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<\/a>A pint, in Tunisia felt very, very odd. Seeing vest-wearing blokes drinking pints in the street today had me gawping like a fool.<\/p><\/div>\n
This morning we chatted with the German couple, fellow motorhome tourers we found when we arrived here at the youth hostel. They’ve been in Tunisia 8 days and we’re the first other motorhome they have seen. We shared some stories about the fun of working in IT (he’d had a heart attack brought on by a global SAP roll out) and our experience of travelling the south of the country (they’d toured Tunisia before, but were nervous this time about the potential for terrorism in the far south). They then set off for Kairouan, where we’ll hopefully bump into them tomorrow.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The security guard down the road claimed this was his bike. Maybe it was, his body language says different (he didn’t touch it once as we chatted about it). It’s an incredible machine anywhere, never mind here among the rusting million mile mopeds.<\/p><\/div>\n
Heading on foot for the coast road, a pack of five or six wild dogs gave us a scare and entertained the locals. Usually these creatures will leg it at the sight of a stone being picked up, but this crew were made of sterner stuff, facing up to me as Ju carried Charlie on the other side of the street. Once we were past them we hit the long white, clean beach, devoid of deck chairs, unsurprisingly with zero ‘no dogs’ signs, since no-one has dogs. A mile later and we were in town.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Charlie legs it along another beach, managing a very passable Roman Salute into the bargain.<\/p><\/div>\n
Tunisia has these weird areas called Zone Touristiques. They’re miles away from anywhere. The feeling seems to be that tourists will only want to come and stay in an all-inclusive hotel, not venturing into town, unless maybe they’re on an organised excursion. A couple of times Brits have bemoaned this to us: we’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing around us, nothing to see or to do in the evening. On the other hand, you can get a week here, including flights, all-inclusive, for \u00a3300 a head. Incredible. Enough folks are taking advantage of it that the place is swamped with hotels (rough to seriously swanky), bars (what an amazing sight to see blokes in vests sat in the sun drinking pints of beer in the centre of an Islamic town while the call to prayer rings out at mega-volume) and a vast range of eateries and tat shops.<\/p>\n
<\/a>DJ Who? is playing the weird Texan ranch club place around the corner tonight. We’re staying in, saddos.<\/p><\/div>\n
I thought I’d hate it, but I don’t, it’s interesting to see this closer mixing of cultures, and I like beer. The odd woman walks past the mosque in the full burka, others stick to the ubiquitous head scarf and flowing clothes, others wear jeans, their hair flowing, sun-glasses glinting. A similar range in men: a chap on the beach with a thick full\u00a0moustache-less\u00a0beard reminded me of \u00a0the parody Four Lions, while English, German and Italian chaps\u00a0purposefully\u00a0strut. I know this strut, since I do it myself. It’s a strut which tries to say ‘I know where I’m going, I’m in control, I can deal with anything’. It’s a bit of a farce really – even in this Westernised pocket of the country a few days or weeks isn’t enough to prepare us Europeans, to understand how to deal with the relative chaos,\u00a0unfamiliarity\u00a0and\u00a0uncertainty\u00a0of the culture here. You either go with the flow, or you’ll hate it.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Few women go the whole hog, so that those that do really stand out.<\/p><\/div>\n
Anyway, I’m again prattling on. We took in the sights as the sun broke through cloud, the BBC said a high of 23 degrees C today and it felt it, a beautiful blue sky by the early afternoon. At least the outside of the sights that is. The ribat looks very similar to the one in Monastir but with no Monty Python attachment. The mosque, we imagine at least, looks much like most mosques.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Sousse ribat, a beggar to the left completing the medieval atmosphere.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Sousse nippers, a happy little couple of faces they were!<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>The medina’s got plenty mogs. We keep Charlie away as they look far meaner than him.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>No horse meat here folks.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Hello? Hello? Look in my shop? Do you good price? Everything five dinar?<\/p><\/div>\n
The medina was much fun, as they always are. Various levels of scammers (everything in my shop is five dinar – hmm, no it’s not is it?) and hard sellers (one bloke had a decent grip of me before I punched him out – just kidding – I set Charlie on him) and more scammers (here’s a free necklace as it’s a festival day – boolsheet my friend – this chap actually tried this on us twice, I laughed hard enough the first time he must have had a goldfish\u00a0memory\u00a0to try again).<\/p>\n
<\/a>Many more strokes for mogwai in the medina.<\/p><\/div>\n
Ju did more haggling, as I did my best to cock it up, siding with the seller as I felt sorry for him in the face of the ‘every penny’s a prisoner’ assault from Ju. All this action can make a place feel pretty awful – here’s our medina survival guide<\/a><\/strong>, how we make it more fun.<\/p>\n