borogove

sabrina here in arrezzo. according to lonely planet, arrezzo's not much to look at, having endured lots of bombing during the war. we've loved it though, partly because it does seem like a regular town that we could imagine ourselves living in. and it actually does have an old medieval center that's still very much lived in. we walked around it and found our way to a park at the top of the hill, where school kids were playing soccer (with one of the girls acting as ref, whistle and all), and 3 other girls had cornered one poor francesco so that they could declare that they did not like him. after the kids left, we spent some time enjoying the 360 views of the surrounding tuscan hills, complete with vineyards, farmhouses, and apartment complexes.

that evening, we decided to catch star wars episode iii at one of the local cinemas. we were one of 8 people in the theater (most people were catching the school play that was taking place in the main theater upstairs), and the quality of the screening was such that it seemed like it was indeed taking place years before episode iv. also, it was dubbed in italian, so the love scenes were probably more palatable to us than they would have been in the original. serge was able to understand most of the movie, given the similarities between italian and spanish, so he explained some of the finer points to me. all in all a very enjoyable experience.

well, we actually share it with our new landlord who lives upstairs, but we still love the fact that we'll be going through it every day (tunisia is full of these arched, studded blue doors that we've been coveting). basically, right before we left for italy, we signed a lease on an apartment for the month of june! it was the only place we looked at, and it's way too big for us (3 bedrooms), but the rental agent couldn't get us anything else, so we decided to take it. luckily the lease was not nearly as complex as nyc ones are, so even with our rudimentary french skills, we were able to understand it. we are very excited about being able to cook and have a living room to hang out in -- and extra space for our visitors! yes, please come visit if you can! i know it's very short notice, but we have 2 extra beds, and we're in a gorgeous white-and-blue town on a hill by the sea -- Sidi Bou Said -- just a 30-minute commute from downtown tunis. the apartment is a bit run-down but certainly in better shape than some of the hotels we've stayed in, and it's huge and cool and in a great location. the owner is a very kindly middle-aged gentleman named cherif, and his family goes back several generations in Sidi Bou Said. we're looking forward to getting to know him better.

sabrina here. so we're in rome now, land of hi-speed internet connections, qwerty keyboards, costly lodgings, and lots of chinese people! we're staying in a youth hostel in which our 2 beds in a room of 10 cost as much as our private, beautifully tiled room with vaulted brick ceiling off a courtyard on a hill by the sea in Tunisia. as hostels go, though, this one is pretty decent -- sparkling clean bathrooms and quiet, respectful guests (the owner sends away those he deems likely to be rowdy, even if they've made reservations). and it's in a convenient neighborhood that not only is close to public transportation but also appears to be something of a chinatown. so so far we've had chinese food every day. the food isn't wonderful, but it's been nice to have rice and dumplings and baby bok choy and to listen to all the chinese folks speaking italian.


getting here was itself lots of fun -- we took a 17-hour boat that's sort of in between a ferry and a cruise -- there's a sundeck/heliport, a bar, an arcade, a cafeteria, and a tv room with reclining chairs for those who don't purchase cabin space. no pool, though I was sure I saw one pictured in the brochure. there were only about 50 people on the ferry with us, though the boat probably has cabin and TV room space for at least 6 times that many. we got off at civitavecchia, a very pleasant port town, and from there caught a train to rome, about an hour away. we'll be taking a ferry with another company back to tunis later, this time from just south of genoa, and we're looking forward to it.


after seeing the other colosseum, the forum, the spanish steps, and st. peter's basilica, we decided to hop on a random city bus (we chose #36) and see where it took us. we ended up in a lovely residential neighborhood and entered the second pizza place we saw; soon after we sat down, the tables all around us completely filled up with locals of all ages, and we soon found out why -- the food was delicious and cheap.

we also decided to spend our final night (before going to meet serge's friends at the villa) in the town of arezzo, for no other reason than that it's a train stop at which we'd have to make a transfer anyway. so we'll see how that goes.

serge at the keys today. we are actually in rome right now, somewhat unexpectedly, after the ferry schedule--which has mystified us for some time now--worked out so that we were able to include a quick visit to the eternal city into our journey to tuscany. very nice and all that.

so, a quick bit of background: a very good friend of mine, katherine, was in the peace corps in tunisia in the early 90s, and lived in a town called ain jeloula, where she made many friends with whom she has not kept in very close contact. she told us before our trip to go visit them. so, last saturday, we decided to do it.

