I am trying really hard to like Tunis.  I’d really like to give them the benefit of the doubt – but wow, the city is like one huge garbage dump.  The climate is awesome, it’s located on the Mediterranean, and they have history up the ying-yang what with Phoenicians all the way up to Ottoman Turks.  But everywhere I go all I see is trash and crumbling infrastructure.

Yes, this is a city that goes back a couple thousand years and the Medina is credited with being built one thousand years back.  It is damn old.  And it looks it, with furtive alleyways and uneven pavement.  Most of the buildings look like they could use some renovation and the sidewalks are in poor shape.  Which is why most of the populace walks in the street.  With the cars.  I wonder how many traffic deaths there are each year.  Even with the cross-walks the cars ignore the lights … so don’t step out when you see the green walking man!  Not only are people and cars in the street, but also shops.  That’s right, many streets are lined with tables full of goods for sale – kind of like a never-ending open-air mall.  And somehow the traffic  goes through those streets.

All of that I could stomach, but it’s the ridiculous amounts of trash and garbage everywhere that really put me off.  I get that you may be living hand to mouth – but even if you have nothing, do you want to be living in a garbage dump?  And I realize I may be going overboard here, but it really blows my mind.  If I had no money and even no roof over my head – my little space of earth or sidewalk would be trash free.  I just don’t get it.

With tourism being an important part of their economy here, I would think they would want to clean the place up.  I see garbage cans everywhere – would not be hard to actually throw your trash in the trash.  Very disappointing.  Not to say damaging to the environment.  When you look out on a beautiful vista then look at the ground and see it covered in plastic water bottles and food wrappers and unidentifiable crap – it’s depressing.  I should point out that Athens was similar (and Kotor) – though not this bad.

Ok, enough of my garbage rant…

One of the good things about Tunis – is the people.  It is fairly obvious that I am not from around here, and due to the aforementioned lack of infrastructure, I have had some issues with public transportation.  Everyone that I’ve spoken to has been very helpful.  Even when I attempt to speak a little French (which is sidesplittingly humorous) they still try to help me.  More on this later.

I’m staying in an Airbnb apartment in an area called La Goulette.  This is the port where cruise ships dock, though I don’t believe any have been back to Tunis since the incident last year.  Terrorist gunmen attacked busloads of cruise passengers at the Bardo Museum.  Twenty foreign tourists were killed.  I have decided not to be a part of any group tourist activities and to blend in with the locals.  Ha.  And yes, I did go to the Bardo which was kind of on lockdown…  I think there were 10 of us in there.  Trust me, I was very alert and contemplating exit strategies, just in case.

 

Anyway, there is a vigilant Muslim couple who are basically my caretakers.  I call them vigilant because when I arrived and called to say I was getting into a taxi, my contact Dalila wanted to speak directly to the taxi driver.  I think she read him the riot act and told him to deliver me ‘rapidament’.  My taxi driver was less jovial after that.  Dalila called me again – as it was taking some time to get over there (bad traffic mostly, and me leaving my passport at the airport – but I don’t need to recount stupid things that I do, right?) and again yelled at my taxi driver – by this point he was fairly pissed off.  This cost me an extra 5 dinars upon exiting the taxi (that’s like 3 bucks US) which I believe was the opposite of her intent!

Upon arrival I was met by Dalila and whisked into the apartment without further ado.  Usually I visit a supermarket when I first arrive somewhere to get some form of sustenance for the next morning.  Dalila directed me to the local mom and pop store across the street.  But – she then completely freaked me out with comments about removing all my jewelry (and I was not wearing any kind of ostentatious jewelry, believe me) and ‘paying attention’ which made me think there were pickpockets or worse roaming the neighborhood (her English is paltry, my French is abysmal).  Coupled with the fact that this really does not appear to be a tourist area … I was feeling a bit panicky.  This was not an auspicious beginning and I don’t know that it was really necessary – I really don’t think this neighborhood is crawling with petty thieves.  And unfortunately it had me contemplating an immediate exit to another part of the city and worrying about being mugged or something.

