Door Guardians

I bought a little hanging rack and set up these souvenirs I bought in Tunisia. They look great, and they'll keep away burglars, no doubt!

Journey's End

I had never commuted through Newark Airport before. It's always been an origin or destination, never just a place to go through Customs.

I struggled with not going straight home. With getting on the next plane to Los Angeles instead of on the train to Jersey City.

But it was raining out and my coat was in Burbank, so I had a bit of incentive to return to California.

And when I got home, semi-delirious from time zone changes, I unpacked my bag. No paintings, but at least these little guys made it safely from Tunis to Burbank.

A Sad Tale

Here is the sad story of a Tunisian painting, now residing in pieces wrapped in cardboard in a Barcelona dumpster.

The painting prior to shipping. I didn't think the glass would make it home, but I'd replace it when I got there.

I wasn't allowed to take the painting as carry-on. It went "Special Luggage" class. 

I could feel the glass moving about as I carried the package under my arm from the airport to the Barcelona hotel. I knew the glass had broken, but didn't care about that much. But what I didn't realize was the painting was actually ON the glass. 

Goodbye, little painting. You were awesome. We hardly knew you. 

Leaving Tunisia

For those mornings when you crawl out of bed at 5 a.m. in a stranger’s house in the Tunis Medina, pull the door shut behind you as you run through your list of possessions in your head, walk to Bab Mnara to hail a taxi, and the taxi drives you to the airport through empty streets with every warning light flashing, and then you get to use “special luggage” for your new Noah's Ark painting to travel to Barcelona, you need a pain au chocolate to start the day.

Tunisia is not what people think of when they think of Africa, mostly because Africa is what people associate with lions and Masaai warriors. In my mind, like most people, I associate Tunisia more with Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Algeria...it's just what we do. But is IS Africa, North Africa, like all those other countries I just listed. I wondered, as I sipped my latte, what is the term for my interest in this continent? Like Frankophile or Anglophile, is there a name for the sort of person who likes to take share taxis around the continent? Cape-to-Cairo-o-phile? Bus-ist? And if I'm an Africa-phile, what do we call my various other fascinations? Wallaby-o-phile? Bangkok-o-phile? Bali-o-phile? Yogyakartist?

I'm not even sure it's travel I'm obsessed with. It's really just novelty and an adventurous romp. A good laugh helps.

I had been pretty rusty on this trip, having been chained to a desk for three-and-a-half years aside from my little test trip to Tijuana a few months ago, but I'd warmed up quickly. I was feeling stress now as I prepared to board the plane back to Europe, departing the continent of Africa where I'd been through so much in my other lives, residing in Cairo, Uganda, Namibia, Cape Town...taking public transit up the eastern side and down the western side. Spending time with Herr Marlboro back when I still thought relationships were something I might want to prioritize. I was just dipping a toe in here in Tunisia, but the thought of going back to Burbank and to work kind of broke my heart.

I boarded my flight for Barcelona, just over the Mediterranean. A short flight, less time than I'd spend getting from Burbank to LAX by public transit, but a world away.

Carthage Afternoon

I caught the TGM trolley out to Sidi Bou Said, a little village just north of Carthage. This is a town decked out in white and blue paint, a town that gets a nice breeze off the ocean all year around.

I guess. I was only there briefly one afternoon in March. I'm definitely making a lot of leaps here. I was too impatient after five days of pure touristing, too instantly bored by environment.

It wasn't as atmospheric as Chefchaouen in Morocco, which has a lot more blue than white, but it is probably a really nice place to live. Bet Sidi Bou Said is part of the rent-is-too-damn-high club, though.

I headed to Carthage next, but after the extraordinary Roman ruins at Dougga, I was mostly disappointed, so headed back to Tunis.

When I got off the train, I passed the Jawa sandcrawler again, and stopped at the first sidewalk cafe I saw for a snack. I'd been breaking my own rules a lot on this trip, skipping meals, not staying hydrated, and not eating on a schedule. One of my rules is eat on a schedule, even if you have to eat poorly. This wasn't poorly though...it was a chicken sandwich.

I hunted for souvenirs next, back in the medina, wandering the alleys looking for something I wanted to carry home.

I finished my afternoon up with a visit to my host in her workshop.

"How much is that?" I asked, pointing at a Noah's Ark painting on her workshop wall. It was the equivalent of $63. I paid her in cash after a visit to the ATM, and she packed the painting up for me.

"Can't I roll it up and leave the frame?" I asked.

She looked horrified. "No. We will pack it with...this stuff. I don't know the English for it." She did a popping motion with her fingers.

