I visited my sister in Egypt in May 2012, just before Mohamed Morsi was elected President after over a year of unrest following the January 25 Revolution of 2011. My brother-in-law had a Fulbright fellowship to teach at the University of Alexandria for a year, and I visited at the end of their year there.

It was a very good time to visit Egypt. There were no crowds anywhere, and prices were cheap. There were a few people killed during a disturbance in Cairo while we were there, but we saw no sign of it.

I had lived in Berlin in 1972-73, during the days of the Baader-Meinhof Group, so maybe I don't notice terrorism as much as some people do. We'd get bombed and then have a couple of weeks of heightened security, and then all was forgotten until the next bombing.

But for the most part, life goes on. Most of the time, terrorism has very little effect compared to normal crime. Statistics say American travelers are far safer in most places during this age of terrorism, than they are in their own neighborhoods in heavily-armed America.

-Joe-