Blogs from Tunisia, Africa - page 27

On Getting Arrested. OK so I got arrested. Not really. Just a ride to the police station. I was in Matmata where the some parts of the Star Wars movies were filmed - and the tourist police came by. As I was the only ewok in town, I got lucky. Yes, the police wanted to see my passport and ask all sorts of personal questions. As Hardy was busy asking me out for coffee every five minutes, Laurel was examining my clean passport. The Hardy character really did remind me of his name sake - besides being rather roley-poly, he was sporting the requisite police mustache. As I was tuning down offers for coffee Laurel noticed that I had, in his words, dropped from heaven. He meant of course that there is a period in my ... read more

Después de un viaje por Túnez. (Versión en español). Después de un viaje por Túnez, querría compartir las sensaciones experimentadas, algunas fotografías, y sacar algunas conclusiones. Por supuesto, también es una buena ocasión para dejar en el aire algunas ideas que podrían ser aprovechables por quienes tuviesen previsiones de un viaje por aquellos lugares. Seguramente sea un poco fuera de lo común el que me llamase la atención el hecho de tantos vestigios encontrados de civilizaciones que en su momento fueron localizadas en la mente en lugares distantes de aquellos, sobre todo teniendo en cuenta el significado de “cercano y lejano” en aquellas fechas remotas. Está en los libros, hemos pasado por eso hace años, insistiendo una y otra vez en los pasajes famosos de la historia antigua que quedaron retenidos en la memoria, y que ... read more

Well so far Tunisia had been fabulous!! After a lot of more developed countries (Mexico City, New York, London, Greece, Turkey) it was nice to get back to something a bit more exotic and different!! And cheap too!! It's nice when the Aussie dollar stretches a bit more... :) We were really enjoying Tunisia - the people were really friendly, even though they spoke French and we didn't understand. But from their demeanour we hope they were being friendly. Food has been an interesting experience. At the last few places listed above, we have had an opportunity to try the food back home in Sydney. Tunisia is the first place in a long while where everything was strange again!! Didn't help that the menus are all in french either. Thankfully Catherine knew enough french to distinguish ... read more

If you can't guess, I went to Carthage today (for the uncultured Carthage is an ancient city that was once one of the most powerful cities in that part of the world - famous associated people include Hannibal the guy who marched on Rome with an army of elephant riding troops over the Italian alps). Today was my last day in Tunisia, so I left the luxury of the conference hotel and travelled into Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Tunis is a bit of a hole - nothing much to see except for 2 main sights - Carthage and a beautiful seaside town called Sidi Bou Said. Carthage was a major disappointment mainly because all that remains is a few crumbling ruins and a dodgy museum. Most of the ruins are spread out across a built ... read more

Today was day 3 of the 5 day conference, and I was sick of conference. Bored stupid. So I decided to skip today and head out to Kairoun, apparently the 4th most holy city in all of the world. The trip to Kairoun was short and sweet - and uneventful 1.5h journey with none of the customary pleasantaries of Tunisian bus travel such as men with bad body odour or women who talk too loud. Women here (older women in particular) have no concept of volume - they just yell in their nasal annoying voices - just yell - I don't think they actually are talking to anybody - they just yell. Now I was expecting everybody to be extra holy in this city, seeing as it is the 4th most holy city in all of ... read more