Cairo

That was a lot of airplane. After flying to Germany next to a very nice but terribly fat woman who spilled frequently into my seat both over and under the armrest (thank god for that armrest), I found a local hotel and paid way too much for a good night's sleep. Or was it a good day's sleep? Jetlag sucks. My main tactic, or strategery if you will, to combat jetlag, has always been to stay up as long as possible and try and sleep my very first night at the correct local time. This has worked well for me in the past, and this trip seems no exception, although spending all of yesterday awake after about 10 hours on a plane was rather challenging. During this time I discovered that Germans really DO have an unhealthy obsession with David Hasselhoff, and that yes, his music really is THAT BAD. Yikes. Only moderately better was the German shuttlebus' music as we bombed down the freeway toward my overpriced hotel: Chumbawumba? Come on damnit... Also there are virtually no commercials on German TV, which is a lot like watching TV with Lana and Kelly after having procured a PVR ("....... SOMEONE FAST FORWARD THE DAMNED COMMER- WHERE'S THE REMOTE? I BET CHRIS HAS IT AGAIN... NO SURPRISE... DO YOUR DAMNED JOB CHRIS").

The underpaid front desk agent at the overpriced hotel neglected to actually set up my wake up call, despite my standing at the counter until he'd claimed he'd done so. Danke, sheizekopf. Luckily, I travel with a battery powered alarm clock, so I was good to go anyway. Sadly he wasn't there the next morning, so I couldn't ream him out. I mean, I could have reamed somebody else out, but then what's the point; I wanted to make that other guy feel bad, not some random guy. I ate the driest sandwich ever made for breakfast at the airport (I swear it took me 20 minutes, it was like eating sand), and finally got down to the boarding gate just in time for them to tell me that "I vood have to vait and zee iv I could get on ze plane" (which I noticed was about half full when I finally did get on; apparently they were expecting a rush of last minute pyramid seekers).

The plane to Cairo was uneventful, which come to think of it is quite nice when it comes to plane rides, and I spent most of the time reading my bible (Lonely Planet: Egypt). I assumed that the hotels would be basically empty and so jumped into a car with 3 Aussies and headed downtown, full of confidence. Well, it turns out that basically all of the hotels down here are sold out due to the weekly Friday celebrations in Tahrir square, so I might be sleeping on the proverbial (and actual) couch tonight. There are currently about a hundred thousand Egyptians in the square; it's pretty amazing to say the least!


Currently I'm sitting on the rooftop patio of my little hotel, watching the sunset and listening to the celebrations from afar. Tomorrow I'm off to see the pyramids of Giza, the only remaining wonder of the seven wonders of the world, upon which I plan to unleash a full photographic assault. After that I'll likely make my way down to Aswan on the overnight train, and then come back up the Nile on a boat to Luxor; basically I'm going to try and cram all the historical stuff into about a week and then deke out for the beaches, leaving me as long as I want to laze about in Dahab, a backpacker's paradise on the red sea. Awesome. I can't wait to get this trip underway!

Well, that's all for now, I'll update as I can over the next few days.

C