Egypt so far

I'm not sure I could have chosen a more radically different place to go on vacation from Siberia than Egypt. Although Egypt is actually a very popular vacation destination for Russians, when people ask me where I came from, telling them I came from Siberia feels kind of like saying I came from Mars. And when I think of Krasnoyarsk, the blue light, the frosted trees, the sun crawling across the horizon all day, the steaming Yenisei, it does seem like another planet.

I arrived here just in time to ring in 2010 on a party boat on the Nile, and since then I've seen the mangled faces of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, Tutankhamun's golden death mask, two enormous mummified crocodiles, and marveled at how much energy went into death in Ancient Egypt.

It seems like all you need to open a business here is a little bit of space and some kind of something to sell. I walked past a storefront the other day that was completely empty except for one enormous lamb shank hanging from the ceiling. The shop keeper was just standing under the shank giving it some gentle pats. In every nook and cranny of the city there is a collection of men sitting, chilling, drinking coffee. I love a culture that loves to sit, and Max and I have spent a lot of time going from coffee shop to juice stand to coffee shop.

One of Max's favorite places, a bar called Harreyyia (which I am definitely spelling completely wrong) might be the best beer drinking space I have ever encountered. It's great for people watching, always full of a diverse collection of ex-pats and eccentric old Egyptian men, and the waiter likes Max so much he gives him a poke in the ribs every once in a while. They offer one kind of beer for about $1.50 a bottle and an endless supply of what I like to call peni-beans, a funny pickled bean beer snack. I'm starting to think I could happily drink only Stella beer only at this place for the rest of my life. Although honestly I could do without the peni-beans.

Tonight we're heading into the desert, to Siwa, a complex of Oases near the Libyan border where the locals speak Berber, not Arabic. Alexander the Great once traveled to Siwa to consult the great Oracle of Amun, which (who?) was so powerful that entire armies tried to get to Siwa to destroy it and were swallowed up by sand storms. We're going to bike around, swim in hot springs, and go sandboarding.

My life is ok.