we were in kairouan, a very nice and very conservative town a couple hours from tunis and, after some discreet inquiries, we learned that ain jeloula was about an hour away by louage, the shared taxis we use to get around where there are no convenient buses or trains. when we tried to get a regular taxi driver to take us to the station, he was flummoxed for a bit, thinking we were mispronouncing another town that was more popular with the tourists, but we eventually were able to convince him that we wanted to go to AJ, and we found a louage and we were off.

we arrived in AJ after a drive through some beautiful non-Saharan countryside, armed only with the names of two sisters, we just started asking people if they knew them. slowly but surely we were directed around the (very small) town until we were given a 2-block ride in a pickup to meet their brother. brandishing photos of me and katherine together to establish my credentials, we tried to explain who we were. in typical tunisian fashion, he invited us into his house and started calling his siblings to tell them about the surprise visitors. in short order the house was full of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, all excited about the friends of katherine who had appeared so suddenly. some old photos of katherine were trotted out and we updated every new arrival on the details of her life (married, living in LA, and she has a brand new baby, in case you're curious) and the story of how we had arrived. my favorite moment came when we realized that the driver of the louage was one of the brothers of the family, who we had never thought to ask for directions.

the two sisters who we had initially asked about both live in other towns now, but they told us to sit tight because they wanted to come talk to us. while we waited we had lunch and watched the videos of the party preceding the circumcision of two boys from the younger generation. then we watched the actual circumcision. good times all around. several of the family members speak excellent english, so we were able to communicate much better than we usually do.

the missing sisters eventually turned up to much fanfare. stories were repeated, hearts were warmed, cokes were consumed, many photos were taken. also, we were given some "natural gum", which i can say without hesitation was the worst chewing experience of my life. naturally, of course, i played it cool. in fact, i was playing it so cool all day long that nobody realized that i was a bit ill (not from the gum or the lunch. also, mom, i'm feeling fine now) until i rather loudly started throwing up in a small bathroom with, as it turned out, excellent acoustics. i was prescribed a healthy dose of the locally-made honey and all was well.

we agreed that it was one of our best adventures, and it was especially rewarding because we were not overly confident that we would be able to find these people with as little information as we had. imagine our pleasant surprise at receiving such a heaping helping of tunisian hospitality.

sabrina here. so after that second sandstorm, i decided i'd had enough of the arid south and we headed to the coast. (you may or may not recall that serge mentioned we'd be going to tataouine to see the berber settlements that served as models in some of the star wars movies. well, we didn't.) on the way to the port city of mahdia, we stopped at el jem, which boasts a colosseum that's smaller but better preserved than the one in rome. mahdia didn't have the beach we'd been hoping for (still-cold water and greyish sand littered with both garbage and lots of furry brown balls from the ocean), but the sea breeze was quite a relief. the medina is small and beautiful, surrounded by rocky shores and blue-green mediterranean water. and filled with weavers of shawls, blankets, and headbands. the city was about to host a silk festival, although we didn't stay for it. we did poke around one weaver's workshop, and he showed us the silk bridal robe he was crafting, which will sell for about 320 USD. patterns in the fabric are made by stepping on various combinations of the 8 or so pedals on the loom, which then lift or lower different strands of thread. the appropriate spool of thread is then pushed along a runner (sort of like the ridge on a blackboard that holds the erasers) between the upper and lower strands to get to the other side. ok, that probably wasn't a very illustrative explanation -- just know that it was way cool. the weaver was also a very nice man who didn't once ask us to purchase anything. so we went back later and got a silk shawl for my mom.

after 2 nights in mahdia, we took the commuter train up to sousse, arguably the country's premiere tourist destination. prior to coming to this region, we hadn't seen a ton of tourists -- mostly tunisian and/or other arabic-speaking tourists in tozeur, plus french and german tour groups in matmata and ksar ghilane. in mahdia and sousse, though, we've seen tons of sun-starved brits and russians, in addition to the ubiquitous french and germans. people never, ever ask us if we're american -- they usually ask serge if he's german, italian, or spanish (or, once, lithuanian!). and of course they think i'm japanese -- though i can't say we've seen many japanese folks.

despite all the tourists, though, sousse was a fun place, as it's a bustling, cosmopolitan city where tunisians are just as likely to be sitting on the beach and in the cafes as are europeans. it also has a beautiful medina, in which we saw our first mosque courtyard (which is as far as non-muslims are allowed to go into a mosque, if that) as well as a restored funduq (the inns at which caravans would stop for the night).

