Per aspera ad astra

There are some things I absolutely love about Russia (see: banya, sukhariki, Maslenitsa, etc.) and for the most part I wouldn’t change a thing because I love this country.

That being said, there are some things intrinsic in the Russian mindset that I just can’t see eye to eye with. This article is a good example. If you’re not the link-clicking type, Moscow doesn’t allow gay rights marches. On Sunday there was a march-of-sorts where about 50 people tried to present a petition for allowing gay rights marches to the city hall. The rest was pretty predictable, if you know anything about the Russian attitude towards homosexuality:

As Aaron said (roughly) to sum everything up: “A group of people decided to protest. A group of people who disagree with them attacked them with eggs and stones. Then the first group of people got arrested for illegal conduct.” In perhaps one of the most confusing quotes to grace a BBC article, a spokesman for the police said: “Moscow police don’t have the right to encroach on the law to pander to a group of citizens who exploit the theme of human rights while distorting this notion.”

Translation: Sorry gays, we can’t help you. What you’re doing is illegal and wrong.
Now, I know the topic of whether or not gay people should have rights is up for debate in the States. However, in Russia, the overwhelming majority of people are vehemently against homosexuality all-out. In my conversation class last semester, I broached the topic and asked if gay people should be allowed to get married. All but one of my students quickly responded in the negative, while one girl enthusiastically nodded. I was surprised, but not nearly as surprised as the rest of the class.
Me: You think it’s okay for two gay people to get married?
Her: Wait you mean to each other?
Me: Yes.
Her: Oh. Well then, no, of course not.
While we all had a little laugh about it, it’s actually a pretty sad state of affairs. Not a single Russian I’ve talked to, even the most liberal-minded, would even consider that homosexuality wasn’t a choice that a person consciously made, or that it wasn’t some sort of illness that you could ‘catch’. Likewise, very few of them thought there was any problem with gay rights in Russia.

Here’s a snippet of a conversation I had with one of my Russian co-workers after reading about the protests:
Her: I… Well, most Russians don’t have any problems with them. They should just stay at home and be who they are without announcing it to the world
Me: But, you see, there shouldn’t be any problem with them announcing it. They should be able to hold hands without being pelted with eggs.
Her: In some places, they can and it’s not a problem. Me, personally, I don’t have a problem with it. But I worry about my children. If they have to work in a place where there are people like that, I don’t know how I’d feel.
Me: Do you really think they are going to have a negative influence on your children because they’re gay?
Her: Well, yes, of course. It’s wrong… I’m not really against them getting married though.
Me: Do you think they should be able to adopt children?
Her: Definitely no.

When I ride on the bus and see billboards all over that say “Children should live in a family,” and go to the orphanage and see children whose parents were alcoholics or drug users, it’s depressing to think that a loving couple can’t adopt them because they have the improper ratio of X to Y chromosomes.
I have some pretty strong opinions on some things and gay rights is definitely one of those. It’s hard to be in a place that’s already made its mind up about something and is pretty stubborn about moving. The fact that the Russian Constitution says: “Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets.”and essentially ignores that idea completely- doesn’t make me particularly optimistic about the individual rights-aspect of this democracy.

I’ve been a terrible blogger; despite the fact that I spend a good chunk of my day on my laptop, I haven’t updated in what the the Internet community might label as ‘forever’. Fortunately, I’ll get this one in under the month mark.

We recently had our long-awaited spring break and I took advantage of Russia’s cheap flights to cool places and headed off to Egypt for the week. After several months of scattered sunshine, cold rain and limited fruits and veggies, I was ready for a change.

After an awful flight (I have the sneaking suspicion that Russian pilots are a lot like Russian drivers- overly aggressive and slightly intoxicated at all times), I arrived in Cairo around 1:30 in the morning. After a brief moment of panic, found a reputable-looking guy (note: hard to do at 1 am) and asked him what to do, got my Egyptian visa (read: paid $15 bucks and got two stamps in my passport), and found the driver from the hostel I was staying at.

Because I am a hopeless fool for history, archaeology and- erm- Brendan Fraser, I resolved to go to the Egyptian Museum and soak in the goodness. Since I’m poor- here’s a bit of advice for any future travellers: If you don’t want to pay wander around until you hear a guide speaking English (or Russian, in my case) and leech on to the tour group like you’ve always been there. (I did this quite a bit during the course of the trip) The museum was great, though I had a bit of deja-vu looking at a bunch of British Museum leftovers. I was still feeling sick from the week before, so I went back to the hostel, talked to some of the guys who run the place and fell asleep around 9.

The next day, I went with a French couple on a quasi-planned trip to Giza, Saqqara, and an open-air museum in between the two. Our driver was this really jovial, sort-of English speaking who tried to convince us that Lindsay Lohan really was in love with him, but he would have none of her party-girl, druggie lifestyle. While driving in Cairo is notoriously insane, Farek took the cake. One way streets? Pedestrians? Stoplights? No problem for Farek- taxi driver. You know how your parents tell you to keep your head/arms/legs inside the car when you’re young? That’s because, on the off-chance you’re ever riding in a taxi in Egypt, you’ll need it to survive with all appendages intact.

Anyway, somehow we arrived at the Pyramids unscathed. Being there was simultaneously motivating (look at what people can do!), depressing (what cool things have we done lately?), thought-provoking (why is there such a huge obsession with death?) and hot (about 40 degrees C).

