SHORT EGYPTIAN BREAK

I do not usually write about travels, but my recent trip to Egypt really blew my mind. In between what has been an incredibly busy month, I went on a 6-day trip through Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and the Nile both to explore the local economy (did not do much of that…) as well as visit a civilization that I have long studied. Astounding. I have never been to a country with such palpable history—everywhere. Since this is not a travel blog, I will keep my recommendation short: I have trekked, baked, hacked, and lounged my way through a great majority of the remains of civilizations past—Egypt just blows them all away.

There are ruins everywhere of everything and the government has only uncovered a small portion of what lies under the sands. Sadly, the fact that there is so much has also made Egypt one of the most stolen from civilizations. Whether stolen and melted in the years preceding the 1800’s bartered for nothing to art connoisseurs in the 19th and 20th centuries, or traded by Egyptian kings for broken French clocks (you can still find the obelisk in Paris), it is truly a pity.

I thought I would leave a photo of 200-year-old graffiti. It is both amusing and irritating to see the monuments defaced with centuries old scribble. If I had a better grasp of ancient Greek or Latin, I might have been able to translate the 1000-year-old graffiti that I saw.

Of course I could not resist spending an hour or two scouting for old cars to buy. In a land that has embraced Fiat’s, Renaults, and Lada’s, I was pleasantly surprised to find plenty of old Combi’s, 1940’s Benzes and Muscle cars, rotting. Apparently small, tinny, and square is in, who would have thought. Now the trick is for me to develop a business that will justify shipping containers to The Philippines or China…