Tunisia Vol. I

Good evening friends,














I decided that it was high time to update this little blog of mine. Last week, for my spring break, I went to Tunisia for about a week, with 50 other Temple students and the amazing Maria Ponce de Leon, an Italian professor fluent in English, French, Arabic in addition to Italian. Her friend Mounir, a Tunisian Italian professor, also came along. We piled on to a bus every day at 6 am and covered a lot of ground. In fact, the last day we looked at a map of Tunisia and realized that we had to traveled to every inhabitable part of the country.

Day one: We arrive in Tunis, the capital, after a one-hour flight from Rome. There are little red and white Tunisian flags everywhere. I'm a big fan of this flag, I find it pretty visually interesting. There are also posters and billboards all over featuring the President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on a background of purple, his favorite color. After trying for two months to learn as much Italian as possible while being constantly surrounded by American students, it was mind-warping to be surrounded by Arabic and French. And all the Tunisians that I met first guessed that I was Spanish, then French, then English, then Dutch, then Russian...but never American. Strange because most Italians can tell that you're American instantly, but I guess that many more Spainards and Italians make it to Tunisia than Americans. In the afternoon, we went to the Medinah of Tunis (the city center) and the Kasbah. Our professor took us to one of her friends' shops, a tiny profumeria, and he showed us how he makes concentrated perfumes. The currency here is the dinar, about 1,80 to 1 euro. We also went to the souk of Tunis, the giant marketplace that winds in and out of dark tunnels with vendors hawking leather goods, jewelry, pastries, household items, and ceramics. Here we stopped to get lunch, tuna sandwiches with french fries inside, which gradually became a staple of the trip. French fries showed up almost every day here. That evening, we stopped at a hookah bar and had traditional sweet mint tea with pine nuts and date-honey cookies called makrouds.

Day two: We left Tunis early for Port el Kantaoui, a very touristy place with lots of very tan, very old people. However, there were lots of stray cats to remind me of Italy. Port el Kantaoui is on the Meditteranean, and I tried to go wading, but it was very cold, although it was about 65 F.
There was also a zoo there with huge guinea pigs with miniature tables and chairs in their habitat. We then left for Sousse, and checked into a giant hotel with more tan old people. But this hotel had Arabic and square dancing lessons, the latter which we joined in that night with some very funny German tourists, who apparently come to Sousse and stay for the winter. In Sousse, there are white buildings everywhere with blue doors. We wandered through the crazy Sousse souk and bought 4 kilos of makrouds to share on the bus. That afternoon we ended up in Monastir to see the massive maseoleum with two towers.

But that's all for now, because I've got to catch the overnight train to Venice. Ciao ciao ciao.