Although I refuse to buy into the tour-package deal, I am an unabashed lover of tourist traps. So, yeah, I rode a camel around the Pyramids.

My guide (approximately 18 years old) turned out to be pretty useless when it came to explaining the history of the pyramids (whatever, that’s what Wikipedia is for), but was fluent in such English phrases as “You are very beautiful lady,” and “If you happy, you can give me tip”. I did get my money’s worth by getting him to teach me some Arabic. Though he did get me to pose for some pretty ridiculous pictures, so maybe he wins in the end.

Failure is just success rounded down? However, this next one was completely my idea.

I rode around for about 2 hours and then headed back to meet Farek and the Frenchies. Our next stop was Saqqara which, if you didn’t click on the above link, is the world’s oldest standing step pyramid, and (while less tourist-ridden) is equally impressive.

Despite the fact that I was slightly exhausted and definitely sunburned after that excursion, I met a guy named Osama from Hospitality Club that I’d talked to earlier that evening. We went to the quasi-yuppie part of Cairo called Heliopolis and met some of his (also fluent English-speaking) friends at a cafe. Then we went to Khan El-Khalili and I fell in love with the aisles and aisles of junk before being whisked off to Cairo Jazz Club which, if you are ever in Cairo and like music at ALL, you must go to.

The next day, Osama and I went to Alexandria . Since my one-use camera was almost out of film and the weather was crappy (hot and cloudy), this day was pretty photo-free. We walked around by the sea (see: picture), ate some absolutely great (and cheap!) seafood and went to Green Plaza (an outside mall-type deal) for some Turkish coffee and shisha.

The next day I took the sleeper train to Luxor and, thanks to the completely out-of-date timetable, arrived two hours later than I had expected (and told my hostel that I’d arrive by). Fortunately, the guys at this hostel were also super-friendly and wasted no time in giving me tons of information about the important places to see within 36 hours.
I napped all afternoon and then I took a felucca ride on the Nile. While I was expecting to be piled on a little sailboat with a dozen other tourists, it ended up being just the hostel guy, the captain (?) of the felucca, his grandson, and me. Pretty fantastic- the breeze from the river and the shade from the sails was very calming.

We stopped at this place called Banana Island, where (to your surprise, I’m sure) there are hundreds of banana trees and people sit around and eat lots of bananas in a tourist attraction strictly designed to prove that we are actually descended from monkeys. Anyway, my body certainly wasn’t complaining about the vitamins it was suddenly getting, as I enjoyed some mandarins, watermelons, apples and (yes) bananas.

As we left Banana Island, the sun was just beginning to set over the Nile and I took this shot. You can be jealous.

The next day was action-packed as I visited the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Deir el-Bahri, Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple, all the while trying to avoid the endless stream of kiosk vendors, illegitimate tour guides, and men with their mouths hanging open (with brief pauses to make catcalls) at the sight of a white girl by herself. The guys at the hostel (which was not nearly as nice as mine in Cairo and had a nice little army of resident ants in the bathroom) were helpful around town/with learning some Arabic and I felt my $2 was well-spent.
I went back to Cairo on the (much) less expensive express night train. I found my cabin after deciphering the Arabic numbers that I taught myself (!) and was pleasantly surprised at how nice first class was for a $10 ticket. However, the woman sitting next to me was obviously very disappointed. (Here, obviously disappointed is a euphemism meaning “crying and screaming hysterically) Her travelling partner was useless at cheering her up and convincing her that it wasn’t so bad (I think she was expecting a sleeper-train style outfit), as she wailed in mixed Italian/English about how much she was let down by the tour company and how much she paid for a decent seat. For an hour. When I tried to intervene and joke about how “If you think this is bad, try Russia”, she glared at me and told me that she WAS trying very hard. Oops, language barrier miscommunication. After the hour of sorrow, she decided that she was going to go to bed and demanded that I shut my book and turn off the cabin lights so she “could make it through the night”. Oh man.

Needless to say, we both made it through somehow and I quickly hailed a taxi at the railway station and we argued for maybe five minutes about a 20 cent difference in fare before he decided he could take me where I was going. Another girl hopped in the taxi with us and we started talking as our cab driver battled Cairo traffic/tried to remember where he was going. Turned out she is originally from Ukraine and now lives in LA, didn’t have a hostel, and after my enthusiastic recommendation of Desert Safary (sic), decided to come with me. (there’s my little plug for the hostel which, for $6 a night, is perhaps one of the cleanest, hassle-free, most well-located hostels in Cairo). I hung out with her and another hostel visitor for the afternoon and then went back to Khan el-Khalili for some last-minute junk ogling with a graphic designer from New York. Seriously, people, stay at hostels, you meet the most diverse and interesting group of people who aren’t just looking to sit around a beach all day.

All in all, it was an incredibly satisfying trip. My apologies for the lack of pictures (if you’re not a slug and check out the links, you can see all of the pictures I would have taken anyway)- what can you do? Usually when I visit a foreign country, I tend to prefer one city above the rest (Moscow, Rome, etc.) but in Egypt every city was absolutely unique and captivating in its own way. While Rome still maintains its spot as my favorite city, Egypt’s pretty high in the running for favorite country. And if I ever go back, even if I’m alone, I’ll know that I’ll hear “Welcome to Egypt” or some variation of that at least 75 times a day!