Saturday 25th September

Got up at 6:00am after an intermittent sleep and caught the 6:40am bus from the hotel to Heathrow airport terminal one.  I went to the Swiss International air counter checked my bag since the woman said it was too heavy to carry on. I guess there are different rules for United, who let me carry on from SFO-LHR, and Swiss who would not let me carry on LHR to GVA. The plane was about 20 mins late in taking off and arrived at Geneva (GVA) about 20 mins late at about noon. In Geneva I was in the transfer lounge until about 14:30pm when we boarded the EgyptAir Boeing 737-800 for Cairo. It was completely full, the seating was pretty cramped, and until the senses gave in, there was a noticeable body odor smell. It looked clean and seemed to be efficiently run. I watched the film Ghost Writer which was good again second time around. The pilot made a very smooth landing at Cairo airport at about 8:10pm. I bought my visa for $15 at the bank and then proceeded through customs. Actually the first time I tried to go through customs they sent me back to the bank to get the visa. I then picked up my bag. On the way out I looked at all the signs people were holding up for their pickups. I could not see one for me. I made up my own sign and walked around showing my signs to the sign holders. Still no luck. I called our host on my mobile, there was an answer but there was a lot of background noise on both ends and I could not make out anything. I hung up getting a bit anxious, and was about to place another call, when I found my contact. His name was Ibrahim,  Fathy, Abd Sal Ghafar. We then had to wait for another lecturer (Mikhail Zhizhy) who was flying from Moscow arriving nominally 1.5 hours later. It transpired his plane (EgyptAir) was delayed and then getting through customs etc took about 1.25hours. Eventually he arrived and quickly found us. At about 11:00pm we got into a very old Fiat 121, no seat belts in the back, a non working one in the passenger seat where I sat, air conditioning was very green (i.e. there was none just open the windows all the way) and set out for Helwan University on the SE side of Cairo. The ride from the airport to Helwan University is not for the faint of heart and was the closest thing to a video game that I can recall. Lane discipline is interesting. Some people drive between the lines, others place the middle line in the middle of the car, but most seem to oscillate between these positions, if there is a visible white line. I would say about 30% of the time, there was no visible white line, so then it gets really interesting.  At the same time it’s not like India where it’s so congested speed is not possible. In Cairo, as we came through, we must have been weaving between traffic at over 70mph most of the time. Of course there was no visible working instrument in the car to verify this. Just to add excitement every now again, probably at roughly 2 mile intervals, there are vicious speed bumps where everyone slows down to about 10-20mph (again no instrument enabled me to verify this). We reached Helwan University at about 11:50pm, and made our way to the Guest House. Even at this time of night the temperature was about 86 degrees and quite humid.  My room was on the top floor which since heat rises was very hot, however my room was lovely and cool with a serious air conditioner. I got to bed at about 12:30am.

Friday 24th September

On Friday Sue and I chatted and walked into town. I bought a pair of light non-need-to-press-trousers at Marks and Spencers, plus a tie, in case the meeting in Cairo was a bit formal (it is not). We checked at the charity shop down the street and found we could have got the tie for half price. To ensure we would be on time to get to the bus station, we left Sue’s place at about 3:30pm stopping off en route for Sue to run an errand. There was light traffic so we arrived at the bus station in Bristol with 45 mins to spare. The bus left Bristol at 5:00pm on time arriving at the Central Bus station Heathrow at 7:20pm. I caught the Hoppa bus shuttle and checked in at the Heathrow Holiday Inn at about 8:00pm. After laying out my gear in my room, I had a light dinner of a tuna and cucumber sandwich plus an orange juice, afterwards retiring to my room to work a bit on the first two talks for Cairo. The hotel had free Internet for the first 20 mins and after that one was charged. This way they can advertize somewhat misleadingly that they have free Internet. Anyhow I did not use it.

Thursday 23rd September

Caught the National bus from Heathrow Central bus station to Bristol. Called my sister Sue from the bus to say “the eagle has landed” etc.  Arrived Bristol 10:00am, made way to meeting point, called Sue, she was 20 yards away in her little blue car. Sue drove to Weston and her new home. It is very nice indeed, reminiscent of the old place but smaller. It has a lovely tiled floor kitchen, 3 bedrooms upstairs and a computer room. I was assigned Liam’s room, I love the doors they put on to the closet, very classy simple open design on the doors. We skyped with Liam (in Nantes) and with Sian (in Nottingham). Via Skype video we showed Sian the posters Barbara had got for Sian. Sian and Liam are both away at university, so Sue has an empty nest. The downstairs loo is Sue’s current project and pride and joy. She showed photos of the disaster it was before she embarked on her project. She has replaced the toilet, ripped off the wallpaper, repainted etc., tore out the old sink (to be replaced by a new corner sink imminently), had a curtain rail (with curtain) installed while I was there. Also “Deb” dropped by while I was staying, to apply the gloss to the trim. I slept well in Liam’s room that night, not getting up until 10:00am next day.

Wednesday 22nd September

Gloriously uneventful, picked up by Supershuttle on time, arrived at airport with tons of time, did not check any bags, bought postcards for Sue, got reminder call from Barbara to buy cards but already done. Only forgotten item was my plastic bags of English and Swiss monies. However that was no problem, I used credit cards and an ATM. I wandered around got a light lunch and some drinks and got to the boarding desk with a couple of minutes to spare. They did not give me an upgrade. It was a Boeing 777B. My seat was 21C second row back from Business class, no seat in front so legs could stretch out but since there was no seat in front of me, there was no place to stuff my backpack etc. into. Luckily, although plane was pretty full, the seat to my left was empty, so I used that space for my stuff. Each seat had its own choice of program and movie. I watched Ripley Scott’s Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, which was a bit disappointing compared to Scott’s other films. I had no success sleeping, and we arrived at LHR on time 7:00am.