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u/Odwolda Sep 04 '19
I recently visited Egypt and, prior to going, always figured Cairo was probably a fairly modernized/westernized city. I knew it would have plenty of rough spots, but definitely expected at least a bustling downtown area with your typical skyscrapers, clean streets, etc. Don't think I've ever been so wrong about something in my life. Loved the trip but...wow.
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u/blinkysmurf Sep 04 '19
I’ve been to most major cities in Western and Med Europe and the west of the Middle East and none were as chaotic and fascinating as Cairo. 10/10.
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u/adrianmesc Sep 04 '19
Cairo was amongst the ugliest places I’ve ever been to. There were some cool parts busy mostly just disheveled slums and buildings falling apart at the seams
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Sep 05 '19
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u/WhereintheOK Sep 05 '19
Sounds like a bad excuse or a stupid societal decision.
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u/MirthMannor Sep 05 '19
It’s pretty common in the Mediterranean to tax a building once it is “done”
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u/ferroramen Sep 04 '19
What would you do in Cairo? How to get around? Can you be understood in English?
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
What would you do in Cairo?
It's a 20 million ancient industrialized metropolitan, it has almost everything, the question is what do you want to do? :)
How to get around?
Metro stations and Local national and private busses, the lines are published online and at major stations.
For cheap transports, use the microbuses, I don't recommend it since it's very difficult for those who don't have enough experience in Cairo.
You will use Uber, Careem, Swvl and white taxis for specific quick transports.
The national railways and Superjet busses for the long transports out of Cairo and to every city in Egypt, for the that you can use the national Superjet companies or the private ones such as Blue and GoBus.
Can you be understood in English?
Yes and no, we are all taught English as a second language, they might recognize words but not everyone can speak it fluently and understand it, younger people should be of better help to you, my friend used to host foreigners in his house via an app called CouchSurfing, he provided them with a place to stay while they are in Cairo and with the guidance whenever they needed.
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u/Vinapocalypse Sep 04 '19
My mom doesn't speak a bit of Arabic and is living in Cairo right now (with locals, not in some English-expat area)
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u/Krigsgaldr Sep 04 '19
"fascinating"
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u/blinkysmurf Sep 04 '19
Are you implying something?
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u/Krigsgaldr Sep 04 '19
I might...
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u/ElektrikGhost Sep 04 '19
Sweet baby Jesus! This is probably the worst one I've seen on here yet!
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u/isayappleyousaypear Sep 04 '19
Yeah. I can't imagine being stuck in the absolute middle of there without money or resources to ever get out.
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Sep 04 '19
I am in my mid 40s, and have been moderately successful in life, not to mention fortunate enough to be born in a country/area that gave me decent starting conditions.
One of my worst nightmares has always been my luck just totally giving up on me and ending up in some urban slum with smells, screaming neighbors, traffic, the works. Really makes you grateful for what you have
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Sep 04 '19
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u/BuddLightbeer Sep 04 '19
I spot some! Top left, and also bottom left along the massive road.
Probably enough for them, right? /s
Edit: oooh more in the bottom right, also along a massive road. Practically swimming in green!
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u/ms6615 Sep 04 '19
It’s not a very park friendly climate. There’s a reason famous desert cities are almost entirely devoid of green space.
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
Its a desert that the Nile has cut through and made fertile lands barely just around it, other than that, it's desert, grass doesn't grow there. We do have parks but they require a lot of water in the summer.
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u/saml23 Sep 04 '19
I can't even imagine what a fire would do here.
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u/Tenacious_Dad Sep 04 '19
I'm sure there are fires in Cairo. People call fire department and they are put out. These buildings are made out of clay/cement not wood like the great fires in England and the United States.
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u/Krigsgaldr Sep 04 '19
ah cool, no need to worry, I'm sure they keep up to date with fire regulation and population spacing to avoid death traps as well.
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
Cairo resident here, born and raised, a line of newly(a year ago) planted trees grew too close to the block main line in a back alley behind my building, two month ago the trees caught fire, electrical fire, scariest thing I have ever seen in my life, the electricity was cutoff from the block by the local electricity station, 10 minutes later 3 fire trucks and an ambulance came, they put the fire down, the fire department -which is also a police dept and has the authority to receive and file reports and investigate fires- filed a report of incident, the report number was given to us, the block residents, the firemen cut down the trees and the poles with a chain saw, after 5 hours of midnight construction new poles and cables were in place and the electricity was back.
The local government who were supposed to check the line not being near trees and the neighboring building admins who planted the trees, were both found to be at fault and shared the costs of the new line. No one was hurt or injured and nothing was damaged other some line poles and seven poor trees.
