The first part of this blog post is dedicated especially to Kate Walker and the rest of my Barcelona travel companions. :)
Part I:
Last week the majority of our group threw down 50 LE to see a performance of the opera Aida, at the pyramids. Literally on a stage set up right in front of them. In order to get there we rode the metro line as far as we could and then piled into a microbus for the rest of the trip. I was frustrated that we got way overcharged for the bus--for some reason there was a miscommunication between our fearless leader Ben and the driver, who saw an easy opportunity to trap us into renting the entire microbus, etc..-- anyway... grumpy Rachel recovered significantly from the 400% price inflation when the driver decided to put in a CD of "Western music" for us... which ended up being almost entirely made up of songs that played constantly on the one and only working TV channel (Mola TV) in my Barcelona apartment during May term. !! After headbobbing to a French song I recognized but couldn't understand, I screamed with happiness when the second song was... "Parachutes" by Cheryl Cole (a Brit-pop singer that of course no one else was as excited to hear as me) . But... noticing the excitement in the backseat, the driver turns his radio up to a ridiculous volume. So... here is the scene:
Driver and random other guy in the front seat. In the second seat, Summer, myself, and a random Egyptian guy in a suit who is also going to Aida (and who proceeded to attach himself to our group for the rest of the night). Back seat crammed with Ben, Nora, and Phil. The vehicle a small VW bus with a blue flashing heart on the windshield, faux fur across the dashboard, a baby-doll head on top of the fur (yes, just the head. ?? I know!) and a plushy heart hanging from the rear-view mirror. I'll never understand Egyptian vehicle decorations. All 5 Americans and the tagalong Egyptian singing and dancing loudly to Kesha, Usher, Lady Gaga, more Kesha, and Beyonce as we weave and jolt along the Cairo highway. All laughing with embarrassment at how loud and stereotypically American our microbus is, which only gets worse when Egyptian Tagalong Man gets hot and we have to stop so that the driver can run around and open the sliding door from the outside (because they don't open from the inside)... and then we carry on with our music-blasting, careening voyage.
When we finally reach the destination we each pay 8 LE while our Egyptian pal pays only 5 and explains that it is fair, because we are tourists. Right. But what can you do...
We rush off to find our seats in the opera crowd, and Egyptian Tagalong Man gives up his 100 LE seat to sit by us, because, as he says, he "doesn't know the people up there." But we are now his friends, so...
The performance was beautiful--costumes, sets, music... though I didn't know the storyline at all. In a perfect world I would have looked up a synopsis online before going, but with the rush and stress plus computer situation... didn't happen. Instead, Egyptian Tagalong Man explained the general idea of the scenes he recognized, or when that was insufficient we made up our own interpretations. All of this was passed telephone-style down the row, prompting us to get shushed by European Tourist Man in front of us who had arrived 20 minutes late (hmmph) but so it goes.
PART II:
We had to leave early because the metro doesn't run all night, so we caught another microbus and negotiated a ride for half the cost of the first one. Once again a fur-lined, plush-decorated, careening bus, with a driver who (as I thought to myself) didn't make me feel all that comfortable as a passenger. But I've had about one taxi/microbus driver so far who did seem safe in the Cairo traffic, so I shrugged it off and tried to ignore the constant lurching and braking and incessant honking that is part of average Cairo driving.
Not so fast.. only a bit down the road we pull dangerously closely alongside a taxi, and sure enough the next thing we know there is an awful crunch and the shrieking tear of metal, annnnd...
Nice Taxi's back end has been owned by Not-So-Nice Microbus's fender. Taxi Driver stops and leaps out of his car, followed by Microbus Driver. Lots of screaming and pointing and lifting by the back of the shirt ensues. We, by now the only passengers in the microbus, look at each other in terror--finally decide to just get out and quietly leave, but realize of course that the sliding door... doesn't open from the inside (see Microbus Story #1, above). A random guy appears outside to let us out, but as soon as we get out, Microbus Driver yells at us to get back in and he'll take us, don't worry. We follow orders and the bus continues on...
Only to be chased down by still-angry Taxi Driver, whose back end is hanging and scraping all the way. The two drivers are yelling at each other as we drive along, all the while lurching and braking and honking. I think we're probably not going to get to the metro by midnight and start to feel like a hostage. We pull over again for another round of yelling and shirt-pulling, while being pointed at, waved at, and laughed at by a microbus full of Egyptians on our starboard side...
Finally, finally, Microbus Driver finds a solution. The best we could figure was that he played the "I Have Americans In My Bus And I Have To Take Care Of Them" card and told Taxi river to meet him at the metro stop, and THEN they could fight it out. Whew. So, long story short, we made it to our destination intact, paid our far and scooted off.
But so far I have not yet felt the need to ride another microbus.
No comments:
Post a Comment