TUNISIAN SOJURN

We are in El Kef, Tunisia, about halfway through our Tunisian sojouorn of two weeks. We’ve spent the last two nights here, and are about to take off to our next destination, Tozeur. It’s about a fiv e or six hour drive from here, the longest drive we’ll have on our trip. We are not driving ourselves, have a driver for the whole duration of the trip, except for the first three days in Tunis. Monsen is staying with us, at the same guest house, here, and I am assuming at the other stops along the way as well. (except perhaps for the night we go by camel to a desert location and camp out!) WE are travelling by ourselves, not with a group. But the arrangements have been made by a Tunisian organization called Wildyness. This is similar to the type of arrangements we made last year in Vietnam. There, we had a different driver and guide at each stop, with one handing us over to the next, or putting us on a flight or train to be picked up on the other end. That worked quite well, as it seems to be doing here as well. Wildyness is a young company run by a Tunisian couple who had travelled widely until deciding to promote tourism in their own country. I had looked into several companies and chose them just because they are Tunisia based, and have personal relationships with the guides and guest houses with whom they work. In Vietnam we worked with a London based company who works with agents in each place to which they organize travel. There are many companies that do this type of customized trip to many different countries. Wildyness works only in Tunisia, and things seem to be working quite well so far, with a few quirks. More about that later. Our trip started out rather inauspiciouly. On the morning of the day we were supposed to leave Boston at 5pm, we received an email from Air France saying that our flight from Paris to Tunis had been cancelled. Whaaa? Turns out that the French air controllers were planning to strike, and over half the flights from Paris had been cancelled. We were able to reschedule to a later flight, with a five hour layover in Paris, meaning instead of arriving early in the am we didn’t get get there until late at night, effectively cutting out the first day of our trip. ************************************* Later, now writing from Tozeur, two stops down the road from Tunis. We are staying at a delightful guest house. I could just relax here for the next three days. This morning we are doing just that. This afternoon at about 2:30 we will have a guide for a walking tour of Touzeur and a visit to a date farm. Dates are ubiquitous here. We had them awaiting us at our airbnb in Tunis, and they have been served as part of our breakfasts since. In Tunis, Jazmin, our host, told us to roll them first between our fingers to soften them and release the flavor. Not sure it really makes a difference, but it’s a pleasant custom that I hope I’ll continue at home. During our two nights in El Kef we visited first the impressive ruins at Dougga, andd the next day, backtracked a bit to also visit the site of Bulla Regia. I’d read about Bulla Regia having the best preserved mosaics still in situ in Tunisia. Most are in the Bardo, which we had visited in Tunis. And they are indeed impressive there. But there is something about seeing them still in their orginal site that can’t compare to seeing them removed to a museum, even as spectacular as those are. Forgive me for bouncing around and back and forth from place to place as I write, as I am always doing. I write off the cuff, pretty much unedited, always trying to catch up. I hope it makes sense to you, if you are reading this. So, back to Tunis. We stayed there at a wonderful airbnb, one of the most delightful we’ve ever stayed at. I found it after Wildyness realized that their first two recommended guest houses, and then the couple after that, had no space available. These are mostly family run places with only a few rooms, and since we had started planning these trips only three weeks before our departure, perhaps not surprising. They had all sounded charming, and we were temporarily frustrated, until I saw the airbnb listing. It’s an apartment in the medina, the old part of the city, with its winding cobblestone streets and passages, some, like ours, inaccessable by car. We had to walk a couple of blocks with our luggage, which wasn’t a problem and just added to the charm. Jazmin and family had totally renovated it, I believe it had been abandoned, There are many such buildings in the medina, and also in the newer parts of the city. When I admired the tiled interior walls, she said they had been there in the building, and they reused them. The most unusual feature was an elevator, installed in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, to take one up to the roof and deck with several couches. Jasmin said her father had constructed it. We went up there once, but Loring said it made him very nervous, and since he is an engineer I took him at his word. The place had two bedrooms, one of which became Loring’s walk-in closet, a lovely living room, and was decorated modernly traditional, if that makes sense. I highly recommend it if you happen to be going to Tunis and looking for someplace to stay. And Jasmin herself was very personable, even picked us up at the airport close to midnight, instead of the 9am time we were originally scheduled to arrive. (the air controllers’ strike, by the way, was cancelled before it happened, but our flight and many others had themselves been cancelled too late to reschedule.) In Tunis we spent one afternoon at the Bardo Museum, famed for its mosaics, and a must to visit. We found out that it had been closed for renovations and only recently reopened last September. I would have been really disappointed if we couldn’t visit. The museum had actually been attacked by terrorists in 2015, which I suppose would have been part, maybe all the cause of the renovations. On leaving the museum I had seen a mosaiced plaque in the entranceway with a list of names and countries. It looked like a plaque listing donors. It seemed peculiar for donors to have come from many different countries. I only realized later that they were the names of the people who had died in the attack, and the countries they had come from. I remember Poland and Japan, not sure of the other nationalities. There were 22 that had been killed From Tunis we took an afteroon’s trip to Carthage and Sidi bu Said. Carthage is a large area of ruins, with a complicated history that our guide told us in great detail. I was only able to absorb a small part of it, because of the detail, not because of his English skills, which are quite good. There were