My feelings of dissatisfaction with living in Cairo got a bit more objective when I wrote down comparisons and differences of the 2 cities..
I felt I had to stop idealizing Izmir/Urla/Turkey and give our situation in Egypt a chance.
Interesting enough I found many similarities both in advantages as disadvantages.
Here we go:
What Cairo/Egypt and Izmir/Turkey have in common:
- Chaotic busy traffic
- Hot weather from May onwards
- Very few public parks or play areas for children
- Very few public swimming pools
- Ugly high rise, buildings, unfinished buildings, with no paint
- Arthur is home early (between 5 and 6)
- Beach resorts within travel distance, say 1,5 hours
- Western style shops and malls available
- Medical services good, cheap and widely available
- Low criminiality, high social control, quiet safe
- No cities to bike around
The advantages of living in Cairo above Izmir
- It is easier to get direct international flights
- No worries about workers around our house in Urla/our financial situation
- Staff is much cheaper, in Turkey 30 euro’s p day, here 100 euro’s a month
- We can save money again!
- The nursery for Femke is excellent
- I have all the time in the world, no obligations or projects
- As it is a world city many good international restaurants are available
- The international community is much bigger and better organized
- The area where we live is greener and therefor much cooler than in Urla
Now the advantages of living in Izmir THUS THE THINGS I MISS!!
- Many nice plces to have breakfast, we haven’t found them yet in Cairo
- Charming villages and beautiful nature not far from Izmir
- Izmir is a better walkable city
- Alsancak and Forum Bornova nice outside shopping
- Beautiful long boulevard
- No language problems
So what to do?
Make a list of all international restaurants we would like to visit
Make a list of top 50 things we want to see in Egypt and Cairo the coming year
Explore our neighbourhood Maadi to the fullest
Accept the fact that we need to take the car or metro for any place outside our Neighboorhood
Learn Arabic as soon as possible!
