Notes on Tunisia
mattlakeman.org
mattlakeman.org
Our Lady of Good Health[1] in India is 1962.
I think what the author means is "one of the famous ones in Europe", but the Sagrada Familia is still being built[0], tho arguably construction started two centuries ago :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Good_H...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Cathedral [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedr...
I am not sure when it was first built, I think it was in the 50s, but they had a major renovation/expansion that I think finished ~40 years ago or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Aparec...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_St._John_the_Di...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_the_National_Shrin... (consecrated 1920; dedicated 1959; minor basilica 1990)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Our_Lady_of_the_A... (1998-2002)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Cathedral_of_the_Russian_... (2018-2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Resurrection_Cathedral (Japanese Orthodox; consecrated 1929)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary%27s_Cathedral,_Tokyo (1964)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Theresa%27s_Cathedral,_Cha... (2008)
As for Italy? Get a load of this "crown jewel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_Church (2003)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur...
St. Paul Outside-the-Walls was completed in 1840! Almost yesterday! However, re-consecration and construction continued after that. Interestingly, it seems that an automatic fire-detection and suppression system had been installed in the 19th century.
Assuming ~1,200 m² of TiO₂-coated surface removing ~16 g NOₓ/m²/year → 1,200 × 16 = 19,200 g = 19.2 kg/year; with an average car emitting ~5 kg NOₓ/year (based on 15,000 km/year at ~0.33 g/km), the roof offsets ~3.8 cars annually.It was many years ago so it might have changed but my experience in Tunisia (as well as Egypt and other places around the Mediterranean) was that if you look and move like you belong in the area most merchants won't bother trying to push you around. I bought some of my favourite clothes in Tunisia and Egypt by asking tourist merchants about theirs and insisting that I want something like that and not the stuff in the souvenir market, many were willing to ask someone at a neighbouring stall to keep an eye on theirs and lead me to a 'real' shop in an area where locals trade with each other.
That's where the good cafés are, and that's the place to meet honest people who might be willing to act like taxi and guide for a day or two, or even invite you to meet their family and share food with them.
I like Matt's posts, but I always take them with a grain of salt. To really get an in-depth viewpoint you need to live somewhere for a year at least, and probably speak at least some of the local language. I've lived in a few countries over the years, and it's just such a different experience from just travelling for a few weeks.
Still, it's good to know about what your first impressions might be like without actually going there.
The history section was long and boring.
Some of the other stuff was a bit interesting, though.
My two cents: I haven't kept up on post-Arab-Spring politics, but the descriptions of Bourguiba (crafty politician, hopeless economics, then senile) and Ben Ali (thuggish, corrupt) seem pretty accurate to me.
The Star Wars section is also pretty limited, if you're a fan, I recommend checking out the GalaxyTours map[1], the tours were outside my budget but the information they provide is extremely accurate and well researched. Chott el-Djerid [2] was my favourite, basically the outside of Luke's home located in the middle of a dry lake (on google maps it looks like water). Funnily enough, my favourite example of Wikipedia not always being right is also an alleged StarWars filming location, wikipedia claims[3] that Ep 1 was filmed at Ksar Ouled Soltane but GalaxyTours shows that it was not [4].
I'm also surprised there were no pictures of plants in the desert covered by plastic bags. It was pretty shocking, driving through the desert, nothing really around, but pretty much every tree/plant had plastic bags attached. I thought maybe they were intentionally put there to serve some purpose, so I stopped and got a closer look. Nope, just trash bags that blew away in the wind and got stuck there.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina_of_Tunis#/media/File:Me...
[1] https://galaxytours.com/starwars-locations-tunisia-map/
[2] https://galaxytours.com/starwars-tunisia-film-sites/chott-el...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksar_Ouled_Soltane
[4] https://galaxytours.com/research/ksar-ouled-soltane-debunkin...
It was really sad to see how trash is all over the country no matter where you go. Dumpsters are extremely disgusting, full of trash left rotting for days in main streets. People throw away anything anywhere.
