http://briancadd.com/theblog.cfm Fri, 13 May 2011 21:45:00 GMT http://bandzoogle.com http://briancadd.com/theblog.cfm?feature=2402578&postid=967567 Back in late January you may have noticed there was somewhat of a revolution in Egypt . Well, guess who was there on the eve of it all! Here is Brians' account of the unbelievable few days. This picture is the only time Brian and son Austin got even close to the Pyramids in Giza. OUR EGYPTIAN VACATION DATELINE PARIS - Thursday 27th January (one week ago). We leave for Cairo, Egypt. We are on a 9-day visit, including 5 of them on a boat going up the Nile. Flying Egypt Air from Charles de Gaulle airport, there is no alcohol on board. Our tour representative ACHMED picks us up at the airport. Austin and AP are beside themselves suppressing laughter because all they can think of is the Jeff Dunham puppet character ACHMED THE DEAD TERRORIST. Turns out perhaps to be not quite as funny now. We drive for 45 minutes on a massive ring road to MENA HOUSE, the iconic Colonial hotel south of downtown Cairo. Achmed, (who AP and Austin have to call Jeff) tells us in the car on the way that there is a ‘peaceful’ demonstration planned for the next day after prayers. To be on the safe side we aren’t allowed into downtown Cairo. Checking in and turning on TV, we discover that this ‘peaceful demonstration’ is actually about overthrowing Mubarak. Nevertheless, the hotel is beyond fabulous so we launch into dinner and bar activities, confident that none of this pesky demonstration stuff will affect us in any way. While we sleep, all mobile phones and Internet in Egypt are suspended. DATELINE CAIRO - Friday 28th January. This morning we walk out of our hotel and 2000 yards up the road to where the entrance to the Pyramids and the Sphinx are. A most torturous hour ensues where we are set upon by every neer-do-well and hustler ever to draw an Egyptian breath. They are an obnoxiously demanding bunch, and no amount of abuse will drive them away. When we eventually fall for a particularly complex scam involving three separate characters and routines, we begrudgingly offer some Egyptian money as a tip. The creep throws an absolute tantrum and demands foreign currency, preferably either American dollars or Euros! Eventually we head back to the hotel. We have seen the two closest pyramids and the BACK of the Sphinx’s head but aren’t worried because we are scheduled to go to the ‘Son et Lumiere’ lightshow that evening when we will see the whole shebang with a guide. We nap and then get ready for the light show. We are to meet in the foyer. I go down a bit later than AP and Austin, who are waiting at the bar. They have just been told that the light show has been cancelled for that evening and that all other excursions in Cairo may ‘be in doubt’ before we leave for Luxor in 3 days time. That night we watch CNN like everyone else in the world and during the night sporadic gunfire can be heard in the streets around the hotel. Early the next morning Achmed informs us by phone that all activities in Cairo have definitely been cancelled and that we are not to leave the hotel under any circumstances. DATELINE CAIRO - Saturday 29th. A day by the pool. There is an ever-building deafening din from the streets around the hotel, constant sirens, horns honking, yelling and occasionally the unmistakable heavy sound of tanks rumbling by. We are due to attend a cocktail party at 6pm for the group of us who are about to travel by boat up the Nile. When we leave the room we notice that there are only minimal lights on around the grounds. This doesn’t make any sense to me as I figure that people sneaking in to loot or kidnap would surely appreciate a dimly lit area! Reaching the courtyard and driveway at the entrance to the main building we see that it is in total darkness. This is probably the only vaguely humorous moment during the whole affair as there are a number of complex groups of dark ruby coloured marble stairs leading up to the hotel entrance and which, in the darkness people are obviously either tripping up or down over. Attendants materialise out of the darkness (scary enough!) and attempt to help you negotiate the polished stone maze up to the front doors. As we are being lead inside we notice, to our severe consternation, the tanks lined up along our front gates and beyond. There are soldiers everywhere. The foyer and out to these gates are thick with armed hotel security guards. Inside it’s as though NOTHING outside exists. Chandeliers gleam brightly and the foyer and all the restaurants and bars are lit up like Christmas trees (a normal state of affairs incidentally, although Christmas trees might be an inappropriate analogy given that 80 percent of Egyptians are Muslim). Only two others attend the cocktail party, a Swiss couple, Lina and Rudy, who are very nice and more than a little apprehensive (like us). Rudy is recovering from a spectacular fall after walking off the edge of a porch in the darkness outside and dropping to the pavement several feet below. Miraculously, only a sore shoulder results. The other 13, all Americans don’t show. Most of them have not come to Egypt at all. The US government is stopping tourists from leaving America. Incidentally, we meet an Australian couple from Adelaide on the last day who have flown all the way from Australia, gone to a restaurant that night and the next day await evacuation with us…and they are going straight back to Adelaide! An expensive meal. Anyway, we have a moderately jolly evening despite the belly dancer having been cancelled because she can’t get into work. Mercifully the same applies to the house band and obviously by the standard of the meal, several of the chefs have had the same problem. Back to our room and a sleepless night (at least for me) as the gunfire and crowd noise ratchets up several notches. DATELINE CAIRO - Sunday 30th. During the morning we venture as close to the front gates as we dare. We have been told that, under no circumstances are we to take pictures of the army or security. As we sit there (and sneak off a few pics using the long lens), we see soldiers constantly marching prisoners past our hotel gates holding handguns to their heads. We are told there are trucks parked just a little further up the street in which there are dozens of prisoners, some of whom have been there all night. These trucks obviously have no rest room facilitates