My first weekend in Cairo couldn’t have come soon enough. I needed to seriously catch up on sleep, and stock my kitchen with something other than pure carbohydrates. I turned in soon after getting home late from work on Thursday and finally had a full night of restful sleep. In the morning I met up with my social sponsor and took a direly needed visit to Gourmet Egypt, the commissary, and the PX.
Gourmet Egypt presented itself as a fairly upscale hole in the wall grocer, which offered freshly baked breads, fresh meats, and other small selections of spices, frozen foods, cheeses, spreads, fruits, and other local fare. It was a good place to find some basics, along with some specialized local goods. I selected some of their garlic paste/spread and was not disappointed.
The next stop was the commissary and PX. The PX has a small selection of household goods, cleaning supplies, detergents, electronics, kitchen supplies, and of course alcohol. There isn’t much to write home about here, but it was a handy place to pick up some quality of life items and to ensure one had all the various home-utility items they needed. The commissary offered the more traditional grocery-store experience, albeit with a limited selection and limited quantities of fresh produce. Of course the meats were almost entirely of the frozen variety. All of this is shipped in rather than procured locally, resulting in a focus on preventing spoilage – which in the case of the produce can happen rather quickly.
In any event, I loaded up at these two stores and filled my cabinets at home with a variety of foodstuffs that I’d probably struggle to get through anytime soon, as I had made it my goal to prevent frequent commissary runs – which were mostly like to take place during my precious weekends.
After this, we regrouped and met up with another new arrival at post to take a stroll down Road 9. As I understood it, Road 9 was Maadi’s “main drag”, which featured a number of restaurants and attractions, while being merely the briefest walk from our residences. It had the makings to be a prominent feature of my stay here, so I was eager to acquaint myself with it. Entering Station Square (the roundabout intersecting Road 9) marked the beginning of the experience, made only slightly less authentic by the lack of considerable traffic and accompanying noise. An overpass crowns the roundabout, while plenty of business storefronts ring the area and small shops, vendors and pedestrians cohabit with parked cars and mopeds.
As we were guided onward, high curbs were the first thing we needed to watch out for, with loose sidewalk and other rough terrain being a close second. At least the sidewalks were predictable! Strolling down the first few storefronts took us past a metro mart or two, storefronts for both Orange and Vodaphone, two mobile providers – situated right across the street from each other, as well as a sandwich shop and some other miscellaneous shops. As one went on, multi-level storefronts were encountered. A cyber café, a radio shack, electrical stores, textile and linen stores, were just a small sample of the variety the street offered.
Of particular notice was a lamp and metalworks shop that had many beautiful looking lampshades, lanterns and other artistic metalworking products. Some of these were quite beautiful and handsomely crafted – I knew that I’d come back at some point to pick something up, but I wasn’t in tourist mode – I’d have plenty of time to come back and peruse their goods later. In one of the larger shops, lampshades and other lighting fixtures and decorations were accompanied with chess and backgammon boards inlaid with attractive patterns made from mosaic and other decorative material – which made for very attractive pieces.
These stores eventually gave way to restaurants dotting the side of the streets, joined by increasingly frequent residences as the road went on. Passing the majority of these, we eventually stopped at a Shawarma place towards the South end of the road, where I enjoyed my first chicken shawarma – a delicious lunch. On the way back up the road we picked up fruit from one of the local vendors and I attempted to sign up for a local mobile plan – which was an exercise in futility that would only be resolved once I had a more permanent resident ID to provide them with.
The language barrier was not as substantial as I had feared, knowing a few simply words and phrases helped with some situations, while other encounters (like signing up for a mobile plan) were simply hopeless without conversing in a language both parties had a decent understanding of. Many of the sights, smells, and experiences were new to me, but nothing stuck out to me as being something that I wouldn’t be able to adapt to or otherwise get used to. There was enough there to keep me going back, and plenty of restaurants and other local fare to try. I had imagined the street would be wider, busier (traffic wise) and more developed – but I wasn’t disappointed with what I saw. It provided some clarity as to what to expect from the public places here, and presented my first sample to what life might be like overseas.
