Cairo: the traffic.

Traffic in Cairo is at once insane and a thing of beauty [and, as Mr. Fox would say, a clustercuss]. Traffic lanes a fluid concept and aren't even marked in most places - and where they are marked, no one pays much attention to them, anyway. There are almost no traffic signals or crosswalks - I've seen a few traffic lights downtown, but there are none in my area. The bigger roads, about five "lanes" in each direction, have a big divider between the two sides, so to make a left, you have to go past the street you want to go down, make a U-turn [they have a designated break in the divider for this every once in a while], and then turn right. The whole thing really is a kind of organized chaos - it's just incredible that it actually works without accidents every few minutes. You really have to see it to believe it.

Several articles I've read have compared crossing the street in Cairo to a game of Frogger - and it's true. Sometimes you can time it just right so you can walk across the whole road in one go, but often you get a couple lanes in and then have to stand around in the street waiting for another break in traffic to go the rest of the way. If you're feeling really confident that day, you can charge ahead and assume that the cars will stop or go around you - the former, however, rarely happens, and when it's the latter, it's only by about an inch.

Honking is kind of a "boy who cried wolf" thing here. Everyone honks so much and for so many reasons that it doesn't even really mean anything anymore. Taxis honk at pedestrians to let them know they're available; all cars honk at other cars to say either "comin' through, get out of the way!" or "why didn't you get out of the way?!?"; and cars driven by men honk at women walking in the street to as a way of saying "what up, baby." Since most cars don't use any lights at nighttime, flashing the headlights is used for the same reasons then - although not instead of honking, but rather as a supplement.

And everyone usually does walk in the street. The sidewalks here are so full of ups and downs and holes and cafés and stores extending to the very edge that they're difficult to navigate [the curbs are really high, too...this city is not handicapped-accessible] - most people just walk on the side of the street, between the parked cars and the crazy cars rushing by a couple inches away.

Speaking of parking, a lot of people double park - but then they leave their cars in neutral so people who need to get in or out of spaces they're in front of can just push them out of the way.

One guy told me that a friend of his - who had been driving in Egypt for years - married a British woman, and when they moved to London, his friend had difficulties driving with rules.