Time Change? What Time Change?

Robyn and I are tired of taking buses – in the past 7 months we’ve been on over 100 of them.

We’re also tired of taking planes, ferries, vans, motorcycles and tuk tuks, as well as walking. So that leaves us with only two options to get to Alexandria…

Train or camel.

And since camels stink, train it is!!!

Now given our previous history with taking the train – see blog entry “Maybe It’s Me” – we’ve made sure we know all of our options before making a decision… yesterday we went to Cairo’s Ramses Station and got the daily schedule for going to Alexandria. They leave almost every hour which means we can have a relaxing morning and, just in case we should miss one train, we can easily catch another.

So we wake up around 8:00am, enjoy a nice breakfast, have a hot shower and head on our way. It’s only a ten-minute walk to Ramses Station – no taxis for us this time, thank you very much – so we get there around 9:15am. We’re hoping to catch the 10:00am train so we can arrive in Alexandria by 12:30pm.

But according to the ticket lady, the tickets for the 10:00am train are all “gone”.

Now this is a bit perplexing because we were told at the information counter that the trains never completely sell out unless it’s a holiday weekend. So we try and re-clarify – “are you sure there’s no tickets left for the 10 o’clock?”

To which she says “the train is gone”.

Hmmm…

Well, no worries – we still have a couple of options available to us.

We can either take the 11:00am “slow train” which will get us in Alexandria at 2:00pm or we can take the 12:00pm “fast train” which will get us there at 2:30pm. And since we’d rather kill time in comfortable train seats versus uncomfortable park benches, we opt for the “slow train”.

Of course now we have to hang out in a hot and dusty train station for 1 ½ hours, but that’s what you get for not booking ahead.

We grab our bags, find a place to sit outside and we wait.

And we wait.

And we wait.

It’s now 10:00am and time is not flying by. I’m bored so I decide to go for a walk.

And as I get up, I notice something…

The big clock in front of the train station says its 11:00am.

That’s odd.

I re-check my watch and yup – it still says its 10:00am.

Now I’m not quite sure what to make of this, so I mention it to Robyn. She checks her watch and hers says its 10:00am too.

Okay – now we’re confused.

I decide to investigate further and walk towards a group of men standing outside the station. They look like the kind of guys who wear watches, so I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to assist me. After all, they’re well-dressed, they have wrists and on their wrists, I can see they’re wearing watches.

Of course, the first thing I do before approaching them is to take off my watch and put it in my pocket.

Why do I do this?

Because I’d rather look unprepared, than stupid.

Well, think about it… if some guy came up to you and asked for the time and you noticed he was wearing a watch, you’d probably think “what a moron – he can’t even read his own watch”.

But if some guy came up to you and asked for the time and he WASN’T wearing a watch, the worst thing you’d probably think is “jeez buddy – buy a watch”.

So I go up to them and say “excuse me – do you have the time?”

Then I make the universal “what-time-is-it-point-at-my-wrist” sign to drive the point home.

They look at their watches and then say “it’s 11:00am”… but not in unison, ‘cuz that would be weird.

11:00am?

Oh shit.

I politely thank them and then I quickly walk over to Robyn and calmly say…

“It’s 11:00am. It’s happened again. Grab your bags. We’ve got to go”.

Like a pair of ninja-gazelle-hybrids, we throw our bags on and bolt into the station.

Yes everyone is staring at us, but more importantly everyone is getting out of our way.

We run through the boarding gates and head straight to Track 3, which is where our train is supposed to be. I think the security guard who’s supposed to be watching the gate – but isn’t – is chasing us and yelling for us to stop, but we don’t care. We just run to our train and hop on board… and notice that it’s not so much a passenger train as it is a mail train.

I find the conductor – or at least I think it’s a conductor. I’m not really sure, but he’s wearing an official-looking hat which is good enough for me. He tells us we’re on the wrong train and our train has moved to Track 2.

So we run through the train, out the other side and over to Track 2.

We can’t find an open door to go in, but the engineer sees us and waves us around to the other side of the train. He’s laughing and ironically, giving us the universal “you’re-late-point-at-his-wrist ” sign to drive the point home.

We hop on the train and this time it looks like a passenger train.

Once again, I find a conductor – or at least I think it’s a conductor. I’m not really sure – he’s not wearing a hat, but he is wearing a sweater-vest with a matching tie, which is good enough for me. He directs us to our seats and no sooner are we sitting down then the train starts moving.

Robyn and I are relieved, but puzzled. Both our watches say it’s only 10:00am and yet everyone else’s seems to be an hour ahead.

What the f***?!?!

We start thinking backwards – the last time we changed our watches was when we crossed back to Egypt from Jordan.

We left Aqaba, Jordan at 11:00am Jordanian time.

We arrived in Nuweiba, Egypt at 3:30pm Jordanian time, but since Egypt is 1 hour behind, we changed our watches to 2:30pm Egyptian time. And we know this was the correct time because we were able to catch the 3:00pm bus to Cairo.

So what the hell happened? Where did that hour go?

We’re now both dumb-founded.

I mean we’re intelligent people. We’re both university graduates. Robyn’s an architect and none of her buildings have ever collapsed and I can do the really hard Sudoku’s without having to write numbers in the corners…

And yet we almost missed another mode of transportation because of time.

Robyn finally grabs our guidebook and starts looking up “time differences” and lo & behold, we figure it out.

You see in Egypt, they go through daylight savings time at midnight on the last Thursday of April.

Well, wouldn’t you know it? At the same time the clocks were changing, we were sitting on a bus, oblivious to it all.

This explains what the ticket lady meant when she said the 10:00am train was “gone”.

Of course, this also means that for the last day & a half, Robyn and I have been operating an hour behind everyone else without even realizing it...

And I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to feel about this.