I've been to Djerba island and litter is even on beaches. I've seen litter floating in the water which deterred me from taking a swim. On one occasion I even spotted a half broken umbrella pole rusted and buried in the sand, just waiting for someone to be seriously injured which I obviously removed. Broken glass in beaches is also common, so be careful and always wear flip-flops.
This is a huge cultural and not so easy to solve problem as I've seen people dumping trash in front of me as if something completely natural. It is sad because if that problem is solved, it is actually a beautiful country.
Other countries suffering exactly the same problem that I've visited are Vietnam and Maldives.
These generalized statements make my blood boil. Djerba in particular has had issues with garbage [0]. This is akin to me saying the US is an extremely needle ridden country based on a long trip to San Francisco.
That said, a lot of Tunisian cities do have issues with garbage management and littering but calling the country "extremely dirty" makes it seem like people are taking dumps in the streets which is not the case.
That was not my reading at all. There are several paragraphs clarifying what they meant with "extremely dirty".
Generalized statements? I've been walking an average of 8Km a day while on holidays in Tunisia, so I've been to plenty of places and cities and the pattern repeated over and over again. I'm not the typical tourist that is moved from place to place like a puppet through tours. What do you expect from me? To walk all over the country to prove my point? Djerba was just an example. Give me break.
As someone who grew up there... he's being generous here. I hated those buildings, extremely depressing.
> he said he was from my hotel
I've almost fell for this while in New Dehli. Friendly walk and talk until he lured into some travel agents shop proceed to sell me some trips.
As someone who did NOT grow up there, I understand why he finds them interesting. They can, indeed, be very interesting to the foreigner, especially when people invite you inside.
And quite like the settler colonies of other countries in Africa, the settler minority who held power in Algeria weren't particularly inclined to give it up to the majority they largely felt beneath them. And since it was a severe insult to national pride to let a core part of France become independent, the French government resisted to the point that it literally broke the government (the Fourth Republic fell because of it, leading to the Fifth Republic).
That was at least the feeling at the time, and we still had to do it, and it is to this day a complete mess of people brought back who don't feel French and aren't Algerians really. We'll pay for it for many decades until it finally disappear, like every subgroup that got "imported" in France and had to merge painfully since France started.
Tunisia in contrast, we really didn't care all that much, there was no cost giving it back and we lost nothing. And fast forward 70 years, we probably actually saved tons of money doing so, so we're all good.
Note that if you talk people to people, it now seems to be in the past, Algerians are proud to be Algerians, French are ashamed to have damage the country so much for so long, and we try to be good friends. I've never met an hostile Algerian, as in a recent immigrant. I've met many hostile 3rd generation immigrants from Algeria whose grandparents fled back to France, and they still have trouble accepting that uprooting. There seems to be nothing to do except wait and smile and tell them it's gonna be ok, with a glass of wine and bit of saucisson.
Do you have a source for that?
Britannica says:
> The largest proportion of Jews trace their roots to Europe (including the former Soviet Union) and North America, though some also hail from Africa (mostly North Africa), Asia, and the Middle East.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel/Demographic-trends
I think this is partially supported by immigration statistics:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-immigration-to-is...
The French invasion of Algeria has always seemed unique and odd to me: Annexing an Arab territory especially while denying equal rights to the "indigenous" population (the term that was used) was a recipe for disaster and ultimately it proved untenable.
In contrast Tunisia was only a protectorate after the French invaded from Algeria in 1881.
It began with centuries of piracy and enslavement in the Mediterranean sea, leading to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars , which in turn led to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1816) . All this doesn't set a path for the invader to offer equal rights to the "indigenous" population.
A military action, even a colonial invasion, to "pacify" a place and to take control of it has little to do with a full annexation. The US did not make Afghanistan a State... And even among European colonial empires Algeria is quite unique.
France had lost most of its Empire during the Revolution and Napoleonic period so was keen to rebuild one. France did not have a settled Canada or Australia, either, so perhaps this also played a role but it seems unrealistic to believe that trying that with an Arabic Muslim country could have ever worked.
