) wafted from side to side making their way up river. We tried to make up song lyrics and with bazooka and verucca words that rhyme with felluca we made some pretty abstract attempts, watch out Lennon and McCartney. On the list of things to do no.134: Hire a felluca.

Here a selection of photos.....

Bikinis to Burkas and all points inbetween

One of the more pleasant surprises of our location is the fact that we are smack bang next to the largest shopping centre on the entire continent of Africa. Admittedly Burkina Faso, Sudan and Niger probably don’t feature on the Shopaholics Grand Tour but the Cairo City Stars Mall should.

We have yet to visit the Khan al Khali (main souk) in downtown Cairo, but the City Stars currently supplies all our immediate needs. Eating out is not true Egyptian style, there is plenty of time for white beans and pigeon, but the kids appreciate the familiar joys of Wagamama, Fuddruckers, Johnny Rockets, TGIs, Ruby Tuesday, and I enjoy Costa Coffee and all those other staples that were absent from Holland.

There is a large supermarket called Spinneys. Egyptians shop and drive with the same style and panache. The general state is one of chaotic melee and rugby-like scrummages on each aisle. The only thing missing is the constant tooting of horns. Choice is very good, and lifes luxuries and essentials like Heinz Tomato ketchup, Worcester Sauce and Frozen Short crust pastry can be purchase if a little expensive.

There is also a great collection of clothes shops, some which I know and others that look good, from bikinis to Burkas, and all points inbetween (which is where my wardrobe lies!!). Most impressive is what we term the Bling Bling shoes shops, these Egyptian ladies like more bling than your average West Coast Rapper and the heels require a step ladder to climb into them. Once we get a house sorted, Inshallah, and the boys start school then I’ll be down there faster than Usain Bolt to have a good mooch around and find some bargains, as prices seem very reasonable, compared to Holland. Plus unlike Holland women are not all 7ft tall so I might be able to buys some trousers and dress that fit!

Day-zed and confused

Growing up, everything seemed stable, such as 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, Saturday-Sunday weekends, the fact that there would only be 4 TV channels and Marathon Bars would always be called Marathon Bars. We looked forward to Fridays to run like a rioting rabble out of school. Saturday (at least for me) was for Football Focus followed by a game if Ipswich were at home, a Sunday morning game for Bramford United followed by a day of rest, roast dinner and latterly with the advent of Sky more footy.

Our world was turned upside down when we lived in Oman where the weekend is Thursday-Friday. This always left us uncomfortable - how do you deal with looking forward to Wednesday afternoon?!?!!!? Roast Beef and Yorkshire puds on a Friday?!? - this was messing with the forces of nature.

Now our internal clocks are being screwed up again, its a longer wavelength jet-lag. Egyptian weekend is Friday-Saturday, which means we look forward to Thursday afternoon (in Cairo’s case to drive rabble-like from work). However, a full day of footy in its rightful place is somehow comforting. Confusion rains at work though as when a meeting is set-up for Tuesday I have to use all my neural powers to think whether that is the second, third or forth day of the working week. My brain aches.....

Roll on Thursday afternoon is what I say....

Gazzumped!

We were told finding a place to stay in Cairo is a frustrating, prolonged business. We were told the negotiations are ephemeral, nothing is set in concrete - even the walls of some places we have visited! Anyway long story, in short form:

Went to see house, man says I want X per month. Ok we say we give you X per month, man says no, he wants more. This could take sometime.

Egyptian Negotiators 1 - Tricker Family 0

but its still only the first half!

Bent pyramids and Jelly Legs

We thought we would get away from the Intercon and Heliopolis yesterday and so took the opportunity of "Friday Prayer Traffic Free Friday" (well not exactly traffic-free but a lot less than normal) and took Ali D - the driver and an Egyptian Egyptologist Mustapha (cue numerous Carry On jokes that for some reason Ti did not approve of, Mustapha Pee etc) down to the Memphis area 30km south of Cairo to have the first day of what is sure to be a pyramid-fest stay in Egypt.

We had our first view of what an extensive metropolis Cairo is, we crossed the fabulously named "City of the Dead" that is indeed an sprawling cemetry area but a working neighbourhood also. I'm keen to look for a place to stay there, it would be a great address to have, "I live in the City of the Dead". However do not think there are many expats are aound there, western ones at least! We also passed the Citadel, Mohummed Ali mosque all places on the must visit list.

