The city they named after me

A man boards the train at one of the stops after midnight. He was unhappy to find that his seat was taken by someone else who wanted to be closer to his travelling party. There was lots of shouting. I dozed in and out. Towards the end there was a security guy with a rifle standing by but it didn’t calm him down. Somehow or other he sat down and accepted the situation later.

I managed to sleep and doze till about 0900. The Nile valley area was rather built up for a lot of the way and as we approached Cairo, the skies were grey with haze presumably from pollution. We arrived into Cairo late morning and stopped briefly before heading to Alexandria.

I couldn’t help noticing that a couple of people (separately) had concealed weapons on them. The barrel of a gun was showing just below their cardigan’s lower edge.

We arrived into Alexandria’s new station some 14 hours after departure and took another 45 minutes of crawling and pausing before we arrived at the historic station where I wanted to get off. As I walked the length of the train and platform to the exit, an icy wind greeted me. I guess it is just a relative feel as I’ve largely been in warm weather.

I was finally in Alexandria, the city they named after me! LOL! I’m now on the Mediterranean some 2400km of overland travel by/on the Nile from where I landed in Khartoum. I took the easy way with public transport. Respect to those I have met who drive or cycle this as parts of their journey through the continent.

I took a taxi to the Alexander the Great hotel as it wasn’t that near and would have been too hard to find on foot with luggage in tow. Opposite the hotel, the little shop charged me everything at local price. People on the street said hello and waved just for fun without trying to sell me anything. This is a side of Egypt that I’ve never seen before!

I took a walk down to the Corniche. There was a small orderly protest outside the rundown courthouse. Finally, I grabbed dinner of fatayer from takeaway and ate it in the litter-strewn tea garden in Medan Tahrir opposite.