Luxor - Encounters 2025

The Nile cruise ships are lined up like a chain. Sometimes in rows of two. The tireless hum of their diesel generators fills the air with exhaust fumes that reach the rooms of the nearby Winter Palace Hotel. Alternative propulsion systems for these floating hotels would be a blessing for everyone. How must the passengers on board feel as they walk in the footsteps of the pharaohs towards Aswan and Cairo?

Imposing Nile ships on the East Bank of Luxor

The air was probably much better back then. But the pharaohs also had no choice but to fight bloody battles in the desert dust in order to a) expand their empire and b) defend themselves against external attacks.

Speaking of blood. My journey is not without blood. The caretaker shows me his shed in front of the gate of the house. As a result of my late arrival, it is already dark. An unlit step leads down to the entrance gate. He rips the gate open with a flourish. At the same time, I stumble down the step, with my head directly against the iron door that was coming towards me. Blood is running down my forehead from the laceration. Luckily, the wound does not need stitches. Well, that starts off well.

The Pillars of the Earth of the Luxor Temple on the eastern Nile bank.

Everything in Flow

The riverside promenade on the East Bank, where the Luxor and Karnak temples have been testament to a high culture for thousands of years, has been significantly spruced up over the past 13 years. Now uniformed restaurants, cafes and bars made of concrete and glass attract customers willing to pay, as can be found all over the world.

Corniche in Luxor East.

The countless taxi drivers and horse-drawn carriages leave no stone unturned to engage me in conversation. But even more persistent are the boat owners and their tourist touts of felucas and motor junks, who want to take me to “Banana Island!” “Very cheap!” and with the “Best Price!” in order to “Make you happy!” This is what happens all the time on the Corniche, as the beach promenade is also called.

"I make you the best price!"

I book a trip through the old town of Luxor, into the hustle and bustle of the crowd. The image of the city changes suddenly and reveals the everyday life of the residents, including the hellish noise of the traffic. We make a short stop at a merchant who sells fresh horse feed. Shortly afterwards we continue towards the train station and into the old town with its countless shops.

And of course, things always happen as they must. I end up in a small spice shop by chance and buy two teas that I won't touch at home.

The tourist group notices very little of all this. One person marches ahead and holds up a flag to guide the herd. Just like in real life. We are always running after something, someone: an ideology, a religion or completely mundane things like power, career and money, the boss, true love... There is always someone marching ahead of us.

In a pack you are always safer. They are also largely shielded by their Egyptian tour guides. This is the finest hour of the souvenir shops. They promise the very best quality in handmade items.

But if you take a closer look, you will only see mass-produced goods on the overloaded shelves, one one-eyed Nefertiti next to the other, papyrus pictures that were actually made from cheaper banana leaves and glittering pyramids for the bookshelf.

Authenticity is always now

A floating restaurant awaits customers.

From the looks of things, business is booming. There is hammering everywhere, heavy trucks loaded with sand drive past. A new road to the airport has just been completed. The flaring up of the Middle East conflict, where this time Israel is bombing Gaza to rubble, comes at an inopportune time. The economic concept of tourism is fragile. The smallest spark ignites a wildfire and brings the boom to a standstill. Tourists simply cancel.

There's nothing handmade there.

Gardens and green spaces have to make way for a universal business plan that works worldwide. As on the eastern bank, a corniche, a beach promenade, is currently being built here on the West Bank. It is said that the Chinese are investing here on a large scale and financing the project. This explains the sharp increase in the number of Chinese tourists, who mostly come in groups, much to the delight of the restaurant owners.

2025

Where years ago true quiet zones were to be discovered in Luxor West that invited people to think and relax, urban planning uniformity is emerging. There are only 13 years between the two images. In my opinion, an opportunity was missed on the West Bank to create a green zone with cafes and restaurants that stands out clearly from the sterile East Bank.

2012

For the construction project, old restaurants on the Nile were removed, trees felled and green spaces concreted over. Visitors should be able to chat here in comfort, even with a walker if necessary. Chinese society is also getting older. Older Egyptians regret this and evoke earlier times, while younger people welcome it. Marriage is expensive. Educating your own children is even more expensive. In this respect, they want to do just as good business on the west side as on the other side of the Nile, over on the East Bank.

Pathological Understanding of Religions

I get talking to a taxi driver who is very critical of Israeli policy. Many people think the same way, including younger people, such as a group of female students from Cairo. The images of the countless civilian victims in the Gaza war are burned into people's collective memory.

Is this your heaven?

In their view, the West has double standards, because genocide is taking place in Gaza under Netanyahu. And not just since the inhumane massacre in Re'im by Hamas on October 7, 2023. I agree with them. But it is also true that Hamas and Hezbollah are doing little to nothing to de-escalate the situation and are using their own population as human shields.

3 Musketeers

In general, as a solo traveller, you quickly get into conversation with the Egyptian population. Three teenagers sit down at a neighboring table and watch me smoke shisha with interest, chatting and having fun. Presumably about me.

The Corniche at the Luxor Museum.

