Friends Cafe
So now I have time to post about my experience at the Friends Cafe. Let me start by saying that I do know by now that everything in Egpyt can turn into some sort of adventure. Expect the unexpected is the way to go. So I knew before I left that the Friends Cafe might not exactly be what I was envisioning. My friends and I left Maadi at around 6:45 last night to go find the Friends Cafe. I knew the area it was in, but not the precise location or address. It took a little wandering around, but not too long before we found it. It was probably 7:30 before we were all there, seated and getting comfortable. I walked in to find the setup not what I was expecting. It looked nothing like the coffee shop in Freinds, but oh well. That's not a big deal. The place looked clean and it had comfy sofas, a large projector screen outside and a nice sized tv inside. However, there was no Friends showing on the TV. It was World Cup. Completely understandable except for the fact that there were no actual matches going on at the moment, just replays of other games. So we asked the wait staff if we could watch Friends, but they didn't really speak English so we didn't get too far with them. Then the owner came out, who spoke perfect English (Hooray!). We explained to him that we had come all the way from Maadi (at least a 30 minute drive) to watch Friends at the Friends Cafe. . . and could he make that happen. He said sure no problem, it's was just that he didn't have the dvds right there in the cafe he would have to get them and it would be 15 minutes. So fine, we look at our menus which were entirely in arabic. We must have spent a half an hour working together to read our menus and looking like retards. So finally we order. Then ten minutes later the waiter comes back and says that they don't have half of the things we ordered. So then we are stumped because it took us half an hour to decode and decide on the first order. The owner comes back with a brand new dvd set of the final season of Friends, that he had obviously just bought at the mall right down the road (it still had a price tag on it and it was like 330 L.E. which is about $57!). At that point I felt really guilty and I couldn't believe the guy had gone to all that trouble for us. Anyways, the waiters start getting that set up and the owner helps us with our order. He explained to us that they are in the process of changing the menu, so they no longer served some things. Ok fine, what do you serve? He starts listing off some things and I ask if there were any vegetarian meals and there were. So we all make another order, at which point we see the people at the next table getting the exact thing we ordered in the first place. So we then we ended up reordering what we ordered to begin with. Then in a reasonable amount of time two or three of the people in our group got their dinner and we all got our drinks, but the pizzas were taking forever. We weren't in a rush and no one wanted to complain because the guy had gone through so much trouble for us, so we said nothing. We watched Friends and waited. Eventually, the waiter comes with complementary fresh orange juices and strawberry juices as an apology for the food taking so long. We didn't ask why it was taking so long, but he said that it would be done in 15 minutes. !5 minutes came, 15 minutes went. We waited and waited. Eventually half of our group needed to go. So the remaining 4 of us watched Friends and waited some more. To make a long story slightly less long, we did eventually get our food. It was good food. But I was so ready to leave by the time it came. All in all, I would go back. The owner was so damn nice and he had problems with his ovens not functioning and I really felt for the guy. To top the night off, three of us got into a taxi to go back to Maadi. Little did we know that our driver would be a lunatic and we were lucky to get back alive.
The Mogamma
I got to the Mogamma at about 9:10 this morning to renew my visa. It was pretty much as I expected to start with. Go to this window, go to that window, get a photocopy, get a picture, pay a fine, buy some stamps, go back to this window, go back to the other window, buy some more stamps, until finally the woman said come back in two hours and it should be ready. So then I go shopping with a friend for two hours and return to the Mogamma. I go to the pick up window and the lady says I need to get more stamps. I get the stamps and she says wait. So I wait. My mistake was in not asking her how long I needed to wait. So I wait for like 20 minutes and it's still not ready. So then I decide to go and get lunch and come back. So I do that and kill like 45 minutes to an hour. Then it's back to the Mogamma to find that it is still not ready. I wait ten more minutes. Then I go home and decide to come back at 4:00 or 4:30. I show up at 4:20 to find them closed for the day. So now I have to sqeeze it somehow into my schedule this week. I hate the Mogamma.
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