Saturday January 07, 2006
Saturday January 07, 2006
Meanwhile, Back in Alexandria...
I passed my Arabic exam! I got 33/35. Of course, I've been kicking myself about the two points I didn't get (mostly because I misspelled "egg", which kind of sucks), instead of feeling good about the points I did. So now I can go out into any Arabic street anywhere in the world... and look like an idiot when I use my formal Arabic on unsuspecting Arabs who only speak the local dialect (like the guy today, who I asked for a "qalum", which means "pen" in formal Arabic, while normal Egyptians say "elem" instead).
El Alamein
The day after the test (yesterday) I went with Lou to El Alamein, which is only a two hour bus ride from Alexandria (assuming you stop the bus driver in time, otherwise he'll barrel right through, as he did with us, so that we had to walk 2 km along the road back into town). It was a pretty impressive experience. We visited the museum, which is very interesting. Each main country involved in the battle of El Alamein (Britain, Germany, Italy, and Egypt) has a room dedicated to its specific perspective on the war. This results in a few oddities -- for example, in the German room, Rommel is hailed as a great leader and his entire life is recorded, but not his death. Also, the (to me, anyway) little-known battle of Malta features large in the German room (as well as Tobruk, both battles summarized here), while the battle of El Alamein seems not to have resulted in a victory (just like the Six Day War in 1973 didn't result in a victory for either side, if you visit the National Military Museum in Cairo).
One interesting thing I learned at the El Alamein Military Museum was from one of the many interesting displays -- it recounted how the victor of one battle often ended up losing the next battle, because victory meant pushing forward while defending the previously gained ground, thus stretching supply lines, while, at the same time, the loser would be forced to regroup and consolidate, which made them stronger and more cohesive for the next battle. (This explained, at least partly, the see-saw nature of warfare, especially in large terrains such as in north Africa.)
Other interesting things at the El Alamein Military Museum included a small section in the Egyptian room which recorded the lives of various spies that worked for the Egyptians. One of them, apparently, was someone called Almazy, a Hungarian. Now, wasn't there a Hungarian called Almazy played by Ralph Fiennes in "The English Patient"? I didn't know that that character was based on a real person, nor that that real person was a spy for the Egyptians. A poignant display was one showing letters (charmingly innocent ones) written by an Australian soldier (who was killed at the battle of El Alamein) to his young wife back home.
But, of course, the most intense experience is the main cemetery itself, about 200 meters from the museum -- it contains 7000 graves of fallen allied soldiers. The age of each soldier is on the grave, most seemed to be between 23 and 35 or so (the oldest that we came across was 51). We'd brought a few beers with us, all the way from Alexandria, and drank them while standing on a raised platform-type thing that overlooks the whole cemetery. It seemed the right thing to do. (Then I left half my beer under a bush, just like a few years earlier I left a bottle of airplane wine at Oscar Wilde's grave at the Sacré Coeur in Paris). Outside the museum there was a great display of various tanks and artillery from the various parties involved in the war. Somehow I found the supply trucks more meaningful than the tanks -- one is somehow 'used to' tanks from that time period, but how often do you see a supply truck? (The last one I saw was in "The English Patient", but I guess that doesn't count.)
Not far outside the main cemetery, we walked into the South African memorial to the fallen soldiers from South Africa. One side of the memorial had a text in Afrikaans, the other in English. A bit further up the road was another memorial, to the fallen Greek soldiers. (Way outside town is a memorial to the German soldiers, we wanted to visit it, but decided we'd leave it for a future trip -- one should always leave something interesting for next time, otherwise there's less point in going back.) One cool thing about the Greek memorial is that we met someone there who flagged a minibus for us that took us all the way back to Alexandria for 4.50 Egyptian pounds (which is less than a US dollar). The trip back was pretty cool, and chatting a bit to local Egyptians was not bad either.
Scuba Diving
Then, today, I did something I'd been hoping I'd be able to get around to doing: scuba diving. I found this site, and then, right after returning from El Alamein, checked out the place to see if they'd take me diving today. It all worked out, and for $100 I got all the equipment I needed, plus two dives and a good meal afterwards. The dives were pretty interesting too. The first lasted about an hour and didn't go deeper than 10 meters. I saw remnants of the famous Alexandrian lighthouse (one of the seven wonders of the world), as well as various pillars, columns, amphoras, and other barnacle-encrusted odds and ends. There was even one point where the dive instructor pointed out part of a wall that clearly showed some Egyptian drawings and hieroglyphics.
The second dive was much shorter (about 20 minutes only, unfortunately) but possibly even more interesting -- various bits and pieces of Cleopatra's palace as well as a downed Italian war plane. Personally, the most interesting part of the dive was right near the end, when I was sitting on my knees at about 6 meters, scraping barnacles off a massive Roman amphora. It made the whole of history a lot more real, compared to viewing an amphora behind a glass casing in a museum.
The people running the dive center were really cool, laid back people. One of them, a young guy called Ahmed, told me that he's working on becoming a graphic artist and asked me if I had heard of HTML. I mentioned Java and he said he'd heard of it, but thought it seemed really hard. This is one of several times where I thought: I wish I had brought some NetBeans USB sticks with me on vacation! Speaking of which...
NetBeans in Cairo?
Tomorrow I'm supposed to be meeting up with a team of Java developers in Cairo! They're from the American University in Cairo and Gregg Sporar (thanks, dude!) put me in touch with them. Brian Leonard sent me his NetBeans module development presentation (thanks, dude!), so all should go well. I really hope it all works out tomorrow and that I get to meet these guys -- first thing Monday morning (2.55 AM) my plane leaves for Amsterdam (from where I fly to Prague), so there should be plenty of time to share time and knowledge with them in Cairo. Here's holding thumbs it all works out!
Jan 07 2006, 09:57:27 AM PST Permalink
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