Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Extending Our Visas

I previously blogged about the laborious process of extending a tourist visa here in 2009 and again in 2018.   We normally arrive in Cairo without a visa and purchase one for twenty-five dollars at the bank window in the airport immigration area.  That visa is only good for thirty days and there is a penalty for overstaying, but the penalty is waived for visitors over 60 years of age.  When our friends, Aliza and Alan, told us about the penalty waiver, we quit renewing, eliminating a major hassle each year.

But, this year we are dealing with some legal issues (recall that water damage to the ceiling?) and need to have legal status in order to have our lawyer file papers with the court.  So we headed across the Nile to obtain a visa extension.

The good news is that we no longer have to go the Mogamma in Tahrir Square to do this.  The Mogamma is becoming a beautiful hotel (it "could be" finished in 2024)  

 

 The bad news is that the process has not changed much.  Passports are now renewed at the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality in the Abassiya district.  The building lies just off Salah Salem, the road to the airport.  It is a short walk from the el Abassiya metro station.

The new office has five floors and likely as many "transaction windows" as the old site in the Mogamma.  There is quite a mix of people from around the world applying here and not many appeared to be American.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that thousands of people pass through the building on any given day.

If I recall the process correctly, it is approximately as follows.  We arrived at about 9:00 A.M. and were directed to take a position in the "European area" line.  Upon reaching the head of the line, we were given a number and told to wait for the number to be called.  Numbers were called fairly rapidly; at our turn, the process was explained by an English-speaking clerk.  We would need to have a receipt for an exchange of $70.00 in U.S. currency from a bank - it could not be from one of the banks represented in the building and also not from an ATM.  With that in hand we would be able to go to another window and pay the necessary fee in Egyptian currency (about $70 worth.)  It was suggested that we could take care of that the next day and then it would take two more days to process our extension.

We headed out to a low-traffic Bank of Egypt office and got a number to change money in person.

 

With two receipts from the bank, we headed back to the passport office.  We returned to the same clerk as in the morning (it was now about 2 P.M.) who immediately gave us a number and told us to have a seat.

 

Numbers were called at a very slow pace as the one clerk had to handle a multitude of inquiries in between numbered clients!  At about 4 P.M. our number came up.  An invoice was prepared showing four charges amongst twenty-eight possibilities and we were approved to pay it at the bank window about ten feet away.

 

With our fee paid, we returned to the clerk's window who assigned us to a different window where we were photographed and fingerprinted.  Somewhere in this process we were given the familiar four-page immigration form where we declare our residence, religion and other vital information.  Back in the Mogamma days, this form was available in a large stack at the entrance to the area and all visitors told each other, "you'll need this, filled out."

At the end of the fingerprinting, we were told to come back in two days, before 9 A.M. and we would be able to pick up our visas after 4 P.M.

Two days later we arrived well before 9 A.M. and were given a number and told to have a seat.  This was another slow moving line.  By about 11 A.M. our number was called.  

 

We gave up our passports to a clerk who flipped through a foot deep stack of paperwork and found our forms, matched them to the passports and applied ticket number 82 to the paper.  He then handed us a second copy of ticket number 82.  We were to return to a different window after 4 P.M.  During the time between 9 and 11 we met a young Welsh man who has been living and working here for several years.  He has to go through this every six months to renew his residency.

We took a taxi back the condo and then an Uber back to the passport office arriving around 3 P.M.  A security man spotted us waiting and took our "82,"  found our passports with extended Visa stamps and handed us our six month residency cards!

Are there any advantages to the new location? Yes.

1. There are escalators between floors.
2. There are plenty of chairs to sit on.
3. There is no mob scene at the end as passports are distributed, with a clerk yelling, "Mr. Amerika!"

If you think your picture taken at the DMV in Minnesota looks bad, just wait until you get one of these:

 

If anyone would like an explanation of the fees and mandatory currency exchange in dollars involved, there is an English language sign at the head of the escalator leading out of the passport building.

We can now stay until mid-August.

Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Linda Buys a New Kitchen Scale

Linda makes considerable use of a kitchen scale for many of her recipes.  She regularly uses the scale to measure flour, butter and other ingredients.  She has had a very nice OXO scale for several years that she keeps here in Egypt.  

 

Unfortunately, it became a bit erratic for a day or so and then simply stopped working.  New batteries needed?  No, that didn't help.

