For Everyday Heroes
Travel Sketches from Kairo

Munich comic artist Barbara Yelin processed her experiences from Cairo in transition at the end of 2011. Yelin was there for several months to conduct a workshop for comic artists and recorded brief vignettes from her everyday life there in a travel diary. In addition to all sorts of amusing everyday stories about defective washing machines and sometimes more, sometimes less racing car rides, readers would have noted one thing in particular: hope for change, for freedom and a better world.

Extracts from "Travel Sketches from Kairo":

Kairo | © Barbara Yelin

About the artist Barbara Yelin:

She has drawn for the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Tagesspiegel, publishes books and conducts workshops all over the world. Barbara Yelin is one of the best German-language comic artists.

Travelpedia: Kairo

© Barbara Yelin (Detail)
Gezira is Cairo's largest Nile island. It is located in the city center and is separated into two districts by the Street of July 26: Ez-Zamalek in the north and El-Gezira in the south. The river island is one of the trendiest places in the city. It is particularly nice to stroll along the banks of the Nile and watch the goings-on on the water.
© Barbara Yelin (Detail)
The largest population of Arabic-speaking Christians in absolute numbers lives in Egypt. Most of them, up to eleven million Egyptian Christians, are Copts. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East. The Copts do not describe themselves as Arabs, but rather as Arab or Arabic-speaking Christians.
© Barbara Yelin (Detail)
Tahrir Square (Liberation Square) is an important downtown square in Cairo. During the Arab Spring of 2011, the square became a symbol of the Egyptian Revolution as a rally for and against the then President Hosni Mubarak.

Jens Wiesner about "travel sketches from Kairo"

Her pencil rushes over the paper as fast as the Egyptian taxi drivers on their way to Tahrir, sometimes with more force, sometime gently, so that the often turbulent and noisy everyday life of Cairo literally jumps at the reader from the pages."

Review

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More about Graphic Travelogues

About the artists

Learn more about our well-known artists, including Barbara Yelin, Reinhard Kleist and Sarnath Banerjee. All with proven comic expertise and sometimes with more, sometimes with less travel experience in the respective country.

About Graphic Travelogues

Graphic Travelogues presents travel experiences by comic artists from different countries, illuminates and identifies recurring topics. From sketches to graphic novels, graphic diaries and travel drawings, we collect treasures here and question concepts and motivations, techniques and experiences.

For Everyday Heroes Travel Sketches from Kairo