A Jawa Sort of Morning

I finally had a chance to sleep in and enjoy a normal breakfast for once in Tunisia.

So who was that person talking loudly downstairs in the guesthouse at six in the morning?

Eventually, I figured out it was the breakfast cook, but she wasn’t talking, she was watching TV while she prepared breakfast.

The guesthouse is amazing—it’s a restored medina house, but there are a few downsides to staying in a beautiful, old place. One is the sounds—they echo throughout the house. The other is the owner refuses to give the guests keys, because she’s “always home.” Which isn’t at all true. But her house was so nice I didn’t have the heart to scold her.

Art Shopping

"That painting in my room...where did you get it?"

"Of Noah's ark? I made it myself."

Oh.

I was speaking with Khaoula, the owner of El Patio guesthouse. A young Tunisian woman, her passion was historical interior design and restoration.

I loved the painting in my room and what I'd expected Khaoula to say is where she'd gotten it. I'd go to that store and see if I could find a cool painting to take home. But this answer was unexpected.

"Do you sell your paintings?" I inquired as casually as I could, since I suspected I wouldn't be able to afford a piece of original art.

"Yes. My workshop is across the alley. I'll show you tomorrow."

I told her I'd be at Carthage in the morning, but would be sure to get to her workshop in the afternoon. I tried not to get to excited...who knew what would be on offer or what the price would be.

Day at Dougga

The six a.m. iPhone chimes taunted me from my bedside at El Patio, the boutique guesthouse I was staying at deep in the Tunis medina.

Snooze.

It tried again a few minutes later.

Snooze. 

Three consecutive days of super-early rises had gotten the better of me. I barely made it out of bed by 6:30, and I knew I was pushing it as far as the louage time. I slid into my clothes, headed downstairs in the dark, picked up a back of snacks with my name on them from the hostess of El Patio, and as soon as I pulled the door shut behind me, realized I’d forgotten my scarf.

6:30 a.m. is a bad time to knock on a door, so I just went without, hoping not to get caught in the sun or rain. I walked down a narrow stone alley out of the medina, to the nearest modern road.

“Bab Sadoun, s’il vous plait,” I said to the taxi driver who’d picked me up by Bab Mnara. Bab Sadoun is where the gare routiere is located for the buses and louages I needed to get myself to Dougga.

So many questions, I know. What’s a gare routiere? What’s a bab? What’s a louage? What’s a Dougga?

A Dougga is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the ruins of a Roman city in…you guessed it. Dougga. That’s a town in Tunisia. It’s about an hour-and-a-half east of Tunis.

Priorities

I'd been apprehensive about the guesthouse I'd booked in Tunis. Not because I mistrusted the photos on the booking site, and not because I thought something was wrong with it, but because I generally prefer the anonymity of a hotel to the intimacy of residing in a stranger's habitat. I don't even like staying with friends, for the most part, so bed and breakfast situations can be awkward.

The host—Khaoula—was a smart young Tunisian woman with a background in interior design. Slim with a pixie cut, she seemed too green to be so invested in restoring 18th century architecture in the Tunis medina, but here she was, dedicated to preserving the past and building a community. Tunis was the heart of the Arab Spring. Perhaps I should not have been surprised.

El Patio guesthouse reminded me of a gorgeous riad I'd once stayed at in Fez, though that had ultimately been quirky as I'd been the only inhabitant. (Some other guests had cancelled, I believe.) Every detail had been attended to, every bit of decor carefully considered. I snapped a few photos—the small decorative tiles on the windowsill, the corresponding medallion in the top center of the same window box—these were clever additions.

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.

A Little Off

Here are some fun businesses I spotted back on Djerba.

In Tunis, I also saw a Pizza Hot, but didn't get a photo in time as I was busy reflecting on Pizza Hat, a restaurant I once patronized in Damascus.

Lunch on the Run

"Small museum with a few mosaics" is how my ancient guidebook described the museum in El Jem.

Small compared to the Bardo, sure. But the mosiacs were marvelous and the backyard held the remains of a large Roman villa named Africa House. I was gobsmacked, having zero expectations of the museum.

Well worth a visit.

I was anxious to get to the train, but also hungry. I hurried back to the main street to look for food options.

I ended up with chicken shawarma on a chapati, scarfed down while running to a train, which turned out to be late.

It's Okay, He's a Friend from Work

The train was super-comfy compared to being stuffed into a louage, even though I've certainly been on nicer trains.

Around noon, I disembarked in El Jem. I could see my destination towering over the street at the far end of town. 

Whoa. 

That's it. That's why I stopped off here to look around during my train trip from Gabes to Tunis. 

