Egypt

Monday, 26 July We had a flight scheduled in the morning from Cairo to Aswan. At first everything was fine. Check-in was fast, no lines anywhere and the flight left according to schedule. Half an hour into the flight, however, we encountered turbulences or at least according to my opinion. Not that there was anything wrong with the weather. In the contrary, it looked beautiful. There were just these desert winds and all these air holes. Anyway, the plane was shaking from one side to the other and up and down at the same time. Nille of course felt dizzy and almost vomited, she has motion sickness. I started to get really scared and I think I recited the Shahada 8-9 times with disruptions of prayers of Al-Fatiha to prepare myself for the afterlife. For anybody who wants to know the Shahada is the Muslim declaration of belief in the oneness of God and acceptance of Muhammad as his prophet. A single and honestly  meant  recitation of it and there you are - a Muslim - in an instant. Everybody else in the plane seemed not to care except another female tourist who also looked quite desperately pale, eyes wide open, gasping for breath. Burcu who was sitting in between me and Nille tried to console each of us alternatively but only the landing brought the desired release. The fellow sitting next to me had the audacity to sleep through the whole flight and only woke up after landing while I was near death. It made me wish I had pushed off his arm from the armrest which he occupied the whole flight. In Aswan we went with one of the taxis (60 EGP) with no headrests and a very chatty cab driver. Nille was at first totally reluctant to get into the car because it looked run-down and totally unsafe. During the 20 min ride through beautiful Aswan he bombarded us with questions which I didn't answer always truthfully to avoid further questions. For example when you tell them that you are not married at my age that normally triggers several follow-up questions like: "Why? What happened? Are you widowed? What about children?" The Keylany Hotel where we stayed for two nights charmed us right away. The hotel was clean, the staff very helpful, the rooftop with a little pool cozy and the breakfast delicious. They offered pancakes made with vanilla in it. Nice touch! Burcu walking in her flip flops hit her toe in the hallway while we were carrying our luggage to our room and all of a sudden the owner of the hotel was standing in front of our door with two medical kits in his arms. Surprised about the speedy reaction he told me that he had cameras on every floor and that he saw the incident. Burcu's toe nail was almost falling off and of course that caused a lot of screaming. Not only from her. I think I screamed louder than her because I cannot see any blood and Nille was causing her own kind of panic. She was screaming: "No, oh God, oh God.... I have to be strong now for Burcu. I can't just run out of the room and leave her alone." The owner couldn't get his wad of cotton even to the vicinity of Burcu's foot without her screaming the house down and we with her. Even the two receptionists were standing close by squinting their eyes when the owner whose name I sadly forgot pulled out the antiseptic. Anyway, we all survived and decided to leave for dinner after the all-exhausting hurly-burly. The cab driver couldn't understand my broken Arabic and therefore took us to the wrong restaurant. For a moment we thought just to wait until the driver drove off again so that we could look for the other place which was supposed to be nearby. But he didn't move and decided to park there. To avoid embarrassment we decided to go inside and have a look. We liked the Nubian House immediately and had a great evening with Shareef, our waiter, who was entertaining us the whole evening. The view from there onto Aswan was breathtaking and with a juice cocktail made of fresh strawberries, mangoes and guavas we enjoyed the sunset. After dark we were invited to see the back of the house with their wall paintings which they did themselves.