Arriving in Tunis

I took a quick look around the Tunis train station, but didn't see anyone holding up a sign with my name on it.

The train from El Jem had run late, so I figured the guesthouse host must have given up on me. Or maybe she hadn't gotten my text. My instructions were to text her with my firm arrival time, but I couldn't text on my local SIM card. I'd purchased data only.

I used Skype and my data connection to text her but hadn't heard back. I had no way of knowing if my workaround had worked around.

She'd had my arrival times from an email, but wasn't here, so I wandered off out of the station to find my way to the guesthouse.

"DO NOT try to walk to the hotel," had been my instructions. Which made no sense to me, but anyway, no one was there to meet me, so I walked to the hotel using Google Maps, exactly as I'd been told not to.


Of course it was fine, but no one was there, since the host was looking for me at the train station. She'd stepped away from arrivals for a while, presumably when I arrived. I rang the doorbell but got no response. Meanwhile, the bell triggered her phone surveillance, so she could see someone was ringing her bell, and checked her camera surveillance, and there I was.

Meanwhile, I'd used Skype to call her.

"I'll be right there," she said. At the same time, her neighbor came over to tell me she'd be right there. She'd texted him from the station.

She was along in a minute, and let me in to her immaculately restored old Tunisian home.