Out of Africa, Part Deux

 Tish wrote her impressions of our misadventures in Alexandria.

     Do you believe that taxi drivers are infallible in navigating the streets of a city to deposit you at your requested destination? Think again. After years of movies and TV shows, I thought taxi drivers knew every place and all the short cuts. Egypt has taught me different. Drivers can be experienced navigators of a city or they can be part-time hacks driving a rented cab trying to make milk money for their families. They can know their area of a city intimately or know nothing at all about other sections of the city. Cairo is immense.

     When Ellen, Mark and Ruth got into the yellow and black cab on the Corniche in Alexandria, I thought we were home free. What driver wouldn’t know the main railway station? It is only 10 minutes away from the Corniche. It is thru a maze of one way streets, but this is a main destination. Whew! Maybe we didn’t need to leave early to make sure we got to the station well before our 7 p.m. departure time. Alex is a small city compared to Cairo. Mafeesh mushkala. No problem.

     Karlice, Ed and I thought we would see them outside the station as they had left in the first cab. Nope. They weren’t inside the station either. We found the platform for the Cairo train. Ed stationed himself at the end of the platform. Karlice searched up and down the platforms. I patrolled the front of the station looking for Ellen, Mark, and Ruth. It was 6:30 and we still had half an hour until the train left. I wasn’t worried. They would be here soon. They must be in a traffic jam somewhere.

     By 6:45, I had tried Ellen’s phone twice and got a “call barred” message. Now it was scary that there was no sign of them. I briefly flashed on their having been kidnapped until I remembered I was not in Guatemala any more. You can get irrational when you are worried. Where are they??? The taxi could get lost, but not for this long. Karlice, Ed and I strategized. If they don’t get here in time, we’ll have to take the next train. When is it? Can we get tickets or is the train full? I was thinking of hotels in Alex for an overnight stay.

     At 6:55, we got their call. At first I thought that they were at the main station, but on the wrong platform. Then I got it, they were at the next station and would wait for us there. We had to run to make the train and find our car. Trains are one of the few things in Egypt that do run on time! Our adrenaline was running high.

     I was confused about where we would meet at the stop. I had an image of them waiting on the platform as the train went by so that we could jump out and swoop them into our car. I called again and spoke to Mahmoud who had helped Ellen, Mark and Ruth. He was excited and he said that they would be in Car 4. Why Car 4? Our tickets were for Car 7. Platform 4, Car 4? No!!!

     When the train stopped, we followed thru with our strategy. Ed stays in the car. Karlice stations herself at the door to the car while I run up and down the platform like a crazy person yelling their names. And searching the crowd. The platform was crazy busy with passengers jostling to get themselves and their luggage on the train.

     A man, later I learned it was Mahmoud, stopped me as I was running along the platform and asked if I was looking for my family. He told me that Ellen, Mark and Ruth were in Car 4. Too bad that the cars didn’t have any numbers on them. I went to the end of the train and counted backwards until 4. No Ellen. No Mark. No Ruth.

     In the surrounding cars? No Ellen. No Mark. No Ruth. Calm down. Let me count the cars again. 1, 2, 3, 4. No Ellen. No Mark, No Ruth. I started yelling their names again. Everyone on the platform was looking at me, but not Ellen, Mark or Ruth. Where were they? How could I have missed them? Start again. My phone rang and Karlice let me know that the lost were found. I ran to car 7-- an Ellen, a Mark and a Ruth.

     A possible disaster was turned into a good memory and comic story due to Mahmoud and his willingness to help strangers on a train platform in Alexandra. Taxi!!

Lost in Africa (almost)

It started as a beautiful day for a trip to Alexandria. We got up early to get the metro to the train station. Five adults (Ed, Karlice, Ruth, Ellen and I) walking in single file behind Tish on our way to the metro station. (Sidewalks are not very good, so one walks in the street trying to stay out of the way of the cars.) We dutifully waited for Tish to give us our metro tickets but, unlike the lemmings we had been to that point, we pushed and shoved our way onto the already packed metro.