so… Near us is an Australian couple who live in Tel Aviv and who just came to Cairo ‘for the weekend’. Obviously don’t own a TV set. They have managed to get on a plane back to Israel. Planes are still leaving sporadically but most flights have been cancelled. Delta and several other major airlines are no longer flying here at all. Countries around the world are beginning to arrange for planes to come in and fly their citizens out. The Australian one won’t get here until possibly Thursday. Then suddenly we are all told to pack immediately and assemble in the foyer. We are being moved to another hotel near the airport. There is good reason for concern about this. The streets around us have been looted and burned. Gunfire and killing goes on constantly. The street running along the side of the hotel where the pool is situated was last night burned and ransacked because it contained many bars and strip joints. The Fundamentalist Muslims torched them. Finally we are herded into a relatively small bus with our luggage. We head out the gates, through soldiers, tanks and insurgents. For the first time we see the trucks containing the prisoners. There are many of them! The bus makes its way to the ring road. We figure that, once we make it on there we will be travelling away from the action and certainly away from the main square where there are now many thousands of people gathered and who now aren’t behaving anywhere near like ‘peaceful protestors’. We see the ring road in front of us then, to our great concern, we pass under it and head straight towards the centre of town! No explanation proffered (although we assume the ring road is jammed). Almost immediately we are running the gauntlet through suburbs guarded by citizen militia. Since the second day of the uprising, the police have disappeared. Not one policeman or vehicle is seen anywhere in Cairo. We are told it is actually the police who are doing much of the looting. Additionally they have opened many jails and released thousands of prisoners into the crowd. (There is a large jail near our hotel). So ordinary citizens, fearful of looting and random violence, have armed themselves with sticks, knives, swords and even guns to protect their homes and families. Every vehicle, including ours, is stopped and questioned. We make it over the river eventually and, at about the time the stents in my heart are popping out of my arteries with anxiety, we pull into the Fairmont hotel near the airport. What a place! Absolutely massive. And over 1000 refugees like us are marshalled there in the hope of getting planes out to anywhere they can. Once more tanks and soldiers everywhere, including those strolling through the foyer waving automatic weapons about. We are immediately taken to a meeting room where the heads of Abercrombie and Kent, our tour company, address us. They offer us two plans: (1) We wait until the next day until we know if any planes are ever going to actually resume service (at this point virtually no-one is flying)…or (2) they will charter a private plane to take us to Amman, Jordan. There we will have to make our own way home. Good grief! There is another meeting scheduled for 9pm where we will all tell them what we want to do. By now there are over 40 people in our evacuation group. We have dinner and retire to our room. Considering our situation it has to be said we are prisoners in luxurious surroundings. The hotel is very nice. At 9pm we are back in the meeting room. There are lots of agitated Americans! They are all demanding that we be flown to a destination in Continental Europe, rather than another Arabian country. Fair point. However, on reflection, the tour company would have paid an absolute fortune to hire the plane (an Airbus A321) and travelling to the Continent would have been extraordinary with airport fees and taxes in places like Naples or Athens. Eventually, when no-one calms down, the tour company simply says “anyone who wants to get out with us, be ready and in the foyer at 10 in the morning”. I suffer another relatively sleepless night. DATELINE AMMAN – Monday 31st. Into a bus at considerably later than 10am, we eventually make it to a small airport designated for private jets and charter planes. There are several thousand evacuees waiting outside the airport. Fortunately our tour operators have us going in a secret door (genuine hostility in the queues as we walk past them!) but everything from then on involves huge delays. Eventually, some 8 hours after we leave the Fairmont, we lift off (in a Nile Air aircraft!!!) and away from Cairo. The cheering and whistling in the plane is huge! We land an hour later in Amman convinced we are on safe ground. Into a bus we are taken to the Four Seasons Hotel in the centre of the city. How different a place. The buildings are (by third world standards) clean and neat, the cars much newer and whole, the traffic is orderly and calm…and the people seem nice, friendly and happy. We are told that we can take a plane early in the morning the day after next. Feeling completely relaxed, we actually book for a tour the next morning to see the ruins of a large Roman city in the north of the country at Jerash. We are finally going to see something tourist after all. Admittedly not in our original country of destination, but at least in the Arab sub-continent. DATELINE AMMAN – Tuesday 1st. A lovely dinner and nice sleep later, we are picked up by our charming guide and humorous driver (try and get that combination anywhere!!) and whisked northwards. A stunning day filled with archaeological delights, a plethora of columns, amphitheatres and even a full size chariot racetrack. During the course of this day (and unknown to us), the Jordanian people have demonstrated and, as a result the King has sacked the entire government. We are once again in a politically torn country and on the verge of being trapped. Of course this doesn’t happen because the Jordanian King is loved and respected and he simply tells them he will fix everything. DATELINE AMMAN – Wednesday 2nd. After arising at 4am, (I admit to getting up a few times and looking out the window for evidence of tanks and soldiers) we are finally on a Royal Jordanian plane, along with many other evacuees and eventually touch down in Paris at lunchtime. We immediately head to our favourite local restaurant and eat and drink everything on the menu. Vive la France!


