Tuesday, February 21, 2006

A Map for Your Viewing Pleasure

If you are interested in the geographical locations of all our Tunisian adventures, this is a great map, compliments of Lonely Planet.

posted by Carly Fowler @ 11:50 PM 1 comments

Monday, February 20, 2006

The African Queen, or Adventures in Tunisia (part 2)

....continued....see previous entry for part 1....

Day 5 - Saturday
Since three of our first four vacation days came accompanied with pre-dawn wake-up calls, we decided to take a bit of a lazy morning. This means that we left for our daily adventure around 10:30 instead of earlier :-) After a lovely hotel breakfast, we took our two taxis to the Nabeul louage stand and hopped a van to Tunis (Tunisia's capital and largest city.) We decided to spend our Saturday at the Bardo Museum, which is the biggest and most important museum in Tunisia. It has rooms full of Phoenician and Roman artifacts, and it is particularly known for its glorious collection of Roman mosaics. The explanations posted by each item were all in French and Arabic, but luckily, my Lonely Planet guide to Tunisia (okay fine - that was product placement, I admit it) had a room-by-room overview of the Bardo, and we were able to see the highlights and read admittedly amusing blurbs about some of the artifacts. Here are three of my favorites:

Drunken Hercules - "Look out for the bronze statue of a drunken Hercules looking decidedly unheroic."

Statue of Apollo - "The statue hails from the temple of Apollo, god of light and music, and the dominant figure is, naturally, the god himself, holding a lyre. He's huge, languorous, and sensual, with how-does-it-stay-on drapery."

Statues of dwarves - "The Bronze Hall displays what was considered hot in home decor in the 1st century BC, including some creepy dancing dwarves."
Hurrah for Lonely Planet coming to the rescue. If any of you ever end up in Tunisia, I highly recommend both the book and the Bardo museum, which I found to be very well done and fascinating. Oh yes, thanks to Kim's foresight, she and I were able to get into the Bardo (and all other state-operated museums) for free because we renewed our ISIC (International Student Identity Card) cards before we left. DEFINITELY WORTH THE MONEY IF YOU ARE TRAVELING ABROAD. Okay enough travel tips :-)

After we finished at the museum, it was about 2:30, and we were way overdue for lunch, so we hired two cabs to take us to the Place de la Victoire, which is where the Tunis medina meets the Ville Nouvelle. Aka, that is where old school Tunis meets French Tunis - right in the middle of the city. The Bardo is a few km outside, so it was a bit of a drive, and I was riding with Danny and Ted. Thank God we always split up the boys and girls, because cab drivers have a tendency to offer to purchase the females. Our driver offered 300 camels for me after Danny and Ted refused to sell him Kim, who he admired as she climbed into the other taxi. Apparently, I'm just second best. Of course I wasn't sold, but it was the first time in my life that anyone ever offered to buy me. Also, cab drivers usually assumed that we were a group of three married couples traveling together, which made for a few awkward moments. "No Mr. Cab Driver, I'm not married to any of these men. Why not? Well I have a boyfriend. Why isn't he here? He's in school. Why isn't he protecting me? You mean from you? DRIVE THE DAMN CAR AND STOP OFFERING TO BUY ME!!" It did get old after a while, I must say. :-P

Right, moving on. So we found this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet and had a delicious 4-course lunch for about $4. The owner was really nice and the place was clean and the food was great, so it was a good choice for a meal. After lunch, we located an internet cafe and attempted to get in touch with people for the first time in 5 days, but it was a frustrating exercise in patience, as the connection was exceptionally slow and the French keyboard was almost indecipherable. They hide their punctuation marks! My emails to my parents and Gregory looked like they were written by a 3-year-old, and it took me about 20 minutes to write 3 lines. Harumph. But lest you think that Saturday was a bad day, I promise, it wasn't :-)

After the internet cafe, we saw the only Roman Catholic Cathedral in Tunisia - St. Vincent de Paul, which is built in an interesting conglomeration of architectural styles. We also took a quick walk through part of the medina until it began to get dark, and then we decided to head home for the night. We had dinner, and then we checked out the "forced fun" activity in the lobby before heading to bed. (No comment on the fact that I was dragged out of the audience and forced to stand on some guy's butt while he lay (bare-chested) on broken glass. I did NOT volunteer.)