I found a helpful YouTube video that showed the secret screws that are the keys to getting inside.  I came to the conclusion that we have the same problem as the author of that video - a bad on/off switch; but, I don't have soldering/de-soldering tools nor a VOM (Volt-Ohm-Meter) in my Egypt tool kit.  So we packed up the scale to take home to work on for next year and took advantage of a visit to "Scale Street."  What I call Scale Street is a block of small shops selling all manner of scales (mostly for retail vendors) just off el Moez street behind Khan el-Khalili - I blogged about it here ten years ago.  

We weren't sure we would find a kitchen scale since most of the shops are devoted to larger commercial models.  We had no luck at our first stop, although the owner thought he could find one for about 150 EGP (less than four dollars) and left for a few minutes to look around.  We continued along the street and decided to try another shop. As soon as we walked inside and saw all the professional meat and cheese cutters we thought, "Well, this is the wrong place to ask."  Turned out to be the perfect place to find a small kitchen scale. The vendor had two scales of just the size we wanted.

 

The shop owner opened a box, took out the scale, inserted two AA batteries and showed us that it indeed worked. We bought it for 200 EGP (five dollars.) The box indicated that two AA batteries were included but those were either discarded due to old age or merely removed for another use. Oh well, we can always buy our own batteries.

It's a nice scale even though it lacks some of the extra features of Linda's previous scale. Her old scale displayed the imperial system in pound and ounces, the new one only uses ounces - but she mostly uses the metric measure so that is not a big problem.

How to test it for accuracy?  Let's put this 36.5 gram Kit Kat bar on it and see what the scale says?

We also bought another kilogram of butter today.  That weighed in at 1026 grams on the new scale.  Accurate enough for baking, I believe.

The cookie lady is back in business!

By the way, the new SF-400 scale is available on Amazon at home for between ten and fourteen dollars with decent reviews.

Checking Amazon-Egypt (which we have not tried to use) there are at least 40 identical appearing models with prices ranging from 98 to 256 EGP - and most come with some very bad 1-star reviews.

And about that Kit Kat bar - did you notice that it is coffee flavor?  They are delicious! I don't think they are available back home.  They come from the U.A.E, manufactured by Nestle in Dubai.

Egypt, 2024 - Convenience Stores are Proliferating

When we first moved into our apartment here in Cairo sixteen years ago, we had a limited number of nearby options for grocery shopping.  The whole neighborhood had been created from farmland at the same time as the Ring Road was rising on pylons in front of us.

 

Our only nearby grocer was a convenience store about two hundred yards down our block.  We refer to it as the "Lebanese store."  It's still in business. Here, Linda walks in to pick up a couple of items last month.

Notice that there is an adjoining fruit and vegetable store with a limited selection of items.

We live on a long, long, but skinny, block full of high-rise apartment buildings adjacent to the Ring Road surrounding Cairo.  It's over a mile walk to circle our block.  Besides convenience stores, the block holds furniture stores, a couple of car dealers, car repair shops, a Michelin Tire store, a mattress shop, two coffee shops, a lighting store, a swimming pool supply store, three pharmacies, a pizza shop, a fast-food Koshary shop, a fast-food falafel shop, a large Chinese restaurant, a gas station, three small mansions/large private homes and two mosques.  

Did I mention the huge Golden Eagle tourist shop selling perfume, papyrus and other souvenirs and which might have as many as ten buses parked out front at times?  (follow that link and read the reviews before you shop!)

 

And we shouldn't forget the Vodafone store, juice bar, nut store, gymnasium and Syrian sandwich shop at the end of the block!  

  

As this commercial area began to develop a dozen years ago, we were fortunate to have a Ragab Sons supermarket open up in a new building just around the corner at the end of the block.   It filled most of the street level floor with a mixture of food and merchandise.

 

This became our favorite convenient place to shop for meat, frozen or canned goods, butter, flour, sugar, etc.  In this 2016 blog post, Linda is shown at the butcher/deli counter loading up. 

Alas, all of the Ragab Sons stores closed a couple of years ago.  It isn't clear just what happened.  Competition, bankruptcy, bad management, sins against the state?  There is supposed to be an auction of assets this year - but it is one of those moving targets frequently encountered here.  The door has been sealed up and the space vacant for the past two years.  Once boasting over 5,000 employees, only their website remains.

But with Ragab Sons gone, we now have six, going on seven, small convenience stores open on the block. We can buy eggs and candy bars at any of them - but diet Coke or Pepsi Lite at none (well, actually, Pepsi Lite is sometimes available at one.)  Here are the new shops with a guide to their location.

