Tunisia Part One…of…

When we left Nice for Tunisia we joked about all the carry-on luggage people were taking. I mean bags and bags of stuff that could not possibly fit in that little box at the check-in that advises you of your carry-on limits. We smirked at each other when the three people ahead of us were kicked off the plane (temporarily) to check their carry-ons. Amateurs! We’ve been doing this so long that we wisely checked only one bag with both of our things in it. In the spirit of traveling light I only brought my purse with my essentials for travel, water, PDA with a new book loaded on and new music, cell phone and some basic drugs. S carried-on his laptop. We were, after all, only going to be away for 4 days. We arrived in Tunisia Saturday afternoon to the madness of the Tunisia Carthage airport. Where our flight was listed at one baggage carousel and then abruptly it would disappear and appear two carrousels over. We spent the better part of an hour chasing from one baggage claim carousel to the next with about 200 other people (wondering the whole time if we were on some weird Tunisian version of candid camera) only to finally have a sour faced airport official, that I had to practically pin to a post, confirm that about 250 pieces of luggage had been misplaced. The airline lost our one piece of luggage. Now who's the amateur? Those people knew. ‘No Madame, it is not lost, it is in Paris, it will be here this evening’ says the short sweaty man behind the lost luggage counter. Ha! Famous last words! Our hotel was a 50 minute drive south in Hammemet and a driver had been sent from there to meet our flight. We walked out of the international baggage claim area to a mob. The three flights worth of people all milling about in baggage claim had 10 times as many people on the other side of the gate waiting to greet them. Madness! Madness, you’ll see, will be a recurring theme. ………. We got the driver’s card when he dropped us off at the resort so that we could call him when our luggage had been located and he would happily take another 90.000TD (Tunisian Dinars, their money goes down to the third decimal place. I had a bit of a tough time trying to figure out all the different coins.) from us for the roundtrip to retrieve our luggage. In the good news column, we checked into our ‘very good’ room to find that we had a fabulous unobstructed view of the Mediterranean right across the road and since we were already down ½ a day we decided to stay local and walk down the street to the Medina. This is where our education began. The first lesson I would impart is that if you purchase a guidebook for a country READ it, ALL of it, before you go, don’t just take it along as a quick reference. If we had read the following story before our first trip into a Medina the whole experience would have been less frightening and more funny.

Just Look, No Buy Viewing vast numbers of carpets and kilims is as much a part of the experience as visiting the Great Mosque. However averse you might be to the idea, you’re likely at some stage to find yourself in a carpet shop. Resistance is futile. The secret is to accept the hospitality, enjoy the ceremony and not feel in the least obliged to buy – easier said than done. The process starts with a passing glance as you walk through one of the medina’s lanes. You’re invited inside and offered sweet tea or Turkish coffee while you sit around and discuss the fact that the salesman (they’re all men and all very charming) has a brother or uncle living in your country and indeed, what providence, sold a carpet, a very beautiful carpet, from his private collection, to one of your countrymen just last week. While you wait for your drinks, why not look, looking is free, just for the pleasure of your eyes. Choices are unfurled by a boy, while another brings tea and coffee which is too hot to drink quickly. You as a price and are told in a conspiratorial whisper that, because you have not come as part of a group, you will be offered a 30% discount. You’re an honoured guest in Tunisia and hospitality demands such things. The ones you don’t like are rolled up and stacked against a wall. The designs are explained and more young men arrive to hold the carpets at viewing level. They might even try to burn the carpet with a cigarette lighter to show its durability. Suddenly the room is filled with young men at your service. Carpets are expertly rolled into tiny bundles to show how easily they will fit in your bag for carrying home. This is the point at which you might decide that carpet-buying is not for you. You say that you want to think about it. The salesman, possibly now casting furtive glances in the direction of the shop owner, is suddenly serious, knowing full well that the vast majority of tourists never return despite promises to do so, knowing even better that most visitors will be leaving on the next bus out of town. Prices drop. They might even do so dramatically. Looks of sadness will be exchanged that such beautiful carpets must be let go for such a price. As you walk out the door – you might be left to find your own way out as hospitality evaporates – you might hear dark mutterings and grim curses directed towards you. More likely, you’ll look over you shoulder and see the salesman deflated on a chair, like a child who has lost his toy… Taken from Lonely Planet Tunisia. Pg. 179

We weren’t buying a rug, but I did make the mistake of stopping to look at some leather goods outside of one shop. We were instantly surrounded by 3 men one who threw an arm around S, and one who took me by the elbow into the back of the shop to show me the best of the leather purses, coats and belts. “No thank you, we’re just looking” has absolutely no meaning, leaving someone alone to shop is a foreign concept, really foreign, how can you know the real value of a thing unless someone is standing there giving a running commentary on each item and pointing out the finer details that you would miss. It took ten minutes of polite refusals and edging toward the door to get away from these men. Their disappointed scowls and mutterings were enough to make us really want to watch our backs as we walked away. First lesson learned, polite doesn’t work, and lesson two, just like when you’re night clubbing, don’t make eye contact. Needless to say we then tried traveling down the alleys of the medina without looking left or right and without expressing the slightest interest in anything. ………. Saturday night arrives and we still have no luggage. Our hotel package turned out to be a demi-pension which meant that our breakfasts and dinners were included in the price of our room. So we went to the giant third floor dinning room to find a huge buffet and about 100 German tourists. I wandered the various buffet stations and had a tremendous time trying to identify anything. Finally settled on some couscous, which I love and something that looked like, and I fervently hoped actually was, chicken. At one of the other stations a man was cooking something that looked like thin slices of beef, so I grabbed some of that too. We sat, ordered beverages and settled in to eat. The ‘chicken’ wasn’t, I think it may have been rabbit; and the beef definitely wasn’t. It was disgusting! I pointed it out to S who tried a piece and then nonchalantly says, ‘Oh, that’s stomach, I’ve had it before in Turkey’. Well that's just fine 'cause I can have couscous for dinner for 3 nights, not a problem. We had no real plans for our visit so we went down to the lobby where there were about 4 or 5 fat notebooks from a variety of tour companies offering day trips to various places, the books however were all in German. We went to the front desk to ask the receptionist if she had any tour information in English. ‘I could call a guide to take you wherever you want to go.’ She told us immediately. We told her we wanted to visit Carthage and the Roman ruins. She called a guide, negotiated a price of 140.000TD for the whole day and told us he would arrive at 9:00 am. Perfect since Carthage is just a bit north-ish of Tunis he could take us past the airport on the way back to the hotel on Sunday night and we wouldn’t have to pay someone else extra for that round trip. Off to the room and to do some ‘laundry’.