It took me a few days to relax and even then I avoided walking around the streets once it was dark out.  Though it seems like everything kind of shuts down by 8 or 9pm.  That might be because of the 5:30am call to prayer via the mosque loudspeakers… one of which is directly behind the apartment I’m staying in.  Lucky me, I am up before the dawn every day.  Ear plugs don’t make a difference.

I did suck it up and do some sightseeing.  This required use of the TGM which is the regional train that travels along the coast up to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.  There is scant signage available to inform you about where to buy tickets, what the name of the station is, and the only map is inside the train cars if you can read it (they are sometimes covered up or scraped up so the text is illegible).  Everything is covered in graffiti.  The TGM is pretty lax in it’s passenger safety.  I watched countless young men and boys playing chicken with the car doors, not letting them close, so they were wide open as we flew down the tracks.  And the boys hung from the top part of the door swinging off onto train platforms.  Again, I wonder how many deaths they have each year, this time from train accidents.  The train cars look like they have seen better days, way better days…

So I made it out to Carthage and multiple sites of Roman ruins.  Y’all must know the story.  Carthage was a city of Phoenician and Berber descent.  The people were called Punics and they owned trade on the Mediterranean.  They ran afoul of the Romans who eventually destroyed Carthage, literally razed the city to the ground.  There are virtually no remnants of it today which has made it rough from a historical perspective, since all of the primary sources are authored by Greek or Roman historians who were somewhat biased in their opinions.  The Romans eventually built over the ruins and what you can see today is really Roman ruins of villas, thermal baths and an amphitheater.

HIP FACT:  The Romans HATED the Carthaginians so much, that after the Punic wars, the word ‘punic’ was changed to mean ‘treacherous’

HIP FACT #2:  Cato the Elder, a famous Roman dude (ok, he was a Senator), used to end ALL of his speeches with the admonition that ‘Carthage must be crushed!’

ONE MORE HIP FACT:  One of the most famous military strategists of all time was a product of Carthage – HANNIBAL.  What a guy!  Look him up – fascinating figure indeed.

These Roman ruins are spread out across a broad area from the top of Byrsa Hill all the way down to the beach.  You can walk from site to site though it is not incredibly well marked.  Like most things here…  These sites are fairly unstructured, you can buy one ticket that gets you into all of them, but there does not seem to be much staff on hand or indication of where you can or can’t go.  I found most places to be nearly deserted – which could be because it’s November, so not the high season here!

Carthage and the Roman cities that followed it must have been stunning.  Built on the slope of a hill that gently rolls down towards the sea, you can’t beat the view.  Scattered about are parts of walls and buildings. Marble pillars, partial statues missing limbs or heads litter the ground.  Further down the hill there is an enclave of Roman Villas, complete with mosaic floors.  I was accosted (not for the first time) by a dapper old man who lured me in with talk of mosaics and showed me several hundred lined up in a long covered gallery (waiting to go into a museum somewhere).  He then explained that for 10 dinars he would take me around the site and provide me with historical commentary.  He pointed out some interesting items, like the aquarium.  Yes, the Romans were early fish farmers!  In this area they had private baths (the wealthy are always trying to keep out the riff-raff) and grand terraces.  The paved roads are still visible and you crunch over the pebbled remains of mosaics as you walk.  They are putting together a new museum at the Roman Villas to house the finds from that area.

I walked down to the Antonine Baths, declining multiple offers from cab drivers to drive me from site to site.   These would be the public baths for the plebeians.  This is a huge complex that is right on the beach.  The Romans had water piped in and sophisticated processes to heat floors and walls.  These were elaborate baths with hot rooms, cold rooms and hot baths.  It turns out that the residence of the President happens to be next door to the Baths.  Consequently, there are many gun-toting military folks all around the archeological park.  They don’t want you to take any pictures of said house either or even walk in that direction… which put a damper on some camera angles and exploring the west side of the ruins.