“Hey, boss!” one of them calls out to me benevolently and points to his pack of cigarettes. I decline with thanks and point to my shisha. He introduces himself to me as Achmed, he is 20 years old and works as a security guard in a hotel in Hurghada. The other is Mohammed, 17 years old and wants to become a professional footballer or at least a famous singer. And the third is called Ahmed, 18 years old and wants to move to his uncle in Düsseldorf to study medicine. We overcome the language barriers with the help of Google Translate.

Columns of the Karnak Temple.

Shortly afterwards, the waiter comes over to us, whom the three of them describe as completely crazy and totally funny. He is also addicted to sex. He asks me with the help of the translator whether I know a German woman who is willing to marry. Life here in Egypt is difficult. You have to pay 3 million Egyptian pounds to get married. I tell him that he has to find the woman on his own. “No woman, no cry!” The other three laugh loudly.

Achmed shows me his photos from the fitness center. A well-trained body, not an ounce of fat. Mohammed counters with his videos of football training, in which he juggles the ball acrobatically. Another video shows him performing as a singer, here, somewhere in Luxor. And Ahmed tells me about his dreams of earning a lot of money as a doctor. He raves about driving a big BMW one day.

At this age, life is still infinite and limitless.

Egyptian coffee ride

The taxi driver takes me to the Egyptian art shop. It is not the same shop as last week. An employee tells me that this branch is closed, to which I reply that he should not tell me stories. We drive with him in the back seat to the address, just a stone's throw away. The shop is indeed closed.

So I go back to the first shop, which turns out to be the main shop. I buy two pictures with a generous discount. To be on the safe side, the employee calls the owner, who gives me a third, smaller picture for free, plus two cartouches of mine inscribed in hieroglyphs. It reminds me a little of the coffee trips the pensioners took, which we used to smile at so pityingly as young people. No matter.

Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel: In Search of Agatha Christie

The entrance to the Winter Palace Hotel leads over the red carpet.

The Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel lives from its grandiose past, when society was divided into static classes. The nobility, the rich and beautiful resided here, or at least important personalities such as the writer Agatha Christie. You can imagine society taking 4 o'clock tea in the large salon. Today, the hotel management must open the doors to less flamboyant people.

The hotel's Victorian Lounge.

The predominantly old furniture in the dining room still exudes an antique feel. In this respect, the image of the guests who somehow came into their own money, who nibble on their breakfast in an almost equally antiquated manner, fits. At the next table sits an elderly lady with long bleached hair that generations of plastic surgeons have worked on. Opposite her is probably her slightly out-of-shape husband, with hands like shovels. And I am somehow in between, no less dusty. Cheers.

"Please dress appropriately."

The instrumental sounds from Funky are out of place here, they don't suit the old furniture or the mature to over-mature guests. And the waiters also lack their subtle restraint at this breakfast buffet. One of them slams the cappuccino down on me in a stressed manner, spoon and handle upside down, and rushes to the next table while his colleague clears the other table with a clatter. Everything seems fake to me. But perhaps they also suffer from a lack of skilled workers here.

The huge park impresses with fountains and sculptures.

A bar like something out of an English crime novel. The murderer is caught here in true style.

The Next Generation

The enterprising Ahmed and his family are carving out some seating space for their restaurant in a vegetable garden on the Luxor West bank. To do this, he is laying a layer of sand on the ground, from which the electric cables for the lamps are already sticking out. Everything is fenced in neatly. He waves to me, calls out in German: "How are you?" and invites me for tea.

These days are also numbered.

He doesn't do this completely unselfishly, asks if I can take a quick look at his menu and wants to know which starters make sense in my opinion. I advise him to offer fewer, but instead freshly prepared and authentic dishes. Nobody needs Chicken McNuggets. In my opinion, authenticity is the order of the day. His restaurant impresses with its location, here on the Nile, surrounded by gardens and trees.

Greedy Hands

The ferry takes you cheaply from Luxor East to Luxor West.

The public ferry runs between Luxor West and Luxor East. The crossing costs Egyptians 5 EGP (Egyptian pounds), maybe less. Tourists pay 10 to 30 pounds, depending on who is sitting there. There are two employees at the entrance to the ferry who you hand over the money to. There is no ticket for this.

A little break until arrival.

I give him 15 EGP. The man tells me with feigned indignation that that is too little, especially since he had previously made it clear to me that the one-way crossing costs 30 EGP. That's why you shouldn't even ask beforehand, but rather ask the employees of the surrounding restaurants about the realistic tourist price. I did that and decided on 15 EGP, just under 30 cents. After I handed him the money, I just kept walking stoically, regardless of his loud protests. He lets me go.

The Pillars of the Earth

What was, what is, what remains?

At the end of my trip I'm sore in two ways, physically and mentally. The nights here are quite cold in January. In the end I've had enough of Luxor, enough of the stench of the ships, cars and motorbikes, enough of the Egyptians and their fairy tales with which they take money out of tourists' pockets, enough of us tourists who do more harm than good, enough of the touts and their ambiguous offers, enough of the religion that shouts its message all day long.

Even the artfully worked stones are just stones, remnants of a grandiose culture that still feeds today's Egypt and its inhabitants through the flow of tourists. I will not return and will leave the amazement to future generations.

Life is

a long, wide river.

Only a few

privileged people sit at the sources

to what was.

So many were before us.

The crowd drifts along,

In the great stream of ignorance.

Always searching

for the sea,

that takes in everything and everyone.

Into forgetting.