OUR EGYPTIAN VACATION

DATELINE PARIS - Thursday 27th January (one week ago).

We leave for Cairo, Egypt. We are on a 9-day visit, including 5 of them on a boat going up the Nile.

Flying Egypt Air from Charles de Gaulle airport, there is no alcohol on board. Our tour representative ACHMED picks us up at the airport. Austin and AP are beside themselves suppressing laughter because all they can think of is the Jeff Dunham puppet character ACHMED THE DEAD TERRORIST. Turns out perhaps to be not quite as funny now.

We drive for 45 minutes on a massive ring road to MENA HOUSE, the iconic Colonial hotel south of downtown Cairo. Achmed, (who AP and Austin have to call Jeff) tells us in the car on the way that there is a ‘peaceful’ demonstration planned for the next day after prayers. To be on the safe side we aren’t allowed into downtown Cairo.

Checking in and turning on TV, we discover that this ‘peaceful demonstration’ is actually about overthrowing Mubarak. Nevertheless, the hotel is beyond fabulous so we launch into dinner and bar activities, confident that none of this pesky demonstration stuff will affect us in any way. While we sleep, all mobile phones and Internet in Egypt are suspended.

DATELINE CAIRO - Friday 28th January.

This morning we walk out of our hotel and 2000 yards up the road to where the entrance to the Pyramids and the Sphinx are. A most torturous hour ensues where we are set upon by every neer-do-well and hustler ever to draw an Egyptian breath. They are an obnoxiously demanding bunch, and no amount of abuse will drive them away. When we eventually fall for a particularly complex scam involving three separate characters and routines, we begrudgingly offer some Egyptian money as a tip. The creep throws an absolute tantrum and demands foreign currency, preferably either American dollars or Euros!

Eventually we head back to the hotel. We have seen the two closest pyramids and the BACK of the Sphinx’s head but aren’t worried because we are scheduled to go to the ‘Son et Lumiere’ lightshow that evening when we will see the whole shebang with a guide.

We nap and then get ready for the light show. We are to meet in the foyer. I go down a bit later than AP and Austin, who are waiting at the bar. They have just been told that the light show has been cancelled for that evening and that all other excursions in Cairo may ‘be in doubt’ before we leave for Luxor in 3 days time.

