Getting around Cairo can sometimes be tricky. Yomna tells us about taking buses in the bustling metropolis. Listen and learn some useful Egyptian Arabic words.
In Cairo, you can find all colors of buses going around…
il2utubisāt الأتوبيسات buses are the most common mean of wasīlit muwaSlāt وسيلة مواصلات transportation in Cairo; it’s mutīHa متاحة available, raxīSa رخيصة cheap, and bitrūH kulle Hitta بتروح كل حته it goes everywhere.
Say, you finished your visit to il2ahramāt الأهرامات the Pyramids, and you wanna go wisT ilbalad وسط البلد downtown. You’ll stand by a muHaTTit utubīs محطة اتوبيس bus stop and many buses will arrive.
Unfortunately, the label on the bus is written in Arabic, so if you are not yet fluent in reading, you’ll have to ask the driver if this one is going downtown.
But if you can read Arabic numbers, he’ll tell you xad utubīs tus3umiyya خد أتوبيس تسعمية to take bus no. 900.
Egyptian people like to help, so maybe that driver will not leave you standing there but he’ll ask you to jump in, and he‘ll drive you to midān ilgīza ميدان الجيزه Giza square and tell you which bus to take from there.
If you arrive at a main maw2if utubīs موقف اتوبيس bus station, you’ll find lots of buses there. You can find the drivers and supervisors sitting in a kiosk somewhere in the station. They can easily tell you which bus to take to reach your destination.
The advantage of taking a bus from the bus station is having a seat. Then you’ll buy a ticket and start your ride.
si3r ittazkara سعر التذكرة ticket fees average min gineeh li-2arba3 ginēh من جنيه لأربع جنيه between 1 and 4 pounds all the way.
There are green, blue, red, and orange buses. Also there are medium and big buses. All these differences doesn’t indicate anything. At the end it’s all doing the same job.
If you wanna go from town to town, let’s say from Cairo to Alexandria, you should go to another kind of buses, which is the golden or black ones. These are utubisāt siyāHa أتوبيسات سياحة traveling buses, and the tickets should be reserved earlier through the company office. Go Bus Egypt and Super Jet on Facebook
The traveling buses have three main bus stations: midān ilgīza ميدان الجيزة Giza square, aHmad Hilmi أحمد حلمي Ahmad Helmy and ilmāZa ألماظه Almaza.
Buses are the easiest mean of transportation in Cairo, but take care, it’s zaHma زحمة crowded most of the time, so my advice to you is, to take it from the station, get seated and enjoy your way.
