My Egypt Trip: A love letter to my Mistress

The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza

I swallowed the bait "new Egyptian Museum" like a pike.

Like so many travelers, I too was lured by the golden burial chambers and treasures of the GEM (Grand Egyptian Museum) like a fish. That was probably the smartest move Egypt has made in a long time, if it even manages to get me to stop by, although museums usually rank in the lower mid of my priorities.

Instead of just lending the prime pieces of Egyptian history from millennia to the top museums in the world, they built the probably most spectacular museum in the world with the GEM, a magnet you can't escape. And those who want to see the GEM will gladly stay longer in the country.

On the way in Cairo

Cairo is probably wilder, louder, poorer, and more chaotic than you can imagine.

Let's not kid ourselves: The fact that there is now a second capital in New Cairo, polished for diplomats, the upper class, and wealthy expats, while old Cairo is falling apart, average income is 400 Euros, and nearly everyone has to struggle through the month, is deeply perverse.

I feel like a wildebeest crossing the road at the River Crossing in the Masai Mara, and my chances of survival feel similarly slim. My guide looks at me puzzled because I close my eyes and hold his hand tightly as if in airplane turbulence. Meanwhile, I wonder if it really makes sense to complain about construction sites on the A3 while people here drive daily to work in junk piles on four wheels across five lanes, which are actually two, to return to a place that can hardly still be called a home for their children.

When I see that dancing and singing here are not a matter of mood, but only whether music is coming from a speaker or someone simply starts to sing, while we at home first need two glasses of sparkling wine and an announcement from the DJ to even step onto the dance floor.

When I see how people here don't show their problems outwardly, celebrate a football game like their own wedding, and despite having nothing themselves, still give me a smile, it becomes clear to me again and again why I love the Arab world. Why it makes me feel and challenges me, and what the metropolises of the Arabian Peninsula with their polished glass and gold cannot give me.

I could not resist Cairo and spontaneously turned three planned days into a week.

By the way, the pyramids still exist

Yes, the pyramids, Saqqara, Memphis and the rest of the classics in and around Cairo are of course still there, and I had the privilege of utilizing our exclusive access to see the first light of sunrise falling on the stones of the Giza pyramids before the buses from Cairo even left. I stood all alone in Saqqara's tombs, the paintings of which still shine after over four thousand years as if the artist had just put down the brush.

Next, it's off to the sea - day trip to Alexandria

Alexandria is a bestseller that no one puts on the shelf

I feel drawn to the sea.

The name "Alexandria" has always had immense radiance for me – something historical, ancient, almost as if its very sound conjures up an entire era. I've always wondered how a city founded by Alexander the Great and later conquered by Napoleon, where Nelson destroyed the entire French fleet off its coast, finds virtually no place in any travel program.

Two of the greatest military commanders in world history immortalized on the same coast, while modern rulers in the region today prefer to immortalize themselves with the next record-high skyscraper that will just be another photo in a consistently same skyline in two generations.

After my day trip from Cairo, I understood it even less.

The newly rebuilt oldest library of humanity and the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, where pharaonic, Greek, and Roman symbols weave together so naturally, as if pharaohs, Greeks, and Romans had never argued over who actually owns this wall, would have been reason enough for a detour.

But in the end, something much more ephemeral caught me: The saltwater in the air, the seagulls over the Corniche, the smell of grilled fish mixing with the sea breeze, and this peculiar mix of Mediterranean and Arab-African vibe that gives one the feeling of being on three continents and three millennia at once.

It is exactly this interplay of cultures, ethnicities, and influences that I love in trading cities by the sea in the Arab region, and thus images from Jeddah, Aqaba, and Salalah come to mind as the wind from the sea lets the boundaries between all these places blur for a moment.

Have you heard of Fayoum?

For an hour I drive past salt lakes and fields full of fruits and vegetables until finally only sand remains. Shortly thereafter, I stand in front of the Lazib Inn and I feel – as cliché as it sounds – like in a real mirage.

Here I stayed:

Hotel Recommendation

Lazib Inn Resort & Spa

The view of the salt lake is so surreal that for a moment I believe I am back at the Mediterranean – almost like an echo from Alexandria, right in the desert. The Andalusian architecture and the warmth here captivate me so much that I completely forget to apply sunscreen, noticing the sunburn only when the euphoria has long faded.

Curious as I am, I want to explore the abandoned village in the ruins next, and the decision unexpectedly leads to the most inspiring experience of this entire long journey.

Read more about this inspiring experience in the blog post: The most moving match on the streets of Fayoum.

On the Nile

It is impossible to summarize what it does to you to stand in the Valley of the Kings, to see the beauty of the paintings and to comprehend what incredible achievements architects, painters, and workers have accomplished at these temples. And yet, like so often, it is the surroundings that touch me the most. The Nile has been the lifeblood of this land for millennia, and the green vegetation, the facades, the colors, the shadows that the palms cast at sunset, want me to pull out a Faber-Castell pencil on my dahabiya, even though I could never draw what I see.

It is too beautiful how all this life passes by you like a movie, the little stops on islands where people live happily and freely in complete self-sufficiency, the hustle and bustle on the streets of Esna, where old televisions stand by the road and weaving is still done by hand. All that deserves its own report.

If someone has turned your head, you could write about them for hours. And so I conclude this love letter with a “Ma Salama”, may we see each other again soon.

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