That night we watch CNN like everyone else in the world and during the night sporadic gunfire can be heard in the streets around the hotel. Early the next morning Achmed informs us by phone that all activities in Cairo have definitely been cancelled and that we are not to leave the hotel under any circumstances.

DATELINE CAIRO - Saturday 29th.

A day by the pool. There is an ever-building deafening din from the streets around the hotel, constant sirens, horns honking, yelling and occasionally the unmistakable heavy sound of tanks rumbling by.

We are due to attend a cocktail party at 6pm for the group of us who are about to travel by boat up the Nile. When we leave the room we notice that there are only minimal lights on around the grounds. This doesn’t make any sense to me as I figure that people sneaking in to loot or kidnap would surely appreciate a dimly lit area! Reaching the courtyard and driveway at the entrance to the main building we see that it is in total darkness.

This is probably the only vaguely humorous moment during the whole affair as there are a number of complex groups of dark ruby coloured marble stairs leading up to the hotel entrance and which, in the darkness people are obviously either tripping up or down over. Attendants materialise out of the darkness (scary enough!) and attempt to help you negotiate the polished stone maze up to the front doors.

As we are being lead inside we notice, to our severe consternation, the tanks lined up along our front gates and beyond. There are soldiers everywhere. The foyer and out to these gates are thick with armed hotel security guards.

Inside it’s as though NOTHING outside exists. Chandeliers gleam brightly and the foyer and all the restaurants and bars are lit up like Christmas trees (a normal state of affairs incidentally, although Christmas trees might be an inappropriate analogy given that 80 percent of Egyptians are Muslim).

Only two others attend the cocktail party, a Swiss couple, Lina and Rudy, who are very nice and more than a little apprehensive (like us). Rudy is recovering from a spectacular fall after walking off the edge of a porch in the darkness outside and dropping to the pavement several feet below. Miraculously, only a sore shoulder results. The other 13, all Americans don’t show. Most of them have not come to Egypt at all. The US government is stopping tourists from leaving America. Incidentally, we meet an Australian couple from Adelaide on the last day who have flown all the way from Australia, gone to a restaurant that night and the next day await evacuation with us…and they are going straight back to Adelaide! An expensive meal.

Anyway, we have a moderately jolly evening despite the belly dancer having been cancelled because she can’t get into work. Mercifully the same applies to the house band and obviously by the standard of the meal, several of the chefs have had the same problem. Back to our room and a sleepless night (at least for me) as the gunfire and crowd noise ratchets up several notches.

DATELINE CAIRO - Sunday 30th.

During the morning we venture as close to the front gates as we dare. We have been told that, under no circumstances are we to take pictures of the army or security. As we sit there (and sneak off a few pics using the long lens), we see soldiers constantly marching prisoners past our hotel gates holding handguns to their heads. We are told there are trucks parked just a little further up the street in which there are dozens of prisoners, some of whom have been there all night. These trucks obviously have no rest room facilitates so…

Near us is an Australian couple who live in Tel Aviv and who just came to Cairo ‘for the weekend’. Obviously don’t own a TV set. They have managed to get on a plane back to Israel. Planes are still leaving sporadically but most flights have been cancelled. Delta and several other major airlines are no longer flying here at all. Countries around the world are beginning to arrange for planes to come in and fly their citizens out. The Australian one won’t get here until possibly Thursday.

Then suddenly we are all told to pack immediately and assemble in the foyer. We are being moved to another hotel near the airport. There is good reason for concern about this. The streets around us have been looted and burned. Gunfire and killing goes on constantly. The street running along the side of the hotel where the pool is situated was last night burned and ransacked because it contained many bars and strip joints. The Fundamentalist Muslims torched them.

Finally we are herded into a relatively small bus with our luggage. We head out the gates, through soldiers, tanks and insurgents. For the first time we see the trucks containing the prisoners. There are many of them! The bus makes its way to the ring road. We figure that, once we make it on there we will be travelling away from the action and certainly away from the main square where there are now many thousands of people gathered and who now aren’t behaving anywhere near like ‘peaceful protestors’.

We see the ring road in front of us then, to our great concern, we pass under it and head straight towards the centre of town! No explanation proffered (although we assume the ring road is jammed). Almost immediately we are running the gauntlet through suburbs guarded by citizen militia. Since the second day of the uprising, the police have disappeared. Not one policeman or vehicle is seen anywhere in Cairo.