El Coptan is not the most attractive of our neighborhood shops.  But the stock of chips, candy and ice cream is the best on the block.  The location next to ZinZinia coffee shop likely makes it quite profitable and the staff is cheerful.  "Coptan" is sometimes used as a title of respect here and the name appears on other stores - possibly named for the wandering character in this movie.

 

Kazyon is a branch of  a 600-store chain rapidly growing across Egypt.  Clean and tidy.  Bar code scanners and receipts!  They have a respectable looking line of products.

 

Another modern, neat and tidy chain is BIM, which reportedly operates 300 stores in Egypt and over 600 in Morocco.  Probably the largest of our mini-supermarkets, BIM has entrances on both sides of the block, offering us a shortcut through the block;  this is attractive to us since all of the vacant lots we used to use as shortcuts have now been filled with high-rise structures.  (Our building has no rear entrance to the street behind us.)   

 

Another old-style, open front convenience store.  A reliable source for a 12-pack box of 1.5 liter bottles of water.

 

A tiny market but has the advantage of being at the end of the block and closest market to the two largest residential buildings as well as near the second coffee shop on the corner. 

 

And here is the newest entrant.  El Coptan Market 2!  Sister store to the El Coptan shown in the first photo but much better dressed!  This one isn't quite open yet.  That surprised me since it was open late at night when we arrived in January.  I bought eggs, something resembling sausage and a case of water at 3 a.m.  When open, this will be our closest market and may tempt our loyalty to "the Lebanese store."

  

 Here are all seven store placed in order on a Google map 

  

Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Watching the Superbowl

After getting a decent Internet connection in Cairo a few years ago, we quit using our satellite dish for entertainment.  Most television programs that we had an interest in were available from Amazon Prime or Netflix via our Amazon Firestick.

Of course, we occasionally hit a roadblock in the form of a screen displaying the message "this program is not available in your region," or words to that effect.  So this year, I signed us up for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which makes it look to the television providers that we are located in Chicago rather than Giza.  With the VPN installed and tested on the laptop I figured that this year the Superbowl might just be in reach if not the playoff games.  I had previously watched part of Superbowl 50 in 2016 via the Internet and five years before that had found a satellite feed for the big game.

Of course, when the Vikings failed to make the playoffs again, my enthusiasm waned. 

Yesterday, Linda found a movie that she wanted to watch that was not available on any of our current subscription services but was available on Peacock.  OK, add one more subscription.   We got the Peacock app installed on the Firestick after two tries and much waiting.  We tried connecting to the movie.  No luck.  An update was available for Peacock and there was no skipping it.  We tried again.  The movie was not authorized in our country.  So, we installed the VPN app on the Firestick.  We could now watch the movie.

By now, Linda was ready for bed; no movie tonight.  

The next morning, Linda tried connecting to Netflix for one of her regular programs; once again, no luck - Netflix now no longer recognized the Egypt Firestick as part of our "family" of authorized devices.  We proceeded to authorize it; this requires that we receive an invitation by email and respond to it within 60 seconds.  A bit of a stretch for our e-mail provider; we made it with ten seconds to spare.  We finally had the Firestick join our device family.

After Linda went to bed, I thought about it a bit and decided that since the Vikings had played both of the Superbowl contenders earlier in the year, maybe I would try to watch some of the game.

I continued my efforts on the Firestick to try and get Paramount Plus working where the Superbowl would be found.  I was unsuccessful - likely because we once had a subscription to P.P. but had cancelled it.  I did get P.P. working on the PC, however.  Well, "working" is a generous description.  I could play the CBS Sunday morning news show but when connecting to the Superbowl broadcast the screen locked up after a couple of seconds with this message:

Maybe the computer was overwhelmed by the task.  I tried switching browsers.  I switched from my personal favorite, Firefox, to the current Microsoft product; or as we say in our household, "try the blue one!"  Voila!  I had a solid connection.   

By this time the game was well into the 4th quarter and San Francisco's early lead had melted down to three points.  (I was monitoring progress via Internet updates on a news site.)  I joined just in time to see Travis Kelce throwing a tantrum with his coach.

Then KC managed a field goal to take the game to a 16-16 tie with less than 6 minutes left.

Then a 19-16 lead for the 49ers - but KC had the ball with 9 seconds left in the game.

They went to overtime.  The 49ers go up by 3 - but could they hold off the Chiefs on one more drive?

Touchdown Kansas City!  Cut to the only fan in the stands that mattered - she's in there somewhere!

Victory, Kansas City.  "Is this the beginning of a dynasty," asks the sideline reporter.  Patrick Mahomes is happy.   

Andy Reid is happy.

