The Empires Strike Back (Tunisia)

Notre entrée dans la vie Tunisienne a vraiment démontré la manière que le peuple célèbre la camaraderie et la fierté nationale… Oh, sorry, I have been speaking French for three weeks and just got carried away...

Tunis Performing Arts Theatre

Our entrée into Tunisian life really demonstrated the way the people celebrate camaraderie and national pride as a group of returning soccer youth (who had just won a tournament in Morocco) serenaded the crew and passengers of our flight with chants and fight songs for three straight hours (save for the meal break).  They even broke into harmonized refrain at the luggage retrieval area and again when greeted by family and friends just past immigration and customs (not something likely to be tolerated at Pearson – me thinks).

Ornate Seaside Village Doorway (Sidi Bou Said)

There is quite the variety of sights in the rather small Tunisian footprint.  Carthage was founded around 850 B.C., and lasted until 146 B.C. when the Romans marauded through and destroyed it.  There is evidence throughout the northern part of the country with random Roman ruins (the 3R’s of Tunisia) strewn about the countryside.  Carthage is just a 30 minute tram ride from the Capital, Tunis (at the Hannibal stop), and while most tourists arrive by the bus load, we followed the well marked tourist map to several impressive archeological sites encompassing fortifications, coliseums (one transformed for use in the summer festival), several communities, thermal baths and a museum.

Inlaid Mosaic Tile Flooring (still intact)

An hours’ train ride south of Tunis is the spectacularly restored (the 4^th R) El Jem coliseum complete with underground lion dens.  Despite a small unattractive town built around the site and the blasé treatment it receives from residents, once within the metre thick walls, the place has a palpable realism to it.

It is easy to imagine the gruesome gladiatorial games and gore that passed for mass entertainment (and I suppose, a warning for imperial subjects to walk the straight and narrow or pass up the spectator sport view for a part in the show).

The country is quite a bit more secular than expected in terms of gender roles (especially when compared to Morocco), with women mostly dressed in modern or semi-traditional attire and seemingly integrated into daily activities,  save for the overly testosterone based café culture.  Hundreds of wicker, metal and plastic tables and chairs spill onto the sidewalks from the many establishments, where mostly men sit in groups facing outward, leering at passers-by, chatting and arguing (in quite boisterous tones).

She was a tourist too!

Tunisia has a very sweeping supply of surface transport crisscrossing the country with planes, trains, buses and Louages – a kind of private competitor and supplement of mini-busses that await a full vehicle of 8 passengers before traveling between pretty much every reasonable destination.  Despite this comprehensive coverage, package coach tourism seems to dominate and there is a noticeable absence of information about how to arrange independent travel from one place to another.  Well, we figured it out the hard way and began our journey south.

The Arabs arrived about 800 years after the fall of Carthage and their historical presence is most evident further south, along with the Berber and other nomadic cultures…