The Professor on a mission and the long and winding road part II

I was going to say the professor on a crusade but then I realised what part of the world we were in........

Our half day tour took us to 'The square of Mosque's' which is a square with a number of mosques. Whilst Nancy were doing her thing and ignoring the less well turned out guy beckoning us into the mosque for a quick fleecing of all my coins and low denomination notes a very well turned out guy approach us and introduced us.

He had a gift of a book for which he wanted no money. With the other guy beckoning us over and my new found porter friend from the day before I must say I was busy trying to figure out what angle this guy was working.

It turned his agenda was not financial. He explained that he wanted to explain Islam was not a violent religion and the extremists were not people of true faith and did not represent the vast majority of people. The book he gave me would explain the key elements of the Islam faith. He would also go away and come back for a book for my, he paused whilst I filled in the blank 'daughter' I added which he duly did so. Checking that I still had my wallet and watch I wished well and walked over to the other guy coins and five pound notes to hand.

The trouble with the seaside is that there are lots of fish restaurants, great if you like fish, Laura - not that keen. Time for a trip to the front desk.

A grill restaurant a 20/25 minute walk down the long and winding road, just past the bridge, maybe on the landside - could have been on the beach. Close enough to avoid a mad taxi ride in either direction. The precise location was however in some doubt so the hotel guy agreed a twenty dollar town car ride there and a walk back along the promenade was probably a good solution.

Laura loved the black Audi A6 with blacked out windows and uniformed driver.

The restaurant on the first floor almost overlooking the sea certainly met our needs serving lumps of various meets fresh off the grill.

Behind Laura was a table of 8-9 young women, all in headgear, arms and legs covered enjoying a girls night out. They were having great fun, giggling, laughing and taking lots and lots of pictures. It was nice to see.

After the meal we started our walk back along the prom. The street, the prom and the beach was busy - lots of families enjoying themselves , street vendors waving pieces of cardboard to keep charcoals burning for the corn on the cob they were selling. The road of course was still full of tooting traffic. The place felt wonderfully vibrant. We caught sight of one bride in full white wedding dress walking with her family along the prom heading for a venue and a little further along a limo disgorge another wedding party, this time the bride (we think) all in black and carrying flowers - well we assumed it was a wedding as the awaiting crowd beneath us at a restaurant appeared to be in party mood.

After a chat about differences in the world, personal security when walking out at night and the dangers of various cities around the world I have visited we reached our hotel. It was only when walking through the hotel's private tunnel from one side of the road to the other did we realise that the 20/25 minute journey had actually taken 40.

And so to bed.....well actually a quick drink at the bar. It will be a quick drink as the only other people in the bar are 3 vocal Brit couples......ah well.

Peter Jackson
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The long and winding road and the revolutionary guide

We arrived into Alexandria late afternoon, successfully met, escorted through the much smaller station to our waiting limousine - a Skoda Octavia.

Now Alexandria is on the coast, our hotel we knew to be on the coast, so our driver left the station and headed through narrow streets until we saw the white crested waves of the Med - we had arrived. Well we thought we had.

Alexandria is on the coast, it has a coast road. What we didn't realise it was a very long one.

Nominally a six lane road, three in each direction that quite often descends into six or seven in each direction or randomly down to two it is the city's main artery. Following the coastline the road weaves in huge sweeps revealing headland after headland. It turns out this coast road is over 25km long!

A quiet night, first watching the sun sink slowly beneath the sea, a light meal and so to bed. For my sins I actually watched a movie on my iPad....oh well.

Today we met Nancy who was to be our guide for the morning. She warmly welcomed us to Free Egypt and explained (reasonably) frequently how life was better/going to get better now that the old regime had gone whilst pointing out various buildings that the said regime had taken over for their personal use. The difference in Alex and Cairo is quite marked - it is visibly a 'seaside' town with it's beach side cafe's - the whole place seems much more relaxed than Cairo - the boys and men staring less at Laura.

There was one sad part of our Nancy's story which she quickly skimmed over. This a lady probably in her mid to late twenties with a BA in her pocket was studying for her Masters but it was taking some time because she had had one child which had died but now has a six month old son. She didn't dwell on her loss even for a blink of an eye and outwardly neither did we but both Laura and I felt the pain.

Laura and I discussed later the statement 'travel broadens the mind'. This trip certainly has done that.




Peter Jackson
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Hustled for a £1 on a train

Most railway stations are chaos. Imagine being an outsider and looking down at Waterloo on a Monday. Now imagine that in a half re-built building, the heat and a cacophony of sound that Beethoven would be able to hear and you begin to get the picture.

Our car took a short cut down a crowded path bordered by market stalls to get us a little closer. Our escort grabbed both suitcases and led the way, constantly checking that Laura was behind him and I her. As we entered the station we were stopped by a craggy faced old man who proffered some kind of ID and took the cases, slinging Laura's holdall over his shoulder and my heavy suitcase onto his shoulder. The three of is followed him through the crowds around the end of a line onto a platform. A number of passengers didn't bother with this long route and simply jumped down, crossed the track and climbed up the other side.

