Cairo, Egypt

So after the past couple months of nothing but go go go, I had this past weekend all planned out - I was going to do nothing but watch college basketball and relax. Weeeeell, Alissa and Kinsey convinced me to go to Cairo with them at the last minute. So I booked a flight at 4pm on Thursday and flew out Friday morning. This was one I couldn't pass up! I couldn't resist the sunshine and 80 degree weather for one thing.

The sphinx.

Alissa, Kinsey, and me at the Sphinx.

The feeling we had when we were there is hard to describe. The only word any of us could come up with was "surreal". Just knowing how ancient the city and that area is was pretty overwhelming. I can only imagine the time and effort it takes to build a pyramid today with cranes and gps, let alone 5,000 years ago. It's no wonder why they are one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world.

Kinsey, Alissa, and me.

Here is a picture that gives a little perspective of just how big they really are (this one, The Great Pyramid, is the tallest at about 500ft). Each one of the stones is probably about 40" tall, which is much bigger than I expected.

This was the view from where we ate lunch.


This puts a whole new meaning to a "Mounty"...

Remind me again why we need AK-47s to protect the Pyramids?

This is a boat that they discovered in about 1955 that was used to transport the pharoahs bodies down the Nile to the pyramids for burial.

Camels in the desert next to the pyramids.

The three famous pyramids are really close together, but this one was about 20 miles away from them. It was called the Bent Pyramid.

On Sunday, we went to "Islamic Cairo". Our Lonely Planet book said the best way to get there and to get the best experience was to walk from downtown, so we did. I really didn't know what to expect since it was the first Muslim country I have been to. I know it was not even close and can't possibly compare, but I have a better appreciation now for what our military must go through in cities like this. There would be no way to know who is hiding a gun or rpg or where they are hiding - not to mention the hundreds of cars parked or abandoned on the roads.

None of us ever felt unsafe, but I'm not afraid to admit that we were very uncomfortable at times because the streets were so windy (and of course rarely named) and typically just dirt and the buildings (or lack thereof, or what seemed to be rubble sometimes) were pretty amazing how bad they were. Some of the places we walked through looked like war zones and being a third world country, everyone was literally just dirt poor, so I didn't feel like I should take any pictures. Even though we were the only tourists in many of the areas (at least it seemed that way!), we were always asked where we were from and nobody ever gave us a hard time for being Americans. In fact, one of our cab drivers asked who our favorite presidents were (I of course refrained from even whispering!) and he said his were Carter and Clinton (shocker, huh). But he said that everyone there was sad that after 9-11 so few Americans come to visit anymore and that everyone there just wants peace in the region. Clearly it was only one Egyptian's opinion, but was interesting to at least hear his perspective. He also drove us by Sadat's mansion on the way back to our hotel, but we passed to quickly to get a picture.

Here are some mosques we saw in the Islamic Cairo area.

Our hotel was right on the Nile River, so we got some great views of the city.

Taxis. If you get lucky, you might get a seatbelt, and if you get really lucky, all of the doors will have handles!
One thing that was eerie the first time was hearing the call for prayer echo throughout the city. Here is a short video of one of them. (Sorry, you'll just have to tilt your head because I wasn't smart enough to get it to flip around).

And this is how you cross the street in Cairo - and we were definitely not brave compared to the locals! For one thing, there are no lanes in the roads, and even if there are, they don't follow them. They don't mind the traffic lights either...just honk and go. I wanted to video one of our cab rides, but never could get a good one. When we were on our way from the airport to the hotel, our cab clipped the mirror of another person's car (we were going fairly slow), so then the other car clipped our's back! Then, not 10 minutes later, a motorcycle was going between the cars (we were almost stopped) and he bumped into our car too! Like the cab drivers said, if you can drive in Cairo, you can drive anywhere. No thanks...I'll take their word for it.

Starkbierfest

Friday night was Starkbierfest at the Paulaner brewery so we all got out our lederhosen and dirndls. The festival is sort of like a mini-Oktoberfest. There was a live oompah band playing and of course plenty of beer that made standing on the tables and singing and dancing sound like a good idea. From left to right...Jenny, Kinsey, me, Chris, Justin, Brian, JP, and Alissa.

