Rock the Kasbah 4/30/07

We’ve been in Tunisia for a few days now. First we flew north from Rome to Milan to then turn right around and fly south to Tunis. And even though it was the same plane for both flights, we get off, go through passport control then get back on the same plane. Once we arrived in Tunis, the 21 of us who have US passports got through passport control without a problem. However the one of us with a Cypriot passport did not know that his required a visa to get into the country. So after an extra hour of waiting we got on our bus that is not big enough for our group so we have to fill two seats with our luggage and pack ourselves into the rest. Finally, at 1:30 am we checked into the hotel and went right to sleep because we had a 7:30 am wakeup call..
Besides all of our craziness, I really like Tunisia as a country. I thought it might be really hot and brown but it is much cooler than Rome was and there is green grass and wild flowers everywhere. Egypt in January was much hotter than this. All of my encounters with Tunisians have been great too. From what I can tell they are a very friendly and welcoming people. The to primary languages of Tunisia are French and Arabic. Kairouan, where we spent last night, was the first city settled in Northern Africa by Muslims. It was founded by the Fatimid Dynasty in the 8th century. Then Tunisia was a French colony until the 1950s. Our first guide explained to us that everyone grows up speaking Arabic then at age 8 in school the begin learning English. At age 11 students begin English and at 16 they can choose between German and Italian. Since school is compulsory until age 16, a lot of Tunisians know English which is really nice. But it’s also been fun to use the little bit of French that I know to communicate as well.
Our second night in Tunis seemed at first like it was about to be as crazy as the first. A small group of us walked around the area of our hotel for a while. We got some really good crepes. I went with a simple chocolate and almond but some other people tried cheese and tuna and egg. The crepe woman actually just fried an egg on top of the crepe. Tunisians love to put egg and tuna on EVERYTHING.
When we were ready for dinner, we had a hard time finding a place that wasn’t Italian. There is a pretty heavy Italian influence in Tunis. We settled on a French restaurant that looked pretty good. Once everyone had decided, the waiter who already didn’t look very happy about us being there, explained in French to us that he would not allow us to order just one thing from the menu but that we would each have to get at least two. Dan Van luckily speaks French pretty well argued with him for a while and then we decided to leave. Beeston got a recommendation from a guy with a Mohawk on the side walk to go to the next block and we would find good food with better atmosphere. The man with the Mohawk was right. We found a fantastic Tunisian restaurant. The eight of us were the only non-Tunisians in there. They gave us several dips and olives to try. I got couscous with chicken and we tried a traditional dish brik which is a really thin dough filled with egg, parsley, and tuna. The brik wasn’t my favorite but the couscous was delicious. After dinner they brought us mint tea.
Last night we stayed in a five star hotel, which we haven’t done since Egypt. The hotel was called Hotel La Kasbah because it is built into an old Arab fortress, Kasbah. It was almost as good as our “authentically palatial” Egyptian hotel experience. The hotel is in Kairouan which is the fourth most holy city in Islam, behind Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. We saw the Great Mosque there this morning. It is much simpler than others we have seen, especially in Istanbul but it is very important for Muslims. Prayer in Kaiouan is projected over the PA system far more than five times per day. I’m not sure why they do it so often here but I think I heard it 6 or 7 times in the 15 hours we were there. It also was much louder than any other place we have heard it and it sounded more like someone was dying rather than praying. It was special to be woken up by it twice before 5:30 am.
One thing that seems to be pretty consistent about Tunisia and we have not seen anywhere else is the handheld bidet phenomenon. Every hotel we’ve stayed at in Italy has had a bidet. However in Tunisia every bathroom, public and private, has a hose on the wall with a knob for water. We have visited some really disgusting bathrooms and some five star ones and they all have them