Ahmed put us on the train. The crowds on the platform had disappeared into various carriages, but fortunately not ours. We sat in wide comfortable seats or facing forward similar in style to business class seats on flights in Europe. Each row consisted of two seats, an aisle then a single seat. Out fellow travellers consisted of suited and booted business men, the guy in front with the most annoying text notification which said in english 'you have a text message'.

Having missed lunch both Laura and I were hungry. A tunic clad waiter walked through the carriage holding a note pad floating in arabic what I took to be requests for orders. I let it past. About half an hour later he was back with a trolley service - this was going to be easy - I just pointed. To get around my lack of knowledge of arabic the waiter wrote down the price and I gave him the requisite funds nicely rounded up as I was just pleased to have had successfully completed the transaction.

Now when Ahmed put us on the train he has invested care of our cases to the carriage porter - each carriage appeared to have its own porter - who place the bags in a shuttered cupboard with no lock and gestured that he knew that those cases were mine and he knew who I was and where I was sitting. Ahmed explained that the train had just two stops and we should get off at the second one and my new best porter friend would put the bags on the platform.

The journey itself difficult purchases of two cheese rolls and two cans of coke aside was quite pleasant, the carriage nicely air conditioned and the seats being able to recline. The view from the windows didn't amount to too much, fields, donkey's carry men and crops punctuated by small towns of partly built blocks of flats from which washing hung.

On board businessmen greeted friends, colleagues or acquaintances as they walked down the aisle to have a cigarette in the spaces between the carriages. It would appear this was a favoured mode of transport of solid working businessmen.

The train pulled into it's first stop and has predicted by Ahmed the vast majority of people left the train leaving Laura, myself and maybe two or three others.

Our porter friend now sprung into action. Operating a lever he swung each seat around so it was facing the opposite way, ready for the return journey to Cairo. Working down through the carriage he soon reached Laura and me. Gesturing he took us to the back down the carriage past his completed work and through to the shuttered cupboard where our cases lay.

He started up a conversation, him in arabic, me in english, offered me then Laura a cigarette and explained that the train had stopped for a moment before entering the station to wait for another train to depart. He showed me the problem by opening the door and inviting me to lean out and look down the track. My porter friend then lift the cases making a noise indicating that they were heavy and opened his hand into which I placed two five pound notes. Checking that they were fivers and there was only two he gestured again, my protestations that I had no more cash lasted about five seconds and I gave him two more fivers. Satisfied the two one way conversations turned to football and the failure of Manchester United to beat Barcelona - by the time we pulled into the station we were giving each other high fives and waving goodbye like life long friends.

And so to Alexandria....

Peter Jackson
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Cairo Cars

If there is one constant in the city like many of its ilk is the constant toot of car horns that simply do not stop at any time of day or night.

The weight of traffic dominates life in the city, a 10 block journey a major expedition. A car is not so much a mean of transport as a musical weapon of choice.

We walked to Tahrir Square, logic would dictate that in this city devoted to the car, van and lorry that the most sensible place to be is the pavement (sidewalk). Nice idea, however natives of Cairo when not in a virtual car park in the middle of the road manage to park nose to tail taking up every inch of space next to the footpath. When I say nose to tail and every inch I mean just that with cars parked touching each other front and back. The upshot of which is makes walking on pavements very difficult - no gaps to cross roads, so on many of the side roads you join the rest of the locals and walk in the road.

Cairo loves the car.
Peter Jackson
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Following my father to Cairo - 70 years on

It only occurred to me a few moments ago that Dad was almost certainly here in Cairo either in 1940 or 41 - 70 years ago. An amazing thought, I must call him later and talk to him.

For the last three days we have seen the sights you would expect to see - the pyramids, the museum, bazaar etc. Looking around the city, talking to people what has struck me the most has been a sense of awaking. Yes the Egyptian people have a long and spectacular history but they believe they are making history now. Yesterday we saw a small protest, there was a banner which said 'We deserve more'. They do, I am sure my father would agree.

Peter Jackson
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21 years ago today

We became a parents for the very first time.

After we had come home and fussing parents, midwives and health visitors had departed we were left with a little bundle of joy, responsibility for which was our and ours alone. On that night the task seemed daunting, it still does.

But the operative word is joy. The joy of seeing our bundle to grow up to be a man and his two sisters grow into ladies.

Parenthood is wonderful gift.

Peter Jackson
Thursday 14th October 2010
Peter Jackson
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A hobby horse in a stable

The stable I am in is where my daughter keeps her two ponies, she is tacking up and I am waiting to watch her ride.

My hobby horse is the way hotel brands particularly luxury ones regularly talk about 'the guest experience' as being the thing that differentiates them from others when talking to C&I agencies and they do nothing to explain how they can develop services and products to make it easy for us to do business with them. What they singularly fail to grasp is that:
* Invariably their view of their own brand is an inflated version of the reality
* They don't get to deliver the guest experience if people like me think they are too hard to do business with and we don't include them in the mix.

My daughter is about to get on her pony, so I will get off my hobby horse....

Have a great day



Peter
Peter Jackson
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