Cairo take 2, beyond the walls
Oct 26, 2009 18:32:47 GMT
Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2009 18:32:47 GMT
So, tonight I decided to walk out of the hotel along the endless security road, which leads to the nicer part of Heliopolis.
You immediately see that the shops are not the same as in the other district.
Naturally, people who shop in such stores do not spend their time eating flat bread and bananas like they do around the block.
In most of the developing world, the customers do not actually set foot into these places but prefer to have their dinners delivered instead.
Naturally, they pay a price for this, but there are yet more shops to cater to their new needs.
The area is definitely more civilized than the other neighborhood, but one can easily perceive the typical Egyptian penchant for changing things from the way they were originally made. The balconies on these upper class apartment buildings attest to this with the personalisation or the removal of the original plans.
The boulevard was not nearly as hard to cross as the one two days ago.
Mosques are everywhere, and they are usually the main thing that indicates to me that I am in the Islamic world. I absolutely do not know how they survived before the invention of green fluorescent tubes, because every single mosque uses as many as they can find a place to put them.
The neighborhood still has a few little snack kiosks. Naturally all of them sell everything from cigarettes to shampoo.
Some of the buildings look like they would be very pleasant in which to live if only the city were not so dusty and polluted. The gardeners seem to have a lot of imagination if not much precision.
Even in the nicest neighborhoods, you will always see some abandoned cars, and there never seems to be any move to take them away.
There was no problem at all around here taking pictures of whatever I wanted, and it was obvious that nobody minded.
It was starting to get dark, so I took the endless security road back to the hotel on foot.
That's just the very first part. On the right hand side is the abandoned horse racetrack, which is now just used as an equestrian center with countless stables of various social categories. Some of the horses that I saw looked pretty pathetic, but it was already too dark to get pictures of them.
So I just continued along the security lane.
I would imagine that if somebody runs the first roadblock, the surviving guards will have enough time to phone the hotel before any vehicle can get there.
Finally, I was in sight of the hotel and its various private cafés. I noticed that any modern café worthy of the name seems to require at least 20 plasma screens placed everywhere.
The casino won't get going until late.
No, I won't be buying any of this stuff in the little row of shops.
Into the hotel and its metal detector...
If ever I convert to Islam, I know that all one has to do in most of the Middle East is to open the desk drawer to find the proper direction of Mecca. More reliable than the Gideon Bible!
You immediately see that the shops are not the same as in the other district.
Naturally, people who shop in such stores do not spend their time eating flat bread and bananas like they do around the block.
In most of the developing world, the customers do not actually set foot into these places but prefer to have their dinners delivered instead.
Naturally, they pay a price for this, but there are yet more shops to cater to their new needs.
The area is definitely more civilized than the other neighborhood, but one can easily perceive the typical Egyptian penchant for changing things from the way they were originally made. The balconies on these upper class apartment buildings attest to this with the personalisation or the removal of the original plans.
The boulevard was not nearly as hard to cross as the one two days ago.
Mosques are everywhere, and they are usually the main thing that indicates to me that I am in the Islamic world. I absolutely do not know how they survived before the invention of green fluorescent tubes, because every single mosque uses as many as they can find a place to put them.
The neighborhood still has a few little snack kiosks. Naturally all of them sell everything from cigarettes to shampoo.
Some of the buildings look like they would be very pleasant in which to live if only the city were not so dusty and polluted. The gardeners seem to have a lot of imagination if not much precision.
Even in the nicest neighborhoods, you will always see some abandoned cars, and there never seems to be any move to take them away.
There was no problem at all around here taking pictures of whatever I wanted, and it was obvious that nobody minded.
It was starting to get dark, so I took the endless security road back to the hotel on foot.
That's just the very first part. On the right hand side is the abandoned horse racetrack, which is now just used as an equestrian center with countless stables of various social categories. Some of the horses that I saw looked pretty pathetic, but it was already too dark to get pictures of them.
So I just continued along the security lane.
I would imagine that if somebody runs the first roadblock, the surviving guards will have enough time to phone the hotel before any vehicle can get there.
Finally, I was in sight of the hotel and its various private cafés. I noticed that any modern café worthy of the name seems to require at least 20 plasma screens placed everywhere.
The casino won't get going until late.
No, I won't be buying any of this stuff in the little row of shops.
Into the hotel and its metal detector...
If ever I convert to Islam, I know that all one has to do in most of the Middle East is to open the desk drawer to find the proper direction of Mecca. More reliable than the Gideon Bible!