After crossing the Nile we made our way down the flood plain of the river along a canal. Unfortunately like many other places in North Africa the 20th Century inventions of the plastic bag and bottle can be seen everywhere, littering the roads and waterway. Corn farms, chicken farms and pigeon farms (a delicacy, farmed in small towers see photo) lay alongside small shops by the relatively traffic-free road. Occasionally we shared the road with water buffalo, goats, sheep, geese, camels etc, the staples of Egyptian agricultual life. Trees are now heavy with dates and mango season is in full swing. We passed through the small village of Sakara and after a short restroom stop (remember Mustapha Pee) we came to our first stop, Zosers Funery Complex.

As you drive from the dense green date farms of the flood plain onto the escarpment you are struck by how quickly the desert starts. You can pretty much have one foot on fertile soil and one on desert, life and death, this was the thinking of the ancient Egyptians.

There are three main pyramids at Sakara, the famous Step Pyramid, the Userkaf and the TiTi pyramid.

The oldest Step pyramid is the best preserved and the latest TiTi is just a pile of rubble (they don’t build em like they used to).

We first visited a mastaba tomb, one of the surrounding tombs to the pyramid of the important dignitaries buried close to the pharaoh. The chap was call Ka-Gmni from 2650 BC. We saw some fantastic panels inside (sorry no photos allowed Sir), Mustapha taught us to read a few hieroglyphics. Apparently Ka-Gmni was a civil servant, a scribe to TiTi, he liked a bit of hunting and fishing, a bit of eating and drinking and collecting taxes -who doesn't. It was impressive and we has it all to ourselves.

Next we went to the Step pyramid, pretty much the oldest building in the world and the prototype for all the pyramids to come. Whilst we in Europe were grunting, collecting nuts and throwing rocks at each other a bright young Egyptian called Imhotep was calculating how to build pyramids with limestone and inventing stone cladding and pebble dash.

Now when you visit a tourist site in Egypt there inevitably are many hawkers and scammers around and the best option to to constantly repeat “La’a Shukran” – no thanks to any offers. We learn't something very important at the Step pyramid – do not let Tom and Tina out of your sight. Joe and myself went off to take a few photos and on return could not find said wife or son. I eventually found them both smiling like loons donning arab head dress supplied by a couple of the local chaps. I was going to drag them away but aforementioned hawkers already had the camera and insisted on them having a family photo. So there we have it. Tina and the boys in full-faux arab wear with some Egyptian herdman wearing my sacred Indiana Jones hat (and it looks better on him). Hope you like the photo, it cost me 5 Egyptian pounds.

and a better one at us that cost us nothing......

After the Step pyramid we headed south to Darshure to the next examples in the early evolution of the pyramid. There was the "Graham Norton" or "Darren" or better known as the Bent Pyramid which we saw from a distance. You can imagine half-way through building this the architech admiring his work and some clever bystander like my dad coming along and whistling through his teeth, shaking his head dismissively saying "I wouldn't do it like that mate, the angles all wrong, you need some 4 be 2s etc etc". I'd like to see the hieroglyphics of what the architech said when he realised the angle was too high (something like &***!!!*&!) and they duly finished it off at lower angle. Actually there are other theories that suggest it was not a mistake but we like this one.

The last pyramid of the day was the Red pyramid. The Red and the Bent are examples of the first real pyramid style rather than the stepped sides. There were no crowds here at all and only the tourist police with thier intercept Camel in case of any trouble. We climbed the 30m of so up the north side and entered the access tunnel.

We had to climbed down at quite a step angle ("walk like a duck" Mustapha said) to the central burial chambers at the centre of the structure. A unique experience and not for the clostraphobes, all but Joe had to stoop low and we descended like 4 of Snow Whites dwarfs except instead of Whistle While You Work you could constantly hear a bone on rock "Clunk" then "Ouch! XXXX!!!". After a long and muscle stiffening desent inside we came to two chambers where thank fully we could stand.

There was the strong smell of ammonia, either from 2000yrs of bat poo or from natural gas (we would have asked whether this was Pharaoh Jif or Cilitbang however Mustapha claimed guides were not allowed to climb to the entrance, down into the pyramid and back again – sounds like he did not fancy it….). After the steep climb up to the light at the end of the tunnel with many repeated Clunk "Ow! XXXX!!!" we all emerged thankfully into the sunlight.

The steep descent and ascent at such a strange angle used some of the lesser known and used leg muscles and we (except dwarf Joe) suffered from Jelly Legs getting down to the car (and have after effects). These were eased by a long afternoon in the hotel pool.

So our first pyramid view. Glad we did it with an Egyptologist -you mustapha egyptologist, it was worth the money. Also, glad we opted to do half day as the boys were getting pyramid blindness (once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all) so we leave the famous Giza pyramids for another day………

This is our first go at a long post - let us know via the comments what you thing people....