The girls showing off their dirndls. The guys never got a picture together...I guess we were too busy drinking as you will find out below. (Alissa, Kerry, Jenny, Andrea, Kinsey)

Don't ask...ok, fine. Every time we ski, we have a shot of Feigling, which is fig flavored vodka (not sure the story behind it, but it's a tradition in Austria). Since they had them at Starkbierfest, we had some there too and the "Feigling girls" gave us masks, shirts, and hats, which wearing them also seemed like a good idea at the time. This is as generous as I get with the embarrassing pictures, so don't ask for any more! (Justin, Chris, and me).

It was really nice on Saturday so a few of us went to the English Garten for a little sun and a beer (sun - now that is something I have been waiting for months to see!). Kerry and Chris had a going away party Saturday night for 2 of the expats (Andrea and Kinsey), which was also fun, but it will be sad to see them leave. Justin is Andrea's husband, so I will definitely miss him on the ski trips.

On Sunday we went to a St. Patrick's Day festival. Unlike Saturday, it was rainy most of the day, so we didn't stay outside too long before we gave up and just found the Irish Pub instead. They were showing a rugby game on TV, so Chris explained the rules to me (he used to play in college), so now I know enough to be dangerous. I still can't force myself to like soccer even being over here, but I can handle rugby and actually enjoyed the game.

Radstadt with the Ski Club

This is probably going to be my last ski blog of the season. I can't believe it's over already (at least for me)! The Munich Ski Club sponsored a ski weekend to Radstadt, Austria this weekend so we figured it was a good way to spend the last ski day of the year. We went sledding Friday night on the mountain, which was actually a blast. You rent a sled at the bottom and then take the lift to the top and sled down a trail all the way to the bottom.

The crew...me, Justin, Kinsey, and Alissa at a little Irish Pub across the street from our hotel.
These are a few people from the Ski Club. Andreas, Jeff, Kinsey, me, Evan, and Alissa.

This is hard to tell what it is, but it is a vending machine where you can buy freshly baked bread. None of us had ever seen one before (even though there are bakeries on almost every street corner), but it was across the street from our hotel, so couldn't resist getting a picture.

Dusseldorf and Cologne, Germany

I flew to Dusseldorf and Cologne this weekend with my friend Kinsey. She is from Chicago and has one month left in Munich before her 18 month rotation is over. We spent yesterday in Dusseldorf and then took the train from there to Cologne today.



This is Dusseldorf and the Rhine River.


Dusseldorf is known for a type of beer called alt. It tastes similar to a pale ale, which is very different from the type of beer we have here in Munich. The other noticable difference is the size of serving! The beers in Dusseldorf were served in .25L glasses (basically a glorified juice glass), whereas it is almost impossible to order a beer in Munich any smaller than .5L (pint) or the big 1L mug.


Interesting buildings...

This is the new EY building in Dusseldorf (yes, only 2 nerdy accountants take pictures of their workplaces). It's all glass, so the views from the top floor were really good.

Me and Kinsey at O'Reilly's Irish Pub in Dusseldorf.

This is a cathedral in Cologne. They started building it around 1250 and didn't finish until almost 1900. It is one of the biggest in Europe and is supposed to have the largest height-to-width ratio of any chuch of its kind. The two spires are over 500 feet tall. It's so big that it was hard to get any good pictures. The inside was even more impressive than the outside.

This is supposed to contain the cloaks and remains of the three wise men.

Coincidence! I am reading a WWII book right now and on the flight back to Munich, this was on one of the pages I read. It was really neat knowing that I had just been there a few hours ago and even crossed that bridge that got bombed and fell into the Rhine. The church actually was untouched somehow, but everything around it is just rubble. Cologne was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany. One of the quotes in the book is from a newspaper article and says, "Cologne is finished, literally erased from the map forever." Another line was that Eisenhower's Chief of Staff said it was a "picture of absolute destruction greater than I had seen anywhere".