Apartment hunt is fun!

…and challenging.

Our apartment hunt began couple of weeks ago when we decided to move out from our current place because the area is spooky and the place is annoyingly creepy.

Like common for naïve foreigners, what is the first thing on your mind when you think about getting information. Of course – internet! Sarah even found a website with nice and affordable offers. After we saw those offers were uploaded 1-2 years ago we still didn’t loose hope. An email (no response of course) and a phone call later we were told that what we are looking for doesn’t exist in Cairo. As common for not so naïve foreigners we of course knew they were bullshitting. And so we decided to change the approach.

What makes you the most powerful person in Egypt? It’s not about who you are but who you know.

To succeed you need to take Good Luck (for Muslims known as Allah) and an Egyptian male (communication purposes) with you, go in the area you would like to live and approach boebs (the “doorkeepers”) if they know any apartments or brokers who know apartments for rent. Suddenly apartments appear and you are exposed to high variety of different places in different conditions. As our goal was to improve our living standard we were quite picky. We were shown several places which weren’t good and one really nice and affordable one. Unfortunately the religious owner didn’t want to rent it for females because females are the reason why men have naughty thoughts sometimes. And it’s unacceptable if females have visitors from the opposite sex.

Current situation is that after 3 evenings of continuous hunt we still don’t have a place and we need to move out today.