Cairo nightlife ...
It exists! And, well, it's oddly similar to, say, Boston nightlife ...
On Thursday night, I met up with Karen and her roommate, Tori, a girl from Alaska who's been studying at the American University for four years. We first went to this club, La Bodega, near the American University dorms, where all of the summer students are housed. It was actually two bar/lounges, and both were absolutely FILLED with the kids who "study" abroad for the summer semester, and just so happen to be underage ... but in Cairo, where IDs aren't checked (the drinking age is in fact 21 here as well), they can go hog-wild.
So, yeah ... kind of like the Bistro in Boise, or ... umm ... okay, where do all of the underage kids go in Boston? The Kells? Wherever ... anyhow, it was FILLED with barely legal girls whoring it up, and the kind of guys described to me by Karen the day before - the ones who are really nerdy and outcast at home, so leave the country in an attempt to become cooler. (It rarely works, by the way.) And, of course, rich Egyptian guys hitting on the barely legal foreign girls. All in all, standard bar scene ... I felt right at home! Of course, I don't really like those bars in the US either, but it was still an oddly familiar environment ... the big problem was the smoking. I thought the constant pollution was bad, but by the time we'd spent an hour inside La Bodega, the outside air smelled positively clean!
Anyhow, we only made it through one beer at La Bodega before leaving. None of us were digging the scene, and Tori was annoyed because "No one is going to hit on us with all this jail bait here." So we moved on to another bar, Deals ... which was lame enough that we walked in, turned around, and walked back out before the door had a chance to close. After that, L'Aubergine, which was about the same, although we at least made it all the way to the bar itself. I was jazzed to go to L'Aubergine, though, because it's also Cairo's only vegetarian restaurant, and I'd been wondering where it was.
So finally, we moved on to the Cairo Jazz Club, a place in Mohandisseen (my neck of the woods) that tends to have actual "adults" ... a friend of Karen and Tori was there, COMPLETELY hammered ... he stumbled into me three times, even though I was actively dodging. Anyhow, the place wasn't bad, and there was LIVE MUSIC. Not jazz, of course - that would be way too much to ask - but at least legitimate music, instead of the shitty "house" music that's taken over around here. In fact, they were covering a bunch of American songs, which was a nice change (although the Elvis medley was a bit strange). I had to find a certain amount of humor in the fact that these American (-looking and -sounding, at any rate) kids actually went halfway around the world to form a band and sing American covers ... feels like they could have done that a bit closer to home. ;)
All in all, it was more or less EXACTLY like a night out at home - we got annoyed by the really young girls because they were obnoxious (but really because we were jealous that they got all the attention), there was not great music performed by social outcasts (the kind of guys that want to be in a band, but aren't cool enough to make their own music), a drunk guy put a cigarette hole in my shirt, and I came home smelling horribly of smoke (okay, maybe the last two are only Boise things). Oddly enough, it made me feel a lot less homesick ... either because I now know I can get some Americana here, or because I remembered how lame America sometimes is. :P
On Thursday night, I met up with Karen and her roommate, Tori, a girl from Alaska who's been studying at the American University for four years. We first went to this club, La Bodega, near the American University dorms, where all of the summer students are housed. It was actually two bar/lounges, and both were absolutely FILLED with the kids who "study" abroad for the summer semester, and just so happen to be underage ... but in Cairo, where IDs aren't checked (the drinking age is in fact 21 here as well), they can go hog-wild.
So, yeah ... kind of like the Bistro in Boise, or ... umm ... okay, where do all of the underage kids go in Boston? The Kells? Wherever ... anyhow, it was FILLED with barely legal girls whoring it up, and the kind of guys described to me by Karen the day before - the ones who are really nerdy and outcast at home, so leave the country in an attempt to become cooler. (It rarely works, by the way.) And, of course, rich Egyptian guys hitting on the barely legal foreign girls. All in all, standard bar scene ... I felt right at home! Of course, I don't really like those bars in the US either, but it was still an oddly familiar environment ... the big problem was the smoking. I thought the constant pollution was bad, but by the time we'd spent an hour inside La Bodega, the outside air smelled positively clean!
Anyhow, we only made it through one beer at La Bodega before leaving. None of us were digging the scene, and Tori was annoyed because "No one is going to hit on us with all this jail bait here." So we moved on to another bar, Deals ... which was lame enough that we walked in, turned around, and walked back out before the door had a chance to close. After that, L'Aubergine, which was about the same, although we at least made it all the way to the bar itself. I was jazzed to go to L'Aubergine, though, because it's also Cairo's only vegetarian restaurant, and I'd been wondering where it was.
So finally, we moved on to the Cairo Jazz Club, a place in Mohandisseen (my neck of the woods) that tends to have actual "adults" ... a friend of Karen and Tori was there, COMPLETELY hammered ... he stumbled into me three times, even though I was actively dodging. Anyhow, the place wasn't bad, and there was LIVE MUSIC. Not jazz, of course - that would be way too much to ask - but at least legitimate music, instead of the shitty "house" music that's taken over around here. In fact, they were covering a bunch of American songs, which was a nice change (although the Elvis medley was a bit strange). I had to find a certain amount of humor in the fact that these American (-looking and -sounding, at any rate) kids actually went halfway around the world to form a band and sing American covers ... feels like they could have done that a bit closer to home. ;)
All in all, it was more or less EXACTLY like a night out at home - we got annoyed by the really young girls because they were obnoxious (but really because we were jealous that they got all the attention), there was not great music performed by social outcasts (the kind of guys that want to be in a band, but aren't cool enough to make their own music), a drunk guy put a cigarette hole in my shirt, and I came home smelling horribly of smoke (okay, maybe the last two are only Boise things). Oddly enough, it made me feel a lot less homesick ... either because I now know I can get some Americana here, or because I remembered how lame America sometimes is. :P
posted by Teale at 10:17 AM
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