We got off at the Mubarak metro station and walked to the adjoining train station. The train was faster than we enjoy riding on Amtrak in Michigan and, a little more than two hours later, we were in Alexandria. We had sped through miles and miles of farmland heading to the lowest part of Lower Egypt. On the train, we all looked at Tish’s tourist guide and suggested a few sights that we might like to see though mainly we wanted to see old Alexandria and the Mediterranean Sea. The train stopped and as we started gathering our things, Tish told us that there are two train stations in Alexandria and we would not get off the train until we were at the second, “end of the line” train station.

Since there were six of us, we had to take two taxis to the Corniche – the promenade along the Mediterranean Sea in the harbor of Alexandria. It was gorgeous: sunny and warm. In other words, it was a great day – a great day for a day trip. We stopped at an historic coffee shop for breakfast. We then walked along the Corniche to the new Alexandria library built on the site of the original library. Ellen almost became one with the fender of a car and/or the pavement as we tried to cross six lanes of traffic to get to the library entrance. Ellen avoided injury but we all wondered why Ptolemy – who built the original library – would chose to put the library on the wrong side of the road when he first ordered its construction.

We backtracked along the Corniche to a hotel that had a roof-top café from which we got to see the whole harbor and to enjoy 25 £-minimum drinks. (About £ 5.60 Egyptian equals one dollar.) While on the roof-top café, it actually started to sprinkle thus validating the weather forecast that we had read the evening before and the prediction of the taxi driver who said: “Rain? Maybe one minute!” We continued west to the fish market enjoying the rainbow that the few seconds of rain brought. We had an early dinner so that we could get the 7:00 PM train back to Cairo.
 Then the beautiful tapestry we had woven with the experiences of our day started to unravel. We started walking east along the Corniche slowly as we tried to hail a taxi. When the first taxi stopped, Ellen or Ruth asked the driver how much to go to the train station. The taxi driver didn’t seem to understand, so I said “Train station – 20 pounds?” to which the taxi driver nodded okay. Ruth, Ellen and I climbed in and sped away. We had never been to Alexandria before but we had studied Tish’s book some and knew when the driver sped past the right turn to the train station that we were heading for trouble. I asked Ellen for Tish’s guide book but Ellen had given it to Tish. Ellen got out her cell phone and tried calling Tish without luck. We told the driver who was heading east along the coast at breakneck speed that he was going in the wrong direction. He stopped and asked a young woman if she spoke English. We told her we wanted to go to the train station to go to Cairo. Ruth was in the back seat making “choo-choo” sounds. The young woman seemed to understand us and tried to explain to the driver where he needed to go. A second woman/friend seemed to confirm what the first young woman had said.
The driver said something and we were off again racing east along the harbor road. I said “la” which is "no" in Arabic. I then began singing “la, la, la, la” from “Deck the Halls” and the driver finally pulled over again and asked for directions again. We offered our pleas. After another exchange in Arabic, we were off again but this time, we went only a short distance and turned right. Right into what appeared to be a 12-lane traffic jam. Actually, there were only six lanes but lane lines are pretty much a waste of paint for the way people drive in Egypt squeezing cars into spaces not made for another car.

The taxi driver inched his way through the traffic and, after what felt like a half hour, pointed to a building off to the left and started saying: “Train! Train!” He then pulled off to the right and let us out. We jumped out and I paid him but he wanted more money because he had driven so far. (Now he speaks English!) I sang another chorus of Deck the Halls and we started inching our way across the 12 lanes of traffic and then went quickly to the train platform. We started asking about which platform was for Cairo and folks told us/pointed to the middle platform. Ellen kept trying to call Tish but without luck. Ellen said this is not the right station but I disagreed and pointed to the name on the wall. The name on the wall in English spelling was “Mahattat Sidi Gaber.” I can be so assertive when I am wrong! The train station where Tish, Karlice and Ed were – and where we should have been was “Mahattat Misr.” We started asking each other if we should go and try to buy tickets (Tish had the tickets!)