Day 6 - Sunday
We got an early start because we had a big itinerary for the day. Carthage (yes, the ancient sworn enemy of Rome) is now the wealthiest suburb of Tunis, and Sidi Bou Said is a gorgeous picturesque Tunisian village overlooking the Mediterranean, and we made it our goal to see both - the morning would be dedicated to Carthage and the afternoon to Sidi Bou Said.

We hopped a louage to Tunis, and from there we took taxis to Carthage, which is only about 15km from the city center. The taxis dropped us off on top of Byrsa hill, which was once the spiritual center of ancient Carthage. Now it is home to a deconsecrated Catholic cathedral that was at one point dedicated to St. Louis, a museum housing Carthagian artifacts, and a spectacular view of Tunis and the sea. The photo shows city, but not the water (and three decidedly lovely females who happened to hop into the center of the photograph!) Kim and I, who had brought our ISIC cards and thus had free entry into the museum, checked out the exhibition while the rest of the group trekked down the hill to locate some ruins that were hidden among the upper middle class housing of present-day Carthage. The museum was okay, but I was glad I didn't have to pay to get in.

At the appointed time, we met up with everyone else on top of Byrsa hill, and we decided to locate some lunch and some more ruins. We stumbled first across "Pizza Phone," and after days of couscous and stew, pizza sounded pretty tasty, so we feasted there before heading to the Antonine baths. The baths are MASSIVE and cover a lot of ground, so we had a good time exploring. The photo is of Kim, Ted, Kelly, and Jeff in front of one of the structures on the property. The interesting thing about the baths is that they are literally next door to the Tunisian president's mansion. In Tunisia they have very strict laws about photographing any military personnel, law enforcement officer, or government building, so we had to be really careful with the photos here. Literally, they will confiscate your camera and/or throw you in jail for breaking this particular law, and frankly, who wants to go to jail in any country, let alone a developing nation? So yes, we were careful :-)

After the baths, we headed towards Sidi Bou Said, which is only 2km from Carthage. Since the weather was so nice (as it had been the entire trip), we decided to walk, and due to my slight navigational error, we ended up on the beach, by the marina. It was lovely, and the walk was beautiful. The only problem was that the actual town was on a cliff about 1000 feet above us. Luckily there was a staircase heading up, which we decided would be the best way to get back rather than hiking around. About fifteen minutes later, we were all huffing and puffing and red-faced at the top. But we made it :-) Sidi Bou Said is famous for being beautiful. All the buildings are painted pristine white, with beautiful blue trimming (all the trimming was the same blue, which Kelly named "Tunisia blue.") There was some good shopping there as well, along with many cafes. After our hike up the face of the cliff, we decided coffee/fresh-squeezed orange juice was a good idea and we tried to get into the place in the photo (the cafe is inside the black and white striped doorway.) It was full, though, so we went to the cafe next door, where I was able to get this lovely shot :-) After resting, we walked through the town, looked at the stores, and came to a beautiful place overlooking the Mediterranean. Here is a photo of the ladies in front of the view, and I believe Jeff said it most poetically: "this could be in the book of 'views that don't suck.' " :-D

We left Sidi Bou Said around 5:30 and headed back to the hotel after another long-but-fun day, had dinner, and got some shut-eye in preparation for our final day in Tunisia.

Day 7 - Monday
For our last day in Tunisia, we decided to go a little crazy, stop being tourists, and start being Tunisians. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Well read on to find out what I mean :-)

Danny decided to take a day of relaxation at the hotel, so the rest of us louaged it to Tunis (we were getting sooooo good at this!) and arrived around 11:00. We headed straight for the medina, where we planned to spend our whole day. The Tunis medina is quite large, and it was very easy for us to fill a day there. We started at the Great Mosque, which is the biggest in Tunis. Non-Muslims are allowed in as far as the courtyard, but visitors can only enter until noon, so we went there first. The Mosque (which was built in the 700s and rebuilt in the 800s) is beautiful, and even more interesting, the builders utilized over 200 columns left by the Romans in Carthage. You can see them in this photo of the courtyard. After the Mosque, we took a short tour of some of the other important sites within the medina - government buildings, other mosques, etc. After THAT came some shopping :-) It is truly an experience just to walk through the souks here - the Tunis medina was MUCH larger than the one in Sousse, and the shopping area was probably 5 times as large. I was able to finish my souvenir shopping there, which was nice. We also got ready for the afternoon's activity (more on that later), which took us to the outer reaches of the medina. By that, I mean, we followed my map into the un-touristy part of the old city and saw what it really looks like to live there. After we found our destination (more later), we headed back to the touristy part for a quick, cheap, and delicious lunch before embarking on our biggest adventure of the trip.