Train Travel in Tunisia

How was my phone running down so fast in Tunisia, I wondered, glancing at the screen while waiting for the train from Gabes to El Jem. At home, it keeps a charge forever.

I switched on Airplane Mode for now. (Later, I'd learn to keep the wi-fi off as it seemed to lose power from constantly seeking a signal.) Surely, there'd be a spot to charge on the train. I'd bought a first class ticket in hopes of there being a power point in each row. But just in case, I'd been fully charged when I left my hotel room on Djerba, just like I had bought a cappuccino and now picked up a croissant from the gare snack shop in case there was nothing to eat on the train. Though I'd seldom been on a train where there were no food options, even if it was a guy wandering around with a tray of snacks. 

The morning was beautiful and just the right mix of chilly and sunny, like spring at home. I'd been prepared for this weather having lived in Cairo during one "winter" some years back, but I probably needed to have brought along a thin fleece for the chillier moments.

I exited the station and walked over to the train outside on the tracks. Through all my trips abroad, I've learned not to judge the interior of the train by the exterior, but even so, the outside looked pretty worn. Still...I'd been on great trains in Egypt and Morocco that were nothing special on the outside. I pulled myself up onto a weatherbeaten car with a giant number 1 on the side.

I found a seat that didn't fall back when I sat down on its worn, plush, teal cushioning.

I laughed at myself now. Sure, a place to charge a phone. Had I just started traveling yesterday? Ha. I wondered what the cars with the number twos on the outside looked like inside.

To the Gare

Another morning, another minibus.

I left my cheap-and-cheerful (and kind of cold and broken, to be honest) hotel right after the call to prayer echoed through the Houmt Souk medina. The sky wasn't light yet, and I thought about using my phone as a flashlight as I walked along the cobblestone alleys hoping to get out without a sprained ankle. But before I had the chance to worry much, I was out of the medina and along the regular paved road that led to the louage lot.

The ticket office hadn't opened for the day as I asked hooded men standing around which was the louage to Gabes. They motioned me into a minibus, which filled up with sleepy commuters in about ten minutes. We zipped off to the ferry as the sky brightened.

The trip to Gabes was short enough—an hour? Two?—and as we approached the outskirts of town, passengers started asking the driver to stop and let them out here and there. This emboldened me to keep an eye on my phone map, and when we turned near the gare, the train station, I asked the driver to stop.

"Stop?"

"Nam. Le Gare. I go to le gare." I'd been speaking a horrific mix of bad French, worse Arabic, and amateur English while in Tunisia. I'd reasoned with myself it was better to speak badly in French and Arabic than to do constant charades, and it seemed to be working.

The driver let me out across the street from a coffee shop. Not like a Starbucks, but more like a place men hang out at night, smoking and bro-bonding. Ah, fuck it, I thought. I marched in and ordered a cappuccino to go, then walked over to the train station. I bought a first class ticket. A splurge! Maybe I'd have somewhere to plug in my phone in first class.

Han Shot First

The louage minibus taxi made its way through the afternoon traffic out of Gabes. About an hour later, we pulled up to the car ferry to Djerba.

I was just going to the first town on the island, so I thought about walking onto the ferry, but was worried it would be cold. The louage had to wait in line for a minute, then the driver surged ahead, trying to bully his way onto the ferry.

He didn't make it. He sighed in frustration, but then another ferry opened up on the next pier over. The louage driver pushed ahead of a bus and pulled all the way to the front of the boat. He shut down the engine, not close enough to the edge, apparently. The driver and a ferry attendant rolled the louage a few more inches.

The crossing was smooth, though I would have gotten out of the minibus and walked around if I hadn't been squashed into the middle.

On the other end, I used my phone map to track our progress, then leaned over the seat in front of me.

"Here. Stop here."

"Here? Not Houmt Souk?"

"Here."

Why indeed would I want to disembark in Ajim?

There was a non-historical site I needed to see there.

I made my way from the roundabout, following the coordinates I'd programmed into my phone, and there it was.

The cantina.

I'd like to say it was a moving moment to see something I'd first watched on film in 1977, but 1977 was a long time ago, and the Mos Eisley cantina exterior has probably seen better days.

Off to See Aunt Beru

The drive from Gabes to Nouvelle Matmata was short, maybe 25 minutes, and I spent longer trying to move on to Old Matmata than I did in the share taxi.

Today was market day in New Matmata, so the streets were packed with vegetable sellers and shoppers. I asked someone where to get the share taxi to Old Matmata, and he told me to wait. Various share taxis pulled up and each time I'd look at him. He'd shake his head and I'd wait a bit longer.

