Arriving to Tunis

I left Cape Town on Sunday 4 PM to Tunis via Jburg and Paris. The weekend had been busy with a campout at AISCT grounds and bunch of Finns at our house for dinner and sauna on Saturday evening.

In the plane, I realized that I had forgotten something: My noise cancelling headphones were not in my bag. Annoying but not too serious like forgetting a laptop charger - which has happened to me.

During the long flight over Africa I had good dinner and watched the latest James Bond movie: Casino Royal. Definitely a change in tone there: grittier, more down to Earth.

I arrived to Paris CdG at 6 AM. It was dark, wet and cold. The connecting flight was slightly delayed. There was some problems in getting people through gate into the plane after the first half had already embarked. After waiting ten minutes in the strong breeze from the open door, we got into the tube and walked into the waiting bus. It continued standing there in the open with all the doors ajar for quite some time. I started shivering before the doors finally closed and the bus started moving very slowly. After a while it stopped. Moved again, stopped, and reversed. The doors opened and we walked up the stairs into an other plastic tube leading into the waiting plane. The heating was on and I soon started feeling better. When I had sat down, there were big snow flakes flying around the plane.

Two hours away, Tunisia was bathing in sunlight. Very Mediterranean, low, mostly white-washed houses spread around making the capital, Tunis. Alia, the course organiser, was at the airport waiting to take me to the hotel. I had time to take a shower and rest a little before the the whole course arrived back to hotel for lunch. The food was excellent with salads and soup for starters; fish, pike perch looking one that is called loup ( fr. for wolf); and fruit.

Alia recommended the most famous museum in Tunis, Bardo, for me to visit during the afternoon. I talked about it concierge to get a map, porter to get a taxi and to the taxi driver who took me there. No-one mentioned that museums are closed on Mondays! I took an other taxi back and worked on my presentations for the afternoon.

Alia and the course came back after 6 PM. Together with American Gary, his Swedish wife and their 19 month son, Jamie and Kenian Trushar  we drove into Madina for a walk and a drink of hot, sweet tea.

Dinner was found at the northern side of the Medina in the Bab Suika area. There is a small simple restaurant selling Tunisian's best lablabi: big chunk of hard white bread is crumbled into a bowl and covered with chick pea stew and spiced with harissa (olive and chili mix), ground coriander, olive oil and salt. Delicious! The place is simply known by its owner's names: Imaed Oueld et Haj Mahmoud.

We had dessert from an other shop: glass of L'ben (fresh youghurt, fin: viili, swed: fil, hind: dahi), freshly squeezed orange juice and a piece of almond and cous-cous-based sweet confusingly also known as harissa. Heavenly!