in sousse we also decided to upgrade our living arrangements, indulging in a 28 USD room (we'd been staying in 15- to 20- USD places), which we were very excited about until serge discovered the many mosquitoes lying in wait for us. he spent all night doing battle with them, killing at least 20 and leaving one particularly bloody corpse smeared across our dresser mirror for the management to see.


what we were most excited about coming to sousse for, however, was the Hong Kong restaurant mentioned in the Rough Guide as one of just a handful of chinese restaurants in the entire country. we've loved tunisian food so far, but it's been 3 weeks. and i'm always curious about chinese food in other countries, which, up to this point, has never been difficult to find. so after a roundabout tour of the beach hotels near the restaurant address, we finally found it on a small side street. and it was closed. out of business. it took me a while to recover from that disappointment; 45 minutes later we ended up at La Fiesta, whose claim to being a spanish restaurant was the presence of paella on the menu. alas. we'll just have to seek out those other 4 chinese places and hope for the best.

the next afternoon, we set off for kairouan, one of the holiest cities in the muslim world. while here, we're also planning to take a day trip to the village of ain jelloula, where serge's friend katherine spent her peace corps years. we've brought pictures of katherine and serge together to help us track down her old friends, even though we don't have their addresses (katherine did give serge instructions on how to find their houses, but he can't remember them).


we've also finally made our plans for getting ourselves to tuscany to meet serge's friends for a week in a villa. our original plan had been to take the ferry to sardinia, cross sardinia, take a ferry to corsica and cross corsica, and then take a ferry to the mainland, but alas, that grand adventure will not come to pass. we weren't able to find a ferry that goes from tunisia to sardinia, so instead we'll be taking one directly to the mainland, near rome.

we've also got some volunteer opportunities lined up for when we return from italy -- at a school for the handicapped and at the red crescent. so things are shaping up nicely.

serge here. we spent the weekend (well, saturday night) back in the sahara, this time with the de la Russi Ibrahim (all spellings of names approximate) family in their "village", which consists of 3 bedouin families living in tents and a bunch of sheep and goats. also 2 hens and a rooster. oh, and lots of mice, as sabrina discovered to her dismay. as our more dedicated readers will remember, we met the oldest son, Abdel Majid, last week and he invited us to meet his parents, who live in the sahara during the summer, apparently.

the village is 25 km from a very small town, so it is very much in the middle of nowhere. we arrived in late afternoon, and sabrina was instantly offered a full mug of fresh goat milk--she wouldn't let me taste it, but she says it tasted like goat cheese. as fate would have it, our arrival coincided with the arrival of another saharan windstorm, so we spent most of our time in the family tent. it's about 10 x 10 and maybe 5 feet tall at its highest point. the floor is sand and there is a courtyard designated by a stack of wood that was also the source of all of our firewood, so i guess the courtyard gets rebuilt fairly regularly. attached to the yard is a little pen that is the fairly easily breached corral for the goats and sheep, who seemed to take it in turns escaping and nibbling on the fence. the chickens live in the tent, but wander pretty freely around the place. it was, obviously, about as far removed from NYC as we could be.

our evening was uneventful in many ways, but we certainly had some singular weather--in the middle of the sahara, it started to rain. it rained on and off for a few hours, sometimes fairly hard. you can imagine our surprise. apparently this sort of thing happens with some regularity--the family has some way to collect the rainwater, which is stored in a goatskin that has been sewn shut except for one leg, which is the spout (the hair is still on the skin, so at first we thought it might be our dinner).

after a dinner of desert bread and bean soup (this time, sabrina was allowed to assist in the preparation), washed down with some water from the dead goat, some of the family went visiting to the neighbors, but we stayed around the fire and talked and sang songs until bedtime, when all 10 of us just lay down on the blankets thrown on the sand. i was near the door, so i got covered with sand during the night, but i was luckier than sabrina, who was sleeping near the wheat and therefore spent the night with mice running across her pillow. not quite the ritz, but a fun time. fun, that is, until the rooster started crowing at 4:45 am. we got out of bed after daybreak and had desert bread with fresh goat milk and sugar, then basically just milled around and yelled at the sheep until it was time to go at around noon.