It's 6:30 in the morning here.  I'm happy too.  Time for bed.

 

Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Shopping for Eggs

We needed eggs a couple of weeks ago and picked up a pack of 30 at the new BIM mini supermarket in the neighborhood.  The eggs weren't visible inside the package and we were quite surprised when we opened them to discover that they were mini-eggs. Linda referred to them as "pigeon eggs". When we looked up the egg sizes of American eggs we discovered a category we didn't know existed. Pee wee eggs are about 35g vs 56/57g for large eggs. These baladi eggs weighed from 33-35g.

  

 

The packaging displayed a very happy hen that laid the eggs.

 

We discovered that these were "baladi eggs."  We're most familiar with the term baladi (sometimes spelled balady) as applied to the traditional round pita-bread found for sale on the streets of our part of town.  Baladi is roughly translated as "folk" or "of the people." Below is baladi bread. When we told various friends that we had accidentally purchased tiny eggs they all exclaimed, "Oh baladi eggs! They are the best." Linda can read the Arabic that says this package is baladi eggs but who ever thought to read what's printed on a package of eggs? We learn many things every year we visit Egypt.

 

In this case, "baladi" indicates eggs from what we would describe as free-range chickens.  Video of some happy Egyptian baladi chickens can be seen here. Needless to say, we used these 30 eggs a lot faster than a normal 30 pack.

I've blogged about the eggs for sale in Cairo previously; see for example, here.

We frequently pick up our eggs at an older convenience store store down the street.  Here is their egg display.

They have small plastic bags nearby that allow one to pick up as many or as few as desired - carry them carefully!  We usually try to pick out particularly clean ones. But it is fun to see feathers on some eggs and chicken sh#* on others.

If we pick up a full flat of 30 from the open egg display, the man working the deli section will wrap them in plastic so that there is less risk of dropping any on the way back to the apartment.

One advantage of the wrapped egg package in larger markets is the presence of a production date / expiration date.  Weigh that against choosing your individual eggs.

Eggs provide another example of the rampant inflation taking place in the food sector here.  The eggs I bought for 2 EGP apiece just two years ago now sell for 5 EGP.  In dollar terms, the price is about the same at around 11 to 12 cents apiece.

Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Walking through the Neighborhood

We spent part of the afternoon at the home of friends in the neighborhood to install curtains in the bedroom that we remodeled last year.  We are going to go back with my hacksaw and cut that curtain rod down to size next week.

(Photo from last year on the left, this year on the right.)

Linda made an excellent choice of fabric for this girl's room decor, don't you think? We took measurements in 2023 so that she could work on the project in MN. The fabric selection and all the sewing were done during the time we were in MN. So happy that it fits nicely over the window.

  

  

 

After we finished visiting we headed home, taking a small detour to visit the neighborhood "Smart Mart" that we blogged about six years ago.  They have the largest selection of vegetables near us.  We passed a much smaller market along the way where the owner was just putting out some fresh tomatoes; I couldn't resist taking a picture.

  

 

We were looking for broccoli and found it at the Smart Mart.  This handsome head weighs in at over two pounds and cost 63 cents.  

 

Reading the text at that six year old post, I noticed that most vegetables were then selling for 3 to 5 EGP per kilo versus 10 to 25 EGP now.  No wonder we hear so much discussion of high prices among people here.  

People at home often ask if we feel safe in Cairo.  Well, of course.  It's nothing like Chicago, Philadelphia or even Minneapolis.  People let their small children go out alone to play; our friend's children walk us out to the main road even after dark without a worry.

There are hazards, of course.  Traffic is the worst of them.  Cars frequently go the wrong way in what appears to be a one-way area; they pass remarkably close to other cars and pedestrians; crossing the street is an exciting challenge. We refer to crossing the street as "dodge and weave". And any vehicle can weave in and out of spots you wouldn't even try to negotiate in the US.

This young man, holding some boards in place in the trunk of his father's car is probably taking more risk than the average Minnesotan is used to nowadays.

Another hazard is ongoing construction.  We passed a building going up nearby.  Watching the load of re-bar being hoisted up to the top, we stopped and gave it plenty of clearance. "Always look up." someone once said to me. (Thanks, Aliza. I know it's not what you meant but it works for situations like this also.)

  

 

You can watch the re-bar load come off the ground and start to ascend on this brief YouTube video.  The rigger has a bit of trouble when a few extra pieces catch onto the load but the man handled the situation deftly and without injury.

Some years ago, I recorded this video showing one of the small cranes that lift this kind of load. Watch below to see the raising of loads of sand to a high floor.