Cairo - The Mother of the World

I woke up, when the driver of the night bus had to pull ungently the breaks the first time. It was four o´clock in the morning and the chaos on the streets was already mind-blowing. After a long ride through the night, I arrived in Umm ad-Dunya - the Mother of the World, how Cairo is called by its people. And this mother has an energy, palpable even at four in the morning, like no other. It´s the product of 20 million inhabitants waging a battle against the desert and life while simultaneously crushing the city´s infrastructure under their collective weight. I was still very tired and I just wanted to close my eyes again, but my view got caught on the silhouette of the magnificent pyramids. This bus ride was a trip through history, nowhere else available than Cairo: Just a short distance from the pyramids, we reached the Nile river with its modern skyscrapers of the new age and some hours later I was searching in the maze of streets of the islamic old town for my hotel. Just when I dropped the luggage in my small room, Hosni, the owner knocked on my door. He guided me over a small staircase up to the roof from where the view over the roofs of Islamic Cairo was stunning. „Welcome to Cairo, the Mother of the World“