we didn't add much to the equation, useless as we are in the desert as well as unable to speak more than a few words of arabic. we were, however, able to share our medical wonders with the family. various pains were made to vanish with the aspirin we had, and our lotion was just the ticket for mom's dry skin. the best, though was dad's vague malady that appeared to be sun-related. sabrina rubbed aloe vera and tiger balm on his head and he said it felt better. he must have enjoyed her ministrations, because when he went out visiting for the evening, dressed in his desert finery, he was also covered with the strong smell of tiger balm. we also left them with a few small gifts, but we're not sure if we'll be able to take them up on their invitation to become equal partners in buying a new house for the animals (if indeed we understood them correctly).

serge here. after staggering out of the sahara we left douz for parts west, to a town called tozeur that is apparently a vacation destination for tunisians and other arabs from the region. it has a huge palm plantation and, my favorite, the beginnings of a golf course. it's still under construction, but i'm sure it will be surreal when it's finished--acres and acres of lush green grass right in the middle of the sahara. the locals seem to enjoy the novelty of running across a field of grass for what could very likely be the first time in their lives. well, we liked tozeur a lot, and we made it our base for a few days of visiting local oasis towns.

pretty much every town in southern tunisia is centered on a small palm plantation, most of which have been inhabited for a thousand years or more. we went to visit nefta, where we avoided the heat of the day in the narrow, high streets of the old town and had lunch at a cafe in the palm plantation. the next day we went to tamerza, a small town high in the mountains near the algerian border that is home to two very improbable waterfalls (there were ducks! in the desert!) and a relatively intact old city. apparently the residents of tamerza moved en masse into the new town one day, rather than slowly replacing the old town over centuries, so the ruins of the old town are still standing just outside the new town. we enjoyed the ancient feel of the place as well as the spectacular views from the mountain south across the seemingly endless sahara.


when we left tozeur we headed deep into the sahara to a place called ksar ghilane. we had to hire a 4-wheel drive to take us across many miles of unpaved road through nothing but desert and wild camels. the town is a very small oasis with a spring-fed pool about 20 feet wide and 4 feet deep. near the pool is the start of a sea of sand dunes--just picture the classic saharan photo. if you add camel trains returning to the oasis from a crumbling roman fort at sunset, you have an idea of our evening in ksar ghilane. especially if you add a bunch of french folks on package tours and one of them has a very funny mustache. we slept in a tent with sand for the floor and then headed back into the mountains to a town called matmata, where everyone lives underground.


apparently a long time ago the matmata tribe realized that their mountain territory was perfect for digging homes out of the ground. so they dig huge courtyards, sometimes several are connected, with rooms dug out of the walls. the earth insulates it so it's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. our hotel was a converted pit dwelling and, on our hottest day so far, it was extremely comfortable. another hotel was the setting for a scene in the first star wars (the set is still in place, in fact), and apparently lots of the films have scenes shot in tunisia's desert. i'm told there is a significant amount of star wars-based tourism.

now we're back on the coast to cool off, and tomorrow we go to tataouine, where they apparently have another kind of strange housing, but i don't think any of them are hotels.

tunisia has been lovely so far, and the people have been warm and friendly and very patient with my abysmal efforts at speaking french. and we both have very nice tans.

so i've finally found a qwerty keyboard! although the time i'm gaining by typing more quickly is probably not making up for the partiularly slow connection here.

anyway, to get back to where i left off -- our life in the desert looked something like this:

9:30 am: set out
10:15 am: stop to rest
10:30 am: set out again
11:45 am - 5:30 pm: stop for lunch and siesta
5:30 pm: have tea
5:45 pm: set out
6:15 pm: stop to rest
6:30 pm: set out again
7:15 pm: break camp for the night

so we weren't able to get very far during the time that we were actually trekking. each day, we spent a lot of time crouching under the shade of a bush, trying to sleep or read. or, in serge's case, observing the behavior of desert beetles, of which there are many varieties. we also spent lots of time watching kamal cook, because he mostly refused to let us help, unless it was to gather wood for the fire. but we did get to see some really lovely dunes and had one night sleeping under the clearest sky ever.

the next night we were looking forward to the same, but during dinner, the wind started blowing in out of nowhere, throwing sand into our eyes and our pot of stew and showing no signs of letting up. we managed to drag ourselves and our sleeping bags behind a bush, which provided some shelter from the wind, and kamal promptly went to sleep. serge and i, however, were not so lucky (or, rather, just not so completely at ease with the vagaries of desert life), and pretty much stayed up all night. we returned to douz the next day completely covered in sand.

