Hurghada - Communication Problems

Sand Sculpture of Isis at Sand City

I’ve been busy working on my books over the last month or so, so have temporarily dropped my learning of Egyptian Arabic. Anyway, my last trip into Hurghada reminded me that I do need to continue learning Arabic and, actually, I need to pluck up the courage to practice it a bit.

I went into town to get my hair cut – it was in a beauty salon run by a German woman, so for once I wasn’t sitting wondering what was going to happen and I could explain (in English) what I wanted done in some detail. There was a lot of chat in the background in German, so it almost felt like a kind of “home”.

But afterwards, I was out in the big wide world of Hurghada. The next stop was to EgyptAir to enquire about flights to New Zealand. I was a bit apprehensive as my request was a bit complicated – I wanted to know which routes were possible to get to New Zealand, whether I could have stopovers, and whether I could pay for it all in airmiles or whether only certain flights were available for me to use my airmiles. Anything less than straightforward is quite difficult over here, but people had told me that the staff spoke good English at EgyptAir.

The EgyptAir office was fairly busy, so I had to wait to be served, which wasn’t a problem. But you know things aren’t going to go well when you start off saying “I need to go to New Zealand...” and the person replies that they have never heard of New Zealand. I guess it’s not exactly a common destination for Egyptians.

I explained that it was near Australia and finally spelled out Auckland and Christchurch for him to locate on the computer. He then said I could fly Emirates, which I pointed out wasn’t Star Alliance and I needed a Star Alliance flight. Following this, he suggested another route, but said that there weren’t any partner airlines going to New Zealand. I was probably hugely irritating to him, as I informed him that I knew there were routes using Star Alliance members and listed one. He looked it up and I asked for the times of the planes (which I hadn’t found online).

Anyway, after all that faffing about, it ended up that I couldn’t book using my airmiles from the Swiss partner airline in the EgyptAir office; I would have to book the flight via the Swss office. That was a bit annoying! I guess I was probably a bit of an irritating know-it-all customer in my frustration and the conversation ended him with asking me if I needed anything else because he had a lot of customers waiting. I decided to take the hint and left, but without a lot more information than when I entered, really.

Wishing to make the most of my time, I did some shopping and thought I would go into a cafe while I waited for Esmat to come with the taxi. I tried ordering a chocolate milk shake (I’m a child at heart), but the waiter confused it for “milk tea”. This was understandable, since tea is shay in Arabic, so he’d obviously heard “milk shay”.

Anyway, at least the misunderstanding was caught before the drink arrived. I established that I wanted a chocolate milk shake and then he asked which flavour I wanted. I requested chocolate and then he informed me that they had only vanilla and chocolate. On saying chocolate for the fourth time, he understood me.

I’m not saying this to mock the guy, as I am aware that I should be speaking their language and not vice versa, but it’s an illustration of how difficult it can be sometimes when you aren’t making the effort to speak the language yourself.

I asked for the bill straight away, since I didn’t want Esmat to have to wait for me when he arrived. I made a little sign of writing to help explain what I wanted. I even said “Faktura” which is bill in Arabic. The waiter asked me if I wanted paper. I was a bit puzzled by this, but assumed he was asking if I wanted a written receipt or just to pay directly to him. I thought I may as well go for a written receipt to save any misunderstandings about what I owed.

But my assumption was wrong. He’d understood me as requesting a sheet of paper to write on, so he came up to me with a blank sheet of A4.

In the end, I did pay, and actually it was a reasonable price. Meanwhile, Esmat had phoned me to ask me where I was. It turned out that he’d understood me as saying I was in Sheraton Road rather than in El Kawser. Maybe I was mumbling the whole day or something?

Finally, I arrived back home, but it reminded me that every trip into Hurghada is a bit of an effort.