Don't plunge right into the middle, will you?

Just remembered one of my funnier experiences in Cairo, which is one of those cities that has almost too much of everything, including sights, entertainment and traffic chaos.

What it also has is a surprisingly well operating public transport system, which now includes taxis, metered and bargaining, buses that follow regular routes only that it is tricky to know what they are unless you're living there and the-easiest-to-use-of-all: the metro.

It is about this that this entry is. Or in particular about my entry into it. Sometime late at night I was coming back to my hotel after having enjoyed a shisha in one of the many great cafes and bars that offer it throughout the city. I had used the metro several times already so I confidently jumped into one of the middle cars, only to be screamed at by all of the women that sat and stood packed into it. I stumbled back onto the platform, swaying a little and wondering what had just happened till the train rattled of.

Just at that moment an Egyptian man, who had just missed the train running down to the platform walked up to me and set things straight. The middle cars (that is to say 4 and 5) in the Cairo metro are reserved for women (after 21:00 it's actually only number 5), so all the women who want to be on their own will congregate there, which would sort of explain why they would object to a 30 year old Dutch guy with red hair bumbling in, wouldn't it?

Jump right in - but not in the middle on the Cairo Travel Guide.