Indeed. No objective is intangible. Actions taken to reduce an aggressive enemy to inaction can lead to a promising discovery (in this case, that of what would become Algeria, which was then a rich agricultural and pleasant territory occupied by non-unified tribes) leading to a desire to seize it.
Which would the US have fought harder to keep: Hawaii, or the Marshall Islands?
> Tunisian cities are mostly ugly as hell.
Bare a few touristic spots, yes. It is unfortunate as Tunisia could have looked more like Santorini and less like the nuclear apocalypse that it is today. I guess on the upside you have little to no homelessness?
> The only problem with Tunisian niceness is that it blends into Tunisian mercantile craftiness.
This is mostly a problem in touristic craft stores which I never visit. I guess tourists are attracted to the Medina; but most Tunisians "Medinas" have completely collapsed economically.
> Informality Has Its Advantages
Given how broken the system is, that's how anything can run in Tunisia.
> Tunisian butcher shops tend to hang not just hunks of meat but animal heads in front of their stores
This is kind of an ad that we just had the animal slaughtered now. Fresh meat.
> Sorry Tunisia, but your mosque game is weak.
He should have focused on Churches, Cathedrals and Synagogues.
> There aren’t many bars in Tunisia, even in the major cities.
There are lot of bars in Tunisia but the second major city is a conservative one. It is the last place where you want to have a beer.
> Alcohol is still fairly taboo in most Arab countries, even in relatively liberal Tunisia, so they probably adopted cafe cultural norms.
No, the cafe cultural norms came from the French. You can see a similarity with Vietnam in this regard.
> but he was most excited to tell me that the U.S. Ambassador had just visited the House of the Governor two weeks ago along with his “black wife” who “wasn’t white like you and me.” Ok, then.
You are reading too much into this. Tunisians are pretty chatty and gossip to unhealthy levels.
> ... where there’s a lot of lingering resentment against their former overlord
France was a popular (and the) destination until 10 years ago or so. France now sucks economically. It has nothing to do with it being a former overlord.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/star-wars-tunisia-f...
https://depart-travel-services.com/en/discover-the-iconic-st...
If you like Roman ruins, here's my favorite sites that I've personally visited:
- Amphitheatre of El Jem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphitheatre_of_El_Jem
- Dougga - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dougga
- Bulla Regia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_Regia
While itself not an amazing Roman building, I also enjoyed going to Ksar Ghilane - https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ru5sEqEtJDEWNg3R7. There's a small touristic oasis where you ran rent a quad bike, zip over some dunes in the Sahara, and then stop at the small Roman fort. It's fun to imagine being a Roman stationed at one of the southern most outposts of the empire. It's also fun to rent a 4x4 w/ driver and drive through the desert from Douz to Ksar Ghilane.
All those countries are still close to France, with higher education in French and educated people speaking better French than most French. Arabs countries like Tunisia have adopted policies of Arabisation but French is still widespread.
It is perhaps a bit like India: Nationalism in reaction to colonialism but with major cultural links and the old coloniser is a major emigration destination.
France is the main emigration destination for Tunisians (55% if you look it up), with almost a million Tunisians in France (Tunisia's population is 12 million).
> Throughout this trip, I talked to many Europeans, including Frenchmen, Italians, Maltese, Germans, and a few Brits, and from an American perspective, it was surprising how often the topic of conversation turned to immigration. Or rather, anti-immigration.
Well, see numbers above. Anti-immigration sentiment is growing in Europe because of the numbers and negative impact. It should not be a partisan issue, really, but plain realism.
But perhaps the reported strength of feeling is correlated with the history of the PLO, who moved there after being expelled from Lebanon by the Israeli invasion in 1982. Israel then attacked the new PLO HQ in Tunisia in 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wooden_Leg
Correlation might mean causation in a couple of directions. Did the PLO move to Tunis because Tunisians already supported them sympathetically, or do they now support the Palestinian cause more strongly because they provided refuge and were attacked by Israel? Probably both.