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 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 visit, even though museums typically land at the bottom of my priority list.

Instead of continuing to lend out the prime cuts of Egyptian history from millennia to only the top museums in the world, they built the GEM themselves, probably the most spectacular museum in the world, a magnet that you just can't escape. And those wanting to see the GEM will naturally want to 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: That there is now a second capital, New Cairo, polished for diplomats, the upper class, and wealthy expats, while old Cairo falls apart, the average income is 400 euros, and nearly everyone has to fight their way through the month, is deeply perverse.

I feel like a gnu crossing the road during 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 like during airplane turbulence. Meanwhile, I wonder whether it is really appropriate to complain about construction sites on the A3 while people here drive to work daily with junk heaps on four wheels across five lanes, which are actually two, just to return to a place they can hardly call home for their children.

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

When I see how the people here do not show their problems, celebrate a football match like their own wedding, and still give me a smile, although they have nothing themselves, then I am reminded every time 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 couldn't 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 still exist, and I had the privilege of using our exclusive access to see how the first light of sunrise falls on the stones of the pyramids of Giza before the buses from Cairo even left. I stood completely alone in Saqqara's tombs, whose paintings shine even after over four thousand years as if the artist had just set down the brush.

Next, off to the sea - day trip to Alexandria

Alexandria is a bestseller that nobody puts on the shelf

I feel drawn further toward the sea.

The name "Alexandria" has always held enormous allure for me – something historic, ancient, almost as if its very sound conjures an entire era. I have always wondered how a city founded by Alexander the Great and later conquered by Napoleon, off whose coast Nelson destroyed the entire French fleet, finds virtually no place in travel programs.

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-rise building, which will just be another photo in an always identical 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 effortlessly, as if pharaohs, Greeks, and Romans never disputed who really owns this wall, would already be reason enough for a detour.

In the end, however, I was captivated by something much more fleeting: 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, which makes one feel like traveling across three continents and three millennia at once.

Exactly this interplay of cultures, ethnicities, and influences is what I love about sea trade cities in the Arab region, and so images from Jeddah, Aqaba, and Salalah appear in my mind as the wind from the sea dissolves the boundaries between all these places for a moment.

Have you heard of Fayoum?

I drive for an hour 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 feel – as clichéd as it sounds – like in a real mirage.

I stayed here:

Hotel Recommendation

Lazib Inn Resort & Spa

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

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

Read more about this inspiring experience in the blog article: 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 understand what an incredible achievement architects, painters, and workers achieved with these temples. And yet, as so often, what touches me most is the surrounding atmosphere. 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, make me want to pull out a Faber-Castell pencil on my Dahabiya, although I could never draw what I see.

It is too beautiful how all this life flows past 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 TVs stand by the roadside and where weaving is still done by hand. All this deserves its own report.

If someone has turned your head, you could write about them for hours. And so I end this love letter with a "Ma Salama", hoping we will see each other soon.

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