for those of you who aren't reading the comments, our friend sharon very kindly posted the following link to a map of tunisia:

http://www.tourismtunisia.com/maps/tunisia.html

sabrina here again. so to continue from my last post, we've been meeting quite a few people in the last week. on our bus trip from gabes to douz, serge became friendly with a man named ahmed, who had taken his mother to see a medical specialist of some sort in gabes and was on his way back to his home in douz. ahmed invited us to have a drink with him sometime, and we're hoping to do that when we head back to douz on thursday. the main reason we'll be going back to douz, though, is that we've been adopted by the family of one abdel majid de la russie ibrahim, on whose horse-cart we hitched a ride during our first afternoon walking around the douz oasis. so far, he's taught us to ride bareback on his horse, whom serge was given the honor of naming (he chose man o' war), taught serge how to climb a palm tree, and brought us home to meet 5 of his 8 siblings. they're bedouins, although only their parents still live out in the village with all the goats and sheep (sheep!!), and we're all going to go out and visit them on saturday.

but the main reason we'd come to douz at all was to see the sahara, and that we did, during a 2-night camel trek that was very exciting. luckily, camels walk very slowly, so we didn't actually need to ride them the entire time, though we put in a good few hours on them. serge's camel, barshik, tried to throw him twice during our first hour, so we avoided him for the rest of the trip. we decided that barshik was a bit depressed and wished to be free. the alpha male in the pair, labsha, apparently competes in the camel-fighting portion of the annual festival du sahara in douz and appeared pretty content with his lot.

our guide, a 21-year-old former cook named kamal, was a pretty good kid, although he made cucumber salad for us for lunch, which serge very bravely choked down. he also made bread from scratch for us, sometimes more than once a day, burying the dough in a mound of embers and then beating the resulting loaf to clear away the ashes.

stay tuned for details of sleeping under the shade of bushes, playing with desert beetles, and a windstorm that kept us up all night:

Sabrina here:

So it’s been a very busy week, and we’ve lots to tell. First of all, I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that Esperance won the football match (and is now in the finals for the Tunisian Cup), although we ended up missing the first half because we didn’t know that the clocks had been set forward that very morning. By the time we got to the café to watch the game, Esperance had a substantial lead and it wasn’t very exciting anymore. So we went for a walk along the outer edge of the medina and eventually came to the neighbourhood of Halfaouine, where things were quite exciting: folks were practically dancing in the streets for joy at the Esperance victory. Cafes were flying the Esperance colors, people were selling Esperance memorabilia, and someone lit a sparkler. The neighbourhood seemed like it’d be fun on a normal day too, what with all the street vendors selling their spices, fruits, and bread.

The next morning we set out for the south on the coastal train that stops in the city of Gabes. I sat down and pulled out my knitting, whereupon the woman sitting next to me reached down into her bag and pulled out her crocheting. She taught me how to crochet and admired the beauty of my circular needles. Apparently, you can’t find circular needles in Tunisia. So I gave them to her.

From Gabes, we went on to Douz to start our camel trek into the Sahara, which will have to wait until tomorrow because I’ve had enough of this keyboard.

After 3 days in Tunis, we are feeling right at home. On our first night here, a friend of a friend invited us to dinner at his family's house. The old sayings about Tunisian hospitality are right on the money: we were treated to an overabundance of tasty delights. The one thing that was kept from us was some kind of Tunisian pickle dish, which we were told would ruin our taste for Tunisian fare. Dinner was a combination of new tastes, sign language and English/French/Arabic lessons, followed by a late-night trip to the local coffee shop, which was packed at midnight. Sabrina and one of our hosts were 2 of 3 women in the place. We're told that there isn't a lot to do, so most folks just hang out in cafes to watch the people go by. We've enjoyed it so far--the main thing that we've noticed is how well everyone dresses.

On Saturday we woke up late and went to a neighborhood by the sea, where we sat on the beach and ate fish (not at the same time). We managed to navigate the various public transportation systems to get there without serious trouble, so we now feel ready for a trip into rural Tunisia on the bewildering array of long-distance travel options. Aside from sitting in cafes, we haven't been too active-still tired from the trip and the weeks leading up to it. We've spent some time in Tunis' famous Medina, where they sell everything in the world on narrow ancient streets. And a good percentage of the shopkeepers say konichi-wa to Sabrina, which is kind of fun. Serge also got the world's longest haircut there, from a nearsighted barber who keeps his shampoo in miniature gin bottles.

We've been eating lots of tuna, olives, eggs, and harissa (a red pepper paste), often all together. We love the street vendors here and wish we could hire them for our wedding. Anyway, the big football game is about to start, so we need to run. Vive Esperance!