Finally, he frantically motioned at me to run. He pointed to a share taxi. I walked over to it—too slowly as it turned out—only to have a huge family push me aside. They piled in and took all the seats. I asked the driver what to do. "No room," he said with an exasperated shake of his head, leaving me there with other would-be passengers.

Tunisia is much safer and more regulated than other places I'd been around the world.

As I waited for the next louage, it started to rain, later prompting a remark from a friend that the new moisture farmers at the Lars homestead were a lot better than Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had been. Ha. 

Finally, I got my seat in a louage, and we drove over a hilly strip of tarmac into Old Matmata. That's where Luke Skywalker grew up in the original Star Wars movie, and where 400 years ago, people dug homes out of the ground to create cool pit dwellings around central courtyards. Most people have since moved to modern housing in New Matmata, but some people still lived in the traditional homes, and the spot I was going to today was a hotel. Not to stay in—just to look around.

The louage entered town just after noon and then doubled back to the transit center, so I was disoriented by the time I stepped out into the rain. A tout tried to get my attention, but I put up my hood and walked away. I definitely wasn't looking for a place to stay or a tour guide. I had a place to stay, back on Djerba. My goal was to get in, see the Lars homestead, and then get out.

The first part worked well. I used my phone and my preprogrammed GPS coordinates to visit Hotel Sidi Driss, the boyhood home of Luke Skywalker and real-life troglodyte pit dwelling dug out of the ground, then I walked back to the transit lot.

Changing Taxis in Gabes

I promptly got lost in Gabes.

It's always anyone's guess on if you should listen to the random guy you ask for directions or whether you should use Google Maps on your phone. I'd needed the phone in Medenine, but here in Gabes, I should have listened to the guy. 

Google Maps took me off-course to the wrong louage station, but I did have a nice walk around a busy street, passing by what (no doubt this is culturally rude of me) looked like a Jedi robe outlet.

I backtracked, asking other people as I went for the louages to Matmata, and it wasn't until I got back to my starting point that a brilliant man pointed to a building in the distance. 

"See that sign on that building?" 

"Yes." 

"Turn right at that building."

Some people are really good at giving directions.

Morning in Mos Espa

A month ago, I'd typed a Tunisia plan into a Word doc on my laptop.

Louage (share taxi) to Gabes, Matmata, old Matmata, then back to Matmata, Gabes, then to Medenine and back to Djerba.

Why had I done it in that order, I mused now as I made a last-minute swap in my itinerary. I left my hotel at quarter of six and headed to the louage terminal.

The sun had not risen yet and the station was dead.

Uh-oh. 

That wasn't what I'd expected. I wondered if I'd just missed the six a.m. louages, or if maybe the day just hadn't really started yet. I walked across the street to the bus station and asked around.

"Medenine?"

A bus driver shook his head and started up a local bus. A pair of travelers sitting on a bench noted my request, talked among themselves, then motioned for me to follow. We all three went back to the louage station, where a transformation had occurred in the five minutes I'd been gone. The ticket booth was lit and open, and some minibuses engines were on.

I bought a ticket to Medenine and was motioned into a minibus. Ten minutes later, the eight seats were full and we pulled out, heading across the Roman causeway.

The Roman causeway was built in the 6th century BC, but it was damaged in 1551 during an escape by the corsair Dragut and his fleet, when they'd been hemmed in by the Spanish navy. They simply cut a canal through the causeway and escaped into the night. The causeway wasn't repaired until the French rebuilt it in 1953, atop the old Roman base.

That entire paragraph I just typed is suspect. Facts were thin on the ground, but there definitely was an old Roman causeway, updated in 1953, and my share taxi definitely took it to Medenine.

I was there to see Ksar Medenine, which was the easiest Mos Espa location to see via public transport. There are two other ksars used as Anakin Skywalker's home, but this was the one that I didn't need to take a guide and a car to visit.

Disoriented from having no landmarks, I got out of the louage and asked the first person I saw.

"Ou est Ksar Medenine?

They motioned me down to a roundabout. I asked someone else, got another wave, and hiked half a block before I realized this couldn't be right. I'd plugged the GPS coordinates into my phone ahead of time, so I fired it up and followed slowly, up a muddy lane to a vegetable market. I took a right down an alley—this was all highly suspect, but the ancient granaries unexpectedly lay before me.

At the End of the Day

I had some couscous and vegetables at Les Palmiers, right down the alley from my hotel, then headed back to turn in for the night.

My day had started in Valencia, Spain, and then had stops in Barcelona and Tunis before arriving on Djerba in Tunisia.

I didn't yet feel that certainty and confidence travel gives me, but I could see it barreling down at me. Tomorrow I'd spend the entire day sightseeing by local transport. That oughta do it.