We are told it is actually the police who are doing much of the looting. Additionally they have opened many jails and released thousands of prisoners into the crowd. (There is a large jail near our hotel). So ordinary citizens, fearful of looting and random violence, have armed themselves with sticks, knives, swords and even guns to protect their homes and families. Every vehicle, including ours, is stopped and questioned. We make it over the river eventually and, at about the time the stents in my heart are popping out of my arteries with anxiety, we pull into the Fairmont hotel near the airport.

What a place! Absolutely massive. And over 1000 refugees like us are marshalled there in the hope of getting planes out to anywhere they can. Once more tanks and soldiers everywhere, including those strolling through the foyer waving automatic weapons about. We are immediately taken to a meeting room where the heads of Abercrombie and Kent, our tour company, address us. They offer us two plans: (1) We wait until the next day until we know if any planes are ever going to actually resume service (at this point virtually no-one is flying)…or (2) they will charter a private plane to take us to Amman, Jordan. There we will have to make our own way home. Good grief! There is another meeting scheduled for 9pm where we will all tell them what we want to do. By now there are over 40 people in our evacuation group.

We have dinner and retire to our room. Considering our situation it has to be said we are prisoners in luxurious surroundings. The hotel is very nice. At 9pm we are back in the meeting room. There are lots of agitated Americans! They are all demanding that we be flown to a destination in Continental Europe, rather than another Arabian country. Fair point. However, on reflection, the tour company would have paid an absolute fortune to hire the plane (an Airbus A321) and travelling to the Continent would have been extraordinary with airport fees and taxes in places like Naples or Athens.

Eventually, when no-one calms down, the tour company simply says “anyone who wants to get out with us, be ready and in the foyer at 10 in the morning”. I suffer another relatively sleepless night.

DATELINE AMMAN – Monday 31st.

Into a bus at considerably later than 10am, we eventually make it to a small airport designated for private jets and charter planes. There are several thousand evacuees waiting outside the airport. Fortunately our tour operators have us going in a secret door (genuine hostility in the queues as we walk past them!) but everything from then on involves huge delays. Eventually, some 8 hours after we leave the Fairmont, we lift off (in a Nile Air aircraft!!!) and away from Cairo. The cheering and whistling in the plane is huge!

We land an hour later in Amman convinced we are on safe ground. Into a bus we are taken to the Four Seasons Hotel in the centre of the city. How different a place. The buildings are (by third world standards) clean and neat, the cars much newer and whole, the traffic is orderly and calm…and the people seem nice, friendly and happy. We are told that we can take a plane early in the morning the day after next. Feeling completely relaxed, we actually book for a tour the next morning to see the ruins of a large Roman city in the north of the country at Jerash. We are finally going to see something tourist after all. Admittedly not in our original country of destination, but at least in the Arab sub-continent.


DATELINE AMMAN – Tuesday 1st.

A lovely dinner and nice sleep later, we are picked up by our charming guide and humorous driver (try and get that combination anywhere!!) and whisked northwards. A stunning day filled with archaeological delights, a plethora of columns, amphitheatres and even a full size chariot racetrack.

During the course of this day (and unknown to us), the Jordanian people have demonstrated and, as a result the King has sacked the entire government. We are once again in a politically torn country and on the verge of being trapped.

Of course this doesn’t happen because the Jordanian King is loved and respected and he simply tells them he will fix everything.

DATELINE AMMAN – Wednesday 2nd.

After arising at 4am, (I admit to getting up a few times and looking out the window for evidence of tanks and soldiers) we are finally on a Royal Jordanian plane, along with many other evacuees and eventually touch down in Paris at lunchtime.

We immediately head to our favourite local restaurant and eat and drink everything on the menu.

Vive la France!




]]> Fri, 13 May 2011 21:45:00 GMT 71586565A5E4A4E54E455014CACB990F http://briancadd.com/theblog.cfm?feature=2402578&postid=967547 Brian was so glad to arrive back just in time to be playing for the Roland Australia 35th Anniversary in Sydney on April 29th . What a great night - lead by MD Brendan Callinan. Roland also provided Brian with his beloved RD700 at home in Paris - merci bien !


Roland also provided Brian with his beloved RD700 at home in Paris - merci bien !



]]> Fri, 13 May 2011 21:30:00 GMT F99A376429A606ABCE48F022AA597899