Most of the architectural finds from these sites can be seen at the Bardo Museum, including a prolific collection of mosaics.  Basically if you start digging in this area you are going to run into a mosaic floor sooner or later.  There are modern homes that actually have them incorporated because they were found during the building process.  The mosaics are fabulous – I’ve never seen so many intact mosaics, there must be at least one-hundred displayed throughout the museum.  They are excellent tools for historians because they illustrate how people lived and worshiped, as every day scenes are depicted as well as stories about the gods and deities, like Apollo, Mars, and Diana.  Talk about a must-see – they even have mosaics with scenes from Homer’s Odyssey.

I was not as excited about the Medina in Tunis …  because it felt like Mexico in North Africa.  Countless hole-in-the-wall shops selling kitsch.  I’ve been to far better ancient markets, like Istanbul.  Plus, there are plenty of roaming confidence men, so to speak.  At least four times I was chatted up by these gentleman – and this as I was walking down the street, not even in the Medina yet.  They all directed me to the Special Government Shops – where they are going to sell me a BIG carpet.  I don’t know what it is, but everywhere I go people are trying to sell me carpet.  One of these guys finally convinced me to head over there, because than I could go up on the roof and have The View.  I knew about this view – but I did not know that it was like a timeshare meeting where you have to listen to the spiel in order to have the view.  And really, I probably could have walked away from the hard-sell carpet dudes, but it was great fun trying to explain to them that I don’t have a home or a job and therefore no need for carpet – even hand-made, 100% wool carpet!  I’ll admit that this guy took good pictures of me and The View though, so worth it.

I was somewhat nervous walking around downtown, once I noticed that the French Embassy was barricaded and razor wired, with streets blocked off, sandbag installations and even a small tank out front, and basically crawling with soldiers.  I still don’t know what that’s about – and all up and down the grand avenue there are soldiers and vehicles.  I started to think about exit strategies again – because I feel kind of like a target in this world – being so obviously from the West.  And there are no other Westerners here – at least, I did not see anybody – short of a handful of people at the Carthage sites and in the Bardo.  Then again, they may have been much smarter than I, consequently not doing things like riding the light rail or the TGM train.

Yet another country where I can’t figure out the public transportation.  What a surprise.  No maps, though in the cars if you can decipher what’s on the wall, there is your map.  It’s the slowest light rail I’ve experienced and extremely crowded.  In fact, if you are dumb enough to ride it during rush hour (which I swear started at 3pm in the afternoon) you may have an attack of claustrophobia, because they pile so many people into these cars that there is not enough air.

Ok, perhaps I exaggerate (a little), but seriously I have never been on a metro this packed.  And at each stop I thought there might be a riot because people wanted to get on, and they were pushing against all the folks who were already on, there was much yelling, and then the doors to the train won’t close because there are bodies in front of them; which means we sat there until the driver decided to move forward.  Oh my stars and garters.  This is when I lost my ability to figure out, well anything really.

After about an hour I decided I was doing it wrong.  Then my halting French came out, asking those nearest to me about the stop I needed.  They quickly realized that French is not my forte and lucky for me, two of them had some English!  One lady was completely covered and wearing the niqab.  Niqab covers the upper body and face, but not the eyes.  (I only saw a handful of these women, the vast majority of women were split 50/50 between wearing a headscarf (hajib) and not).  This lady even had on gloves and I think goggles or some type of eyewear.  But her English was damn good.  She explained how I needed to change trains.  Excellent.  So right before I needed to leave the train another young lady leaned over and said ‘I will help you’…  Even more excellent.  Of course, it had started pouring rain in the interim and this young lady took my hand and guided me through throngs of people to the correct train line.  And then I met yet another young lady, who overheard me talking about going to La Goulette, which was her destination as well.  This was Neda, with her strawberry color-washed hair and smartphone in hand.  We chatted on the train and I learned that she is a Biology student.  We parted ways as she took the Grand Taxi and I took the TGM back to La Goulette.  In total, about three hours to finally get back to my apartment…very thankful for the kindness of Tunisians!

The brightest spot in Tunis would be Sidi Bou Said.  This is over by Carthage and is an area looking out over the Mediterranean.  I’d say it was a bit more picturesque than downtown Tunis.  If I came here again – this is where I would stay.

All in all – I was out of my comfort zone for several days – which is probably a good thing, right?  Next stop Egypt ….