Ellen said that she was going to go outside to look for Tish, Karlice and Ed. Ruth wisely told her that we needed to stay together and then started asking people about the train to Cairo. While she was trying to make herself understood when talking to an Egyptian soldier, a man who overheard her interrupted saying: “I can help you.” He said that we were at the second train station but that the train would stop to take us to Cairo. Ruth asked him if he had a cell phone. He did and he called the number and connected with Tish. Tish said that they were looking for us at the first train station. Ellen told them to board and we would get on at the second station and all would be fine. Then Ruth or Ellen asked about our train car so that we could be ready to board at the right place. We heard “Car 4” and the man confirmed that we should wait at the spot where Car 4 would stop. He told us that he was in Car 7 if we needed his help again. (The man in the picture was our interpreter/cell-phone owner/savior.)
 About two minutes later, the train to Cairo pulled into the station where we were waiting. We boarded Car 4 – but Tish, Karlice and Ed were not there. We went running for Car 7 and our interpreter (and his telephone) checking the cars as we passed. When we arrived at Car 7, we saw Ed sitting at a window seat. Karlice was with him. Tish had left the train and was on the platform yelling our names but we found her a moment later.)

We all hugged. Tish gave us our tickets and we sped off into the night toward Cairo. For the next two and one half hours, one could hear spontaneous laughter coming from Car 7 as we looked at each other and laughed our relief.

Egypt

As we walked between tombs in the Valley of the Kings just west of Luxor, we passed a young woman wearing a Santa hat. It was only then that I realized that it was Christmas day. Not being aware of the date or the holiday is one of the aspects that underscores this vacation to Egypt. The loss of orientation is not simply the luxury of vacation and forgetting the day, it comes from the cultural slap upside the head – and my head is still spinning.
 My head is still spinning because we left the quiet life of Vaison la Romaine and have come to the second largest city in the world. And the third world. And the home of 5,000 years of documented history. And the place where the dust raised in the desert and in the streets of the cities never gets washed off of leaves or buildings because it never rains. And where the smog can be so thick you can’t see the pyramids. And where the first “wake up” call is the Moslem call to prayers at 5:30 AM. And where the calls to prayer come from so many minarets in so many mosques that they compete for your attention. And where city services have failed to keep pace with population and that means, among other things, garbage is not collected. And where the pollution from plastic – be it plastic water bottles or plastic bags – is overwhelming. And where I feel safer than I do in most cities in the US…

At the same time, my head is spinning because it is amazing to view the temples and pyramids, fortresses and early mosques and try to fathom the skill, craftsmanship and engineering required for their construction. For example, red granite was quarried in Aswan in the south of Egypt and then transported on the Nile to the sites where it would be used as coffins or sarcophagi or as a statue or obelisk or as part of a wall… One of the obelisks from Luxor (Karnak) is at the center of the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Another obelisk – “Cleopatra’s Needle” – stands in Central Park (New York) both transported from Egypt via modern ships (I think)… Our guide told us that some of the pieces weighed more than 200 tons. What kind of boats did they have 4,000 years ago to carry such weights? And then once at the destination, where did they have to go to rent a crane to lift it into place? The pyramids, the Sphinx, and the burial tombs and the elaborate drawings and carvings therein have been preserved well though the relics and icons did not fare as well due to centuries of looting. Archeologists and Egyptologists continue to uncover more sites…

My head is spinning because I thought that France was the “scarf capitol” of the world. After seeing the creative ways women here wear scarves, I am beginning to think that Egypt seems closer to the scarf fashion epi-center. The majority of Moslem women – the majority of women here – have their heads covered. They create fashion statements with the scarves that they wear. Most younger women wear multiple scarves which are always beautiful and well-coordinated with their other garments.

Whether in Cairo or in Luxor, internet connections are readily available and that makes my head spin too. Skype, e-mail, Google work here as well as in France or in the US. Technological advances in communication cross the divides faster than air mail. We were talking about movies and learned that within 24 hours of the release of a movie in the states, bootleg copies are available in the markets here. When I stop being dizzy from spinning, I return to a state of amazement. Awesome vacation. Awesome world.

