I thought I'd share another NYT article about how Cairenes find peace in this crazy city.
I feel like Cairo is always balanced on the knife-edge of nonchaos. At any given moment, the whole thing could go careening into madness ... and yet, somehow, it doesn't. Every day.
Case in point, last night we flew into the new terminal at Cairo Airport. Terminal 3 itself is quite nice overall - it actually looks like a modern terminal in a developed nation. Even the airport website seems to be in good shape.
Our catastrophe happened when we tried to get a taxi home. Normally I reserve a car from the university, but with the flu-mediated university shutdown I wasn't able to make the booking. In an effort to be helpful (warning warning warning!!!) the government claimed to have standardized taxi fares.
Yeah, right. All they've done is given free rein to the taxi sharks to try to fleece tourists. Some of these drivers had the gall to ask for LE 100 to Garden City and LE 70 to Heliopolis (the airport is in Heliopolis!). For the university car, I pay LE 60 (that's for a private, air-conditioned smoke-free car with seatbelts and a driver who carries my bag). The airport has standardized fares to LE 80 to Garden City. The "shuttle" is actually a private car company that has the word "shuttle" in its name (we discovered this about 35 minutes into our taxi search). Going downstairs to departures to look for empty taxis wasn't any better. And we never have been able to find the 2 pound downtown bus.
After almost an hour we found one of the new metered white cabs who was willing to take us to Garden City. We experienced the usual amount of traffic - and when we arrived home, the meter read LE 33.50. That's right. 34 pounds from the airport to Garden City. We were so pleased, we gave the guy 40 pounds and took his phone number.
Summary: Egyptian government tries to make things better, instead makes a bad situation worse.
What was I talking about? Oh, yes, the article. Here are my favorite bits:
...In a difficult environment, Egyptians know how to make do.
They know how to ignore what they cannot change and improvise where they can. They drive the wrong way down one-way streets, are blind to traffic lights, never voluntarily wait in line and regularly circumvent a government bureaucracy that is less than user-friendly. They are not trying to be rude; they are just fighting to get by.
Technically, setting up on a bridge is illegal. But this is Egypt. Who cares about technicalities?Indeed. I guess that just about sums it up, doesn't it?
... “It’s calm, it’s not crowded, and there is clean air,” her mother said. Her younger brother, Muhammad, 11, said he liked it on the bridge “because this is where the car accidents happen.”
Summary: Egyptian system bad. Egyptian people good. Very good. Except for little Muhammed the accident-lover.
I'm glad to know there are things that I'll be missing about living here.
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