Chaos update
OK, so here's my freaky story from Cairo today:
A colleague and I were in a car on the way to the airport. We kept running into traffic (a normal thing in Cairo), at which point the driver would look for an alternate route...where there was usually even more traffic. Anyway, at one point we drove down a side street and traffic once again slowed to a crawl. Then we noticed objects flying through the air up ahead of us. Hmm, that didn't seem right. Then we noticed long lines of police in full riot gear lined up on the left side of the street, and a bunch of what appeared to be students on the right side of the street, many of them hurling objects over the street (i.e., us) at the police. All of a sudden the police charged the crowd with batons swinging freely--and I mean literally right next to my window (at this point were are at a complete stop). As they retreated, all of a sudden a rock or a bottle slammed into my colleague's window, which luckily didn't break. (The driver hadn't seemed terribly alarmed before, but once it appeared that his car might be damaged he finally took on an air of urgency.) With things that have been happening in the world lately, suffice it to say that being caught in the middle of a riot in Cairo was NOT high on my to-do list. There were basically two things that kept me from hyperventilating and completely wigging out: (1) no one was carrying signs or banners or burning flags, and I didn't think we were near anything symbolically important, so there didn't appear to be anything anti-western about it; and (2) everyone seemed to be smiling--the riot police as they walloped the students, the students as they dashed through traffic to the other side, etc. It didn't have a completely hostile vibe--or at least not as hostile as your normal situation involving rock- and bottle-throwing and police beat-downs. In the end, we finally came to a side street where we could duck out, and in the end we came through it unscathed. PHEW! Other than that, though, I felt incredibly safe the entire time I was in Cairo.
Back in Switzerland, on the other hand, I had something almost as shocking happen once I got here. I was taking the train from the Zurich Airport to Basel. It was a double-decker train, so I left my bag downstairs and rode upstairs (which I do all the time). When I got to Basel, I discovered that my suitcase had been opened and rifled through. Luckily I hadn't packed anything valuable so I don't think anything was missing, but it was pretty shocking for peaceful Switzerland!
OK, I think Gretchen is a bit aggravated that I'm blogging within an hour of arriving home--I'll post pictures tomorrow.
A colleague and I were in a car on the way to the airport. We kept running into traffic (a normal thing in Cairo), at which point the driver would look for an alternate route...where there was usually even more traffic. Anyway, at one point we drove down a side street and traffic once again slowed to a crawl. Then we noticed objects flying through the air up ahead of us. Hmm, that didn't seem right. Then we noticed long lines of police in full riot gear lined up on the left side of the street, and a bunch of what appeared to be students on the right side of the street, many of them hurling objects over the street (i.e., us) at the police. All of a sudden the police charged the crowd with batons swinging freely--and I mean literally right next to my window (at this point were are at a complete stop). As they retreated, all of a sudden a rock or a bottle slammed into my colleague's window, which luckily didn't break. (The driver hadn't seemed terribly alarmed before, but once it appeared that his car might be damaged he finally took on an air of urgency.) With things that have been happening in the world lately, suffice it to say that being caught in the middle of a riot in Cairo was NOT high on my to-do list. There were basically two things that kept me from hyperventilating and completely wigging out: (1) no one was carrying signs or banners or burning flags, and I didn't think we were near anything symbolically important, so there didn't appear to be anything anti-western about it; and (2) everyone seemed to be smiling--the riot police as they walloped the students, the students as they dashed through traffic to the other side, etc. It didn't have a completely hostile vibe--or at least not as hostile as your normal situation involving rock- and bottle-throwing and police beat-downs. In the end, we finally came to a side street where we could duck out, and in the end we came through it unscathed. PHEW! Other than that, though, I felt incredibly safe the entire time I was in Cairo.
Back in Switzerland, on the other hand, I had something almost as shocking happen once I got here. I was taking the train from the Zurich Airport to Basel. It was a double-decker train, so I left my bag downstairs and rode upstairs (which I do all the time). When I got to Basel, I discovered that my suitcase had been opened and rifled through. Luckily I hadn't packed anything valuable so I don't think anything was missing, but it was pretty shocking for peaceful Switzerland!
OK, I think Gretchen is a bit aggravated that I'm blogging within an hour of arriving home--I'll post pictures tomorrow.
<< Home