HAPPY...

We are going to Cairo for the holidays. We have heard that the reindeer there look more like camels than caribou but they will help guide us in delivering our sincere holiday wishes to everyone.

Joyeux Noël

Merry Christmas

Happy Hanukah

Happy Solstice

Bonne Année

May 2010 be filled with peace and love.

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Fresh is best!

Everything tastes better here.

It is not the preparation – though the way the French prepare foods does make for great flavors – it is the quality of the food items. Everything: apples, beets, chicken, cod, turkey, zucchini.

I attribute the better flavors to several things.

• The food in the market is fresh, most often locally grown.
• The food is raised using few chemicals.
• The animals are raised using fewer hormones.

Fresh and local seem to be the keys to the good flavors here. In one very important sense, the French never forgot what community-supported-agriculture proponents are promoting at markets in the states: Buy local.

We have seen the ads and signs reminding people to buy their Christmas turkeys and we have heard that the supermarkets macy have only a short supply because the long distance truck drivers want better pay and thus may strike/boycott the turkey delivery system. The other thing we heard is that the turkeys here will be more like those sold in the US which I interpret as more white meat, less flavor. Savourez la vie! Taste life (and good flavors)!

As cookbook author and French food expert Patricia Wells writes in The Provence Cookbook, “I live more than half of each year here, much of it spent touring markets, shops, restaurants, farms, in search of the freshest and finest of the season… Vendors laugh as I gasp when I see the first-of-season fresh white shell beans – cocos blancs – a signal that I can add Provençal vegetable soup, or pistou, to my weekly repertoire.” (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004, p. xiii.) Also visit Patricia Well’s website at: http://www.patriciawells.com/.

Thanksgiving

After leaving our dear friend Mary Beth at the TGV (fast train station) at “0 dark thirty” this morning, we drove east toward the sunrise and Vaison la Romaine. As the skies lightened, the most notable aspect of the horizon was the snow on all of the major mountains. What we experienced as rain on Sunday fell as snow in the higher elevations.

What a beautiful sight. It matched the beauty of some of the other sites we saw during MB’s visit (a French friend calls her “EMBAY” to fit the French pronunciation of the initials.) On Saturday we walked along roads at the foot of Mt. Ventoux past the four rock structures called “les demoiselles coiffées” (the women wearing hats). We walked past olive groves where the olives were black and ready to be picked. We met a man who had a sighthound and, during the conversation with him, we found out that he knew about Scottish deerhounds but he spent most of his time telling us about the Egyptian lineage of his sighthound.

Sunday, we went to the market in Isle sur la Sorgue. It started raining, so we left the beautiful town and its market and headed back north toward Vaison la Romaine. We stopped to taste wine at the Wine cooperative in Beaumes de Venise where Ellen and MB (EMBAY) enjoyed the presentation of the young man serving the wine—and the translation by the old guy with them--as much as the wine tasting. We took back roads over the Dentelles mountains and had spectacular views of distant horizons, valleys and vineyards.

MB (EMBAY) had come to join us for Thanksgiving. She almost didn’t make it. On the Sunday before her Monday departure, she discovered that her passport had expired. Luckily, there is a Department of State office in Chicago. With all due speed in one day MB was able to complete her renewal application, get speedy photos, and plead her case with the requisite amount of charm and groveling to leave the passport office the same day with a renewed passport and a great sigh of relief. She made it to her flight and we met her at the TGV station the next afternoon.

We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner: rabbit in mustard sauce, home-made stuffing with fresh sage, sweet potatoes, green beans and a fresh winter squash/pumpkin pie made by Ellen that was better than any canned-pumpkin generated pie of previous years. We were thankful for the good food, the good fortune of enjoying it in France with good friends, and EMBAY’s success at the passport office.

We were also thankful for friends, both enduring friends and new friends including our new neighbor who lives across the street from the apartment. She joined us for “apero” (cocktails) while EMBAY was here and invited us to a wonderful dinner on Saturday evening.

Every morning, EMBAY shouted: “I am in France!” – a sentiment that we are fortunate to feel and enjoy everyday.