four different civilizations that inhabited it after time. If I am remembering right, there were the Phoenicians, Bizantines, Carthaginians, and Romans. No, that’s not right, I think the Vandals were in there too. I know the Romans destroyed the Carthagians, and the Vandals obviously destroyed something! I may have to go back and research it some more. What is most amazing is how extensive these ruins are, and how they were entirely buried until rediscovered in the 19th century. And that there are large unexcavated areas, less than half has been unearthed because the land is privately owned. There are sections of various columns and fragments of buildings strewn around the ruins, and in the countryside as well. We then visited the city of Sidi bu Said, described as the scenic blue and white city. It seems like an upper class suburb of Tunis. It is scenic, on a hillside, but marred by the fact that it was seething with visitors, some foreign but at least half what seemed to be either Tunisians or other Arabs, the women mostly in hijabs. We had to elbow ourselves up the main route. It was certainly trendy, too much so for us. Our guide mentioned that the American Ambassador lived, there, and also pointed out the former house of a famous local fashion designer who had clothed people like Madonna. Apparently many celebrities came came to his funeral. I had wanted to meet Achraf, the founder of the travel organization who’d helped plan our trip. He met us at our apartment, which I’d wanted to show him for possible future reference. And then we went to a coffee house some blocks from the apartment that he hadn’t yet been to and wanted to check out. He’s in his thirties, just about Max’s age, and his sister, like Carolina, is a couple of years younger. He told us about his travels around the world (Iran being his favorite) and how he and his wife had decided to start a travel business in their own country. They are especially interested in supporting locals and also taking tourists to places a bit off the beaten path. In the medina, in general, we were surprised to find it almost untouristed. I had expected otherwise, seeing as it’s one of the major points of the capital, included in any day tour you would see. Where we walked were alternately quiet streets and ones with many locals and markets selling everything from oranges to toys to hookahs. And many little hole in the wall businesses, from tiny grocery stores to tailors. Our street, like many others, was very quiet, an impasse (dead end. ) Yasmin had given us a suggestion for a nearby place for breakfast, which we had some difficulty finding, lots of small passages that didn’t necessarily go where google told us to go. So we spent a half hour or more looking for a place which was actually quite nearby. Which was fine, since it gave us a purpose in exploring the medina. We eventually had to ask a shopkeeper where it was, which we never would have found ourselves. Inside it was at least three or four levels high, with tables at every level. The menu had breakfast combinations each with a name, and a list of items, only about half of which we could recognize. We ordered two different ones, and were stunned with the variety and quantity when they arrived, served on trays. There were salads, eggs, cheese, bread, jam, fruit, pastries, and more. Loring’s had a sandwich and mine had a pain au chocolate. Serving a large variety of items seems much a part of Tunisian meals. Here for breakfast this morning we had lemon juice (lemonade with mint) coffee, hardboiled eggs, bread, butter, cheese, two kinds of jam, marble pound cake, cookies, and I know I am not remembering everything. At supper one of our nights at the guest house in El Kef, we were first served with what I thought was the main course, until he later brought out huge plates of couscous with lamb. And, yesterday on our way here in Tozeur in the large town of Ghansa, Mosen, our driver, brought is to a restaurant called the Seventy Six, which seemed to be part of a chain. Again, it was four floors high, lots of steps, and we were of course brought to the top level. Not fun for my aging legs, which are protesting all the steps to each location and set of ruins. But worth it in every case. Here at the Seventy Six there was a large menu ranging from hamburgers and salads to “plats” a full meal with various components. Loring opted for a salad camembert and I ordered a banana-nutella-stawberry crepe. Sounded good, and it was. I asked it it came with whipped cream. It didn’t and so I ordered some, just a small amount. I was totally overwhelmed when it arrived. The amount of whipped cream was appropriately small. But the crepe! It was actually at least three crepes, all rolled around bananas and then sliced into little rolls similar to sushi! They were mounded up into a pyramid, drenched in chocolate ( not nutella but good quality chocolate) and then topped with stawberries, chopped pistachios and more bananas. And a small serving of whipped cream to the side. It was delicious but much more than I could eat. I tried, and ate much more than I should have and probably had no more than half. And then regretted it because my stomach didn’t feel great last night and still isn’t right today. I was glad that the waiter asked if I wanted to take the rest of it, which I did. And Loring ate it last night for his supper. (I didn’t want any more or anything else.) Oh, and I fogot a couple of things: Loring’s salad with camembert came with an entire round of camembert cheese, again more than one, or at least we, could eat at a sitting. And, before our food came, the waiter came over with a tureen of pureed lentil-vegetable soup and served us some, which came gratis with the meal. So my lunch was a bowl of vegetable soup and a ginourmous seving of a multi crepe banana-chocolate-strawberry concoction that could easily served two as a meal and at least four, probably more, as dessert. I wish we’d thought to take pictures of both of our meals before we started to eat. Loring did get a picture of me struggling to eat my lunch. Though delicous, it felt ostentacious and maybe wasteful, if people didn’t take the extras home. It was as if upper class was equated with enormous quantities of food. And though not as overwhelming, it seems that the quantity of food served to us everywhere has been more than we could or want to eat. I don’t know if it has to do with class or with impressing foreigners or both. I am guessing tonite will be the same as far as quantity. I just hope that someone will eat whatever we don’t. Oh, and by the way, we’ve ordered camel for tonight. Or at least one to share, the other being the more familiar chicken dinner.