I woke up a couple times at dawn-ish by the call to prayer. I guess the Hostel is right by a Mosque. I was able to check my email and found one from Connie Lee and one from another couch surfer with phone numbers, so I wrote them down and headed out to explore Tunis. The Medina was amazing and I didn’t even mind getting lost immediately because it seemed kinda made that way. I even ask a local at one point to point out his shop on my map so I could come back and he had no idea where it was. Anyway, I eventually saw a sign that said teletaxi and went inside to use the only pay phones in Tunis. I called Connie Lee First and we set up a time and place to meet. I had no idea where it was I was s’pose to be so it became a race to get there in the next 30 minutes. I got terrible directions from four different people including one guy who led me to the complete opposite side of the medina and a police officer who pointed the wrong way when I was only one block away from the Hotel I was to meet at. I met Condor at the Hana Hotel and we took a walk around the main streets as she told me about Tunisian food and some history as well as bringing me to a restaurant with some of the best food I’ve ever eaten called Ojja and then paid for it all. I felt like the prettiest princess at the ball. We agreed to meet the next day and I would hopefully live with them for the rest of the week.
When I went home I unfortunately took the most terrible poo and shower of my life… Why was it so terrible? I’m not sure I want to go into the reasons why, just know that they were valid and they were many. After that debacle I was cold and wet and tired and ready to sleep forever. Instead I met John the Aussie, Ahblot the Indian and Ted the Brit. They were my new roommates, they were actually really cool and had all traveled extensively in the Middle East. I learned tons from them and about what kinds of difficulties and differences one can run into. I have to admit I loved all their accents too; it was like an accent buffet. After talking to my new roomies for hours and hours I took a break and used the internet for a while. I also took a moment to describe the interesting room I was in to a friend of mine : “This room is very Mediterranean and has a strong Muslim feel. It’s a dining room with big creamy marble columns and the walls are these crazy green and blue and white painted tiles and there are all these gold and red drapes and table clothes and there are big clay pots everywhere and a cabinet full of piles of old dusty clocks and a fan and a rotary phone and there is a silver etched tea set on one of the 12 little tables in the room and the ceiling is like 40 or 50 ft. up and its a big glass dome to the night sky which is beautiful but also it makes this room very very cold.” After my chats the Americans and some random lonely Tunisian who walked in, I went to bed and slept beautiful Tunisian dreams.
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