Our good friends, Margaret and Phil, took us to the opening of the truffle market in Richerenches. The small village is the center of the truffle trade in Provence. I read that it is considered to be the most important truffle market in France.

When we got out of the car, it felt like we had stepped into a Marcel Pagnol movie set. (Marcel Pagnol was a French film maker from Marseille. He directed “the trilogy” of French films: Marius, Fanny and Caesar. Hollywood made Fanny from a compilation of the trilogy with Charles Boyer, Maurice Chevalier and Leslie Caron.) Even the street music – from two men who played concertina, violin, piccolo and tin whistle (not all at the same time) - was reminiscent of the music from Pagnol’s films.

The people at the truffle market seemed to be extras from a Pagnol film. Old, unshaven men with berets and work jackets that they have worn for farming, herding, car repairs, and hunting since the jackets were new – generations ago. Several men had the remains of a cigarette stuck to their lips so well attached that they were able to continue their animated conversations without losing the cigarette.

The day started with a procession of men and women wearing long black capes, Camargue-style (large brim) black felt hats and gold medallions hung from gold ribbons around their necks. One man carried his truffle-hunting dog with him during the procession. (The dog had its own gold sash.) They walked from the town square and then preceded around the town ending at a platform stage set up in front of the mayor’s office. The procession reminded me of church processions without the incense – unless cigarette smoke is a modern replacement for incense. All of the black-caped parade marchers with their black hats and gold sashes joined the leaders of the truffle market on stage who offered their best wishes to the truffle hunters (trufflers) and to the truffle merchants. (Ellen got some great pictures of the events and as soon as I can figure out how to get them off of her phone/camera, I will post them.)

After the well-wishing ended, the two young children in the procession cut the ribbon to open the market officially. Meanwhile, on the other side of the main street, men and a few women were already elbow-deep in the truffle trade. The trufflers brought their “black diamonds” in bags/boxes/sacks to the merchants to see what price they would get. The merchants had scales set up in the trunks of their cars or on the beds of their pick-up trucks. Most of the vehicles were well-worn old farm vehicles, but in the middle of the row was a brand new, shiny, sporty, black Mercedes. The man behind the steering wheel wore a suit and tie. His colleague, standing at the trunk, wore a black leather jacket (truffle merchants from Paris ?). The merchants looked over the contents, inspected a few, smelled them and then offered a price. The truffler could accept the price – at which point the contents were weighed – or reject the price and go to another merchant/car trunk/truck bed to see if s/he could do better. If the merchant and the truffler agreed on the price, the truffler would move from the back of the vehicle to the front where a second person, often sitting in the driver’s seat, would pay for the truffles. It was all very orderly but reminded me of descriptions of drug buys in the states.

“…seventy-five-year-old Pébeyre Sr. was on his way home from the Wednesday truffle market in Richerenches, in Provence, when his car was forced into a field by a big BMW. No sooner had he gotten back on the road when another car pulled in front, blocking his passage. Six thieves piled out and, while Pébeyre’s wife watched in horror, forced him out of the car. They made him open the trunk, then fled with 150 pounds of truffles worth thirty-eight thousand dollars.” (Sanders, M. From here you can’t see Paris: seasons of a French village and its restaurant. New York: Perennial, 2003, p. 204)

At around noon, Margaret, Phil, Ellen and I joined hundreds of others at the “salle de fêtes” (community hall) where the village was serving a truffle lunch in a church-basement-style room of long tables with very narrow aisles between the rows of tables. We had truffle omelets, bread, salad with goat cheese, ice cream and coffee. (Red table wine complemented the meal.) We enjoyed the foods but, even more, we enjoyed meeting the people to our left and right. There were three couples from les Baux (50 miles to the south) seated beside Ellen and Phil. The couples seated by Margaret and me were locals from Richerenches.

We got back to Vaison in time to go to the English-language film (London River) showing at the theater and then to enjoy “Bouillabaisse” that Margaret had made. We returned to our little apartment at the end of the evening, tired but happy to be part of this little corner of Provence.