How to cross the street in Cairo

This is the way you cross the street in some crowded streets of Cairo. It's quite extreme, and was one of my favourite "sports" while being there. I know it sounds crazy, but I miss that.

Some more examples:
Crossing the street in Tahrir
Human frogger

And yes, bad stuff can happen :-)

CeBIT

Yesterday I went to CeBIT, with a couple of AIESECers from the national teams in Germany, honoring an invitation from Deutsche Telekom, for a round table and a visit of their stand there. CeBIT in Hannover is the biggest IT fair in the world, and if you ask any IT guy to pick a fair where he wants to go, he would say CeBIT.

My general impression is that the fair is HUGE, it took me almost one hour to walk(run) from one end to the other.

Some of the interesting stuff I've seen there:
Clothes of the future, really good taste with integrated small lights and cool buttoons for music players. (washable, batteries included :-))

The kitchen of the future, with a virtual women talking on a window, where you could order products directly on Internet, or trace your stuff in the kitchen.

A television set where you could see 3D movies, without having to wear special glasses. (I would definatelly buy that in the future).

A cool 3D surrounded Deutsche Telekom conference room :D

Anyway, the weirdest thing was when I stopped in front of a computer, and the dude started drawing some squares on my eyes and mouth, analysing me, and displaying my mood.
P.S.: He didn't guess it :-D

Sinai

After IPM was over, some of the delegates and organizing committee members decided to go to Sinai, while the others went to Luxor and Valley of the Kings. Since I am more of the "action" guy, and less of a "museums and monuments" fan, I decided to take the Sinai trip.
I really don't know how we all got mixed in this weird composition, but at the end, I was the only guy travelling with six girls from Egypt, Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland and Taiwan speeding with 150 km/h on a tight bumpy road, towards Dahab, Sinai.

After crossing about seven security checkpoints (barrels blocking the middle of the street) guarded by armed policeman, we finally reached Dahab. Dahab is a small resort with one main street, 100 km away from Sharm El Sheik (the most popular resort in Sinai). As far as I understood, the security checks are because of the recent bombings in Dahab and Sharm El Sheik.
The prices there were really good. We checked in at Octopus Hotel, paying only 4 euros per night, all upcoming tours or activities going to also be around 10 euros each.

In the first evening, around 11 we went on to Sinai Mountain, to the place where Moses came down with the 10 commandments. Around 1 in the night, we all arrived at the base of the mountain, in the St. Catherine Protectorate. Initially, I believed that we were the only crazy people climbing mountains during the night, but when we got there, the place was already full of tourists and salesmen. We barely got out of our mini-bus, and the bedouins "attacked" us: "Hello my friend! Do you want scherf? Buy scherf, cheap! What's your name? Wher are you from?". "Scherf" meant "scarf", and the method of barganing is typically Egyptian :-).

After passing by the metal detector here too :|, we started to climb the mountain, followed by camels, and our bedouin guide. We climbed the whole night, and towards the morning, after a short snow, we've seen the sunrise, and that was simply gorgeous. Our bedouin guide was really pleasant, talking to us the whole way, and he also found me a nickname, "habibi".

In the second evening in Sinai, we rent a jeep from the hotel, and went somewhere in the middle if the desert, in a beautiful place, surrounded by mountains. There, the bedouins were expecting us, in a hut discretely lightened by candles, and covered with palm-tree leaves. They have prepared us their traditional dinner, a mixture of chicken and vegetables, and then showed us how to build water-pipe out of 0.5L pet bottles. We had a very warm night, with clear skies, and lots of fun.

We spent the last day in Blue Hole, snorkeling in the coral reef, through fishes of all colours, that I had only seen in Windows' screensaver or in Finding Nemo before. The fishes were swimming curious around you, as close to a couple of centimeters, some in groups, some separately, then back, hiding between the corals. At the end, we went to a cool restaurant by the beach, and ate some very good food. The restaurant is called Friends, and it's really worthed: good food, and nice waiters. We all ordered very fancy dishes, and cool mixtures of cold natural juices. I found shark steak in menu, and tried it. It was juicy :D

This was the best day of all three we have spent in Sinai. We still owe lots of thanks to Mai and Maggie, our best egyptian friends who showed us around.

Wrap-up

One year ago, I have planned to keep this blog up to date, but apparently my plan didn't work. Now, I am planning to do that again, so... I will start with a little wrap-up of what happened in the last year:

July 2006 - Got an internship in Germany, moved from Iasi to Bonn
July 2006 - Travelled to Belgium, visited Bruxelles
July 2006 - Visited Cologne (Köln)
August 2006 - My first visit to Berlin
September 2006 - Travelled to Czech Republic, Prague
September 2006 - Travelled to Münich, at Oktoberfest
October 2006 - First time OC (Organizing Commitee), Bielefeld, Germany
November 2006 - OC at NaLDS, in Harz Mountains, Germany
January 2007 - Visited Loredana and Sebi, in Helsinki, Finland
February 2007 - Conference Commitee member, AIESEC International Presidents Meeting 2007, Egypt
March 2007 - Travelled to Sinai, then Giza

Well, a lot has been going on. I have written some words about all this in my romanian weblog, and from now I'll also try to keep up with my posts in English.

Mino, you'd better read this, you were the one who pushed me to do it :D