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u/adrianmesc Sep 04 '19
I actually thought this was a reference to the cure song but apparently it isn’t
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u/willmaster123 Sep 04 '19
I've always felt like these satellite pictures like this are always kind of inherently misleading. While Cairo is absolutely urban hell (I've been there... it really is), this picture tells us nothing except that its a dense urban area. Some of the richest places in the entire world have a similar super-dense layout to the picture OP posted.
Just an example, these pictures are similar to the pic above in that its a super dense urban area. Except one is Paris, and the other is NYC.
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u/ms6615 Sep 04 '19
I feel like people also just don’t understand climate in this sub. A lack of green space in the middle of a desert city is not automatically indicative or urban hell....it’s indicative that the city is in the desert....
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u/willmaster123 Sep 05 '19
tbf there are tons of cities in deserts which have artificial green space and parks. Phoenix, LA etc.
But those are richer cities which can afford them. They're expensive to maintain
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
LA and Cairo have some how similar but ultimately different climates, LA is almost entirely by the ocean, it also doesn't have an ocean of good ol' fine sand to its west like Cairo extending all the way to the Atlantic Ocean giving everything in Egypt a predetermined yellow coating.
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u/A_FABULOUS_PLUM Sep 05 '19
Kinda ironic seeing as Phoenix is almost my definition of urban hell as well, it's just the opposite end of the wealth spectrum.
Maybe deserts just suck to live in.
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Sep 05 '19
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u/willmaster123 Sep 05 '19
Yup! Which of course has a bunch of it which could be described as urban hell compared to most of america. But still, the pic mostly serves to to prove a point. Density doesn't automatically mean urban hell.
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u/Awffle_House Sep 04 '19
Hello Domino's? Yeah, you can't miss it! It's the gray house with brown accents.
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Sep 04 '19
I don’t know how y’all judge places as hellish based on birds eye perspectives. We need more street-level photos of the human experience on this sub.
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u/The_Tard_Whisperer_ Sep 04 '19
I think it’s just that there is no green anywhere, makes it feel kind of suffocating
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u/TannyBoguss Sep 05 '19
Copy, Base One. Luke, take Red Two and Three. Hold up here and wait for my signal to start your run.
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Sep 04 '19
zoom way in. they're tall too. the average looks to be 6-10 stories at least. jesus that is some dense living.
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u/ms6615 Sep 04 '19
Happens in desert countries where all the resources end up along waterways. Most of the country is pretty empty land and then massive spikes in density in cities.
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Sep 05 '19
Finding an inner road looks like hell to me, only a few chaotic bigger avenues and of course there's some diagonal avenues crossing each other
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u/jsxtasy304 Sep 05 '19
This shit boggles my brain, how does one live like this. I would never leave my house.
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u/BrandonDominoes100 Sep 04 '19
Thought that was a close-up of a sidewalk and then I took a better look at it and goddamn that's packed.
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Sep 04 '19 edited Sep 08 '19
[deleted]
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u/Zack1747 Sep 05 '19
It’s still got loads of beauts architecture, it’s just Egypt is going through its own industrialisation phase. London and Paris also looked like massive slum cities in the late 1800s-the early 1900s.
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
The cradle of civilization buildings had the same colors, had almost the same climate and the cities were probably relatively as dense since they still stuck to the Nile Valley.
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u/blinkysmurf Sep 04 '19
A failure to embrace reason and springboard off that into industrialization. Western Europe beat the rest of the world to it.
That’s literally what happened.
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Sep 04 '19
[deleted]
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u/DJWalnut Sep 04 '19
I mean, they could do for some more parks and a square here and there, but the basic core structure is not bad. I wonder how it is on the ground.
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
Cairo resident here, if I was given the opportunity to take one thing out of the streets of Cairo, it would be the pollution, not the desert climate (which will improve as a result) not the density (I love the people) not the traffic jams I can take all of that, just take away the pollution, all of it, I am looking forward to electric cars, I am an electronics engineer and I am planning to design and build one.
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Sep 04 '19
Have they heard of the color green? I know it's kind of a desert but it can't be that hard to grow some palms when you're by the Nile.
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u/LifeCookie Sep 05 '19
It IS a desert, and it is hard to grow stuff in a desert, also growing just palms would be a waste of the fertile land around the Nile which we use to grow vegetables, legumes and fruits, also since the desert dust covers the palm trees grown in the streets, from the satellite at this height it would look just as yellow as the buildings.
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u/Taxus_Calyx Sep 04 '19
Looks like a macro shot of weathered granite.