Out Alone in the Big City
Yesterday was a long long day, but quite interesting and a great learning experience. I spent the first part of the day in the incredible Bibliotecha Alexandria, that is the Alexandria Library. A little history, the Alexandria Library in ancient times was the center of learning and knowledge for the entire world for many years. Thinkings, scientists, philosophers, all intellectuals came to the library to read and talk and distribute their knowledge. That all ended when the thing got burned down, but that's what happens when stupid people do stupid things. Fast forward a many hundreds of years and enter a modern Egypt that wants to increase tourism and capture some of the ancient splendor it calls its heritage.
The current library is built in a similar overall architectural style to the one of old but obviously enhanced with all the nice technological marvels and enhancements we have today. I love the super high ceilings and all the natural light that streams into the building through the roof/window setup they have. I spent the first little while just walking around the different floors and checking out the layout. Then I decided I might as well pick up a book and do some reading, it is a library after all. It was great just sitting in this great library spending hours just reading and learning. The one snag that I ran into was that I didn't know how to turn on the light at my desk. And when I asked someone else, they didn't know how to either. I must have spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure it out, and I'm sure it was something simple that I was missing, but I just couldn't find the switch mechanism. Fortunately, the aforementioned natural light was more than enough for comfortable reading.
It took a few hours but I finally started to get hungry, I knew the restaurant for tourists inside the library would be very overpriced, though I didn't actually look to confirm, plus I wanted to start on my long walk home, so off I went. 45 minutes later I finally found a food shop. It was really friggin annoying too because around my place there are little sandwich, felafel and shiwerma stands everywhere, but I couldn't find one. I used my hunt as an opportunity to take a better look at the city cause I've never really walked through it by myself before. It still hasn't sunk in how huge the city is and how many people live here. I'm sure it's like all super-cities in the world with millions of people calling them home, but coming from a town with less than 100 thousand people, the sheer scale of everything is very shocking. The number of large apartments just extends long into the horizon and there's people constantly walking, driving, carting and biking on every street everywhere you look.
When I finally reached the restaurant I knew exactly what I wanted to get, 2 delicious shiwermas. So I walk on over to the cashier (usually you pay first, and then hand the cook your ticket) and asked for 2 shiwermas. It must have been my accent, or the way I looked, but somehow I think she got the idea that I wasn't a true native, far from it. Her being the saavy business-women she is decided to offer me an upgrade on my meal. This took the form of her saying a lot of arabic really fast, I think I heard the word combo said a few times, and me kind of nodding my head and trying really friggin hard to understand what the hell she was saying. At the end of it, I decided not to ask any questions and just go for the path of least resistence and shook my head and agreed with her suggestion.
Fortunately for me!
I ended up getting this double-decker sandwich of awesomeness. I don't know how they do it, but the meat here is so damn delicious. They put in all of these amazing spices that are so flavourful and fill the mouth with a most satisfying taste. It's not just one spice, it's a combination of many spices, each one with it's own kind of delicious all fusing into an ultimate deliciousness inside your mouth. I was kind of nervous about the quality of the food and if I'd get sick or anything, but I can very happily say that I'm as healthy as a horse with no complications or problems. I don't know if this is an indication of good food quality here as it could be my stomach getting tougher and being able to handle more... unsanitary conditions.
Eating the sandwich was a great experience in itself as I took the time to walk over to the sea and sat with the entire mediterranean stretched before me as I munched on the food. I don't think I can eat any other way now, I'm gonna have to have a beautiful sea-side view with every meal from now on. It just makes the whole thing so much better.