My Lonely Planet says, "You haven't fully experienced Tunisia until you've been scrubbed down with an oven scourer by an enthusiastic elderly masseur." Never have truer words been spoken. A Tunisian custom that has been handed down since Roman times, hammams, or public bathhouses, are an everyday part of life in Tunisia. We thought it would be very interesting (not to mention enjoyable!) to experience this particular custom, so after lunch, the girls and boys split up and headed to our respective single-sex bathhouses. The boys' hammam was right in the touristy part of the medina, but the girls' was in the back alleys, where we saw no tourists, only natives. Now, bathhouses don't have any sort of marking or sign; rather, they have very distinctive doors - the doorway is black and white striped, while the doors are red, green, or some combination of both. In Tunisia, it is common knowledge that such colors on a door equal a hammam, but we had to figure that one out on our own.

Anyway, so Kim, Kelly, and I enter this rather intimidating building with about 30 French words between us, and absolutely no Arabic. The people running the place speak French and Arabic and absolutely no German or English. So we communicated with body language, but hey - it worked! The lady attendant pointed us to the changing area, and we three prudish Americans changed into our bathing suits under our towels. Now, by pure fact of having brought bathing suits instead of just wearing our underwear we already stood out, and the matching blue hotel towels didn't help our cause at all. We went back to the lobby room, where the attendant, after much waving of arms, introduced us to "Mama," an elderly Tunisian woman who would be our bath attendant (aka masseuse, aka lady who would supervise our trip through this rather elaborate ritual.) Mama was a very friendly, smiley lady of about 75 who sported around 4 teeth. She took us into the first of three bathing rooms and proceeded to strip us immediately of our bathing suit tops. Our bottoms stayed on, but we were from that point on topless. Then she led us to the steam room, where we sat with some buckets of excruciatingly hot water for a few minutes, ostensibly to open our pores. We, however, didn't know what we were supposed to be doing, so we just kept splashing ourselves with the boiling water while we shared some soap and shampoo that Kim had enough foresight to bring.

After about 10 minutes, Mama came back and led us to the next room, which was cooler, but still steamy. In the center of the room was a tiled slab that looked almost like a sacrificial alter. After wetting part of it down, she grabbed Kelly and put her on the slab facedown. Then she took this yellow glove and started to rub Kelly's back, which turned bright red instantly. After rubbing down her back, along with the backs of her arms and legs, she flipped Kelly over and continued to rub down the entire front of her body. So, the yellow glove turned out to be the most efficient exfoliating instrument I've ever seen, because there was a lot of dead skin coming off of Kelly! I know this because Mama grabbed my hand and slapped it onto Kelly's chest and made me feel all the dead skin that had been removed. Yum. After that, she soaped up Kelly, front and back, and rinsed her. Then it was my turn. Same deal, and after me came Kim. Each of us received about 10 minutes of attention. Then, Mama shampooed our hair, rinsed us with buckets, and brought us back to the first room. She proceeded to strip us of our bathing suit bottoms (eek!), and she rinsed us again, before gesturing for us to grab our towels. We were done. All in all, it took about an hour, and it was a very interesting and cultural hour! Anyway, we made our way back to the changing area (naked, under our matching blue towels) while everyone there laughed at us. Can't blame them. Heck, we are pale chicas! And dude, matching blue towels are never cool! We changed, and then paid. 3 Dinar apiece for the entire session!!! It was incredible, and I've never felt so clean in my life! And it was fun, although I have to say, I know Kim and Kelly now better than I ever thought I would!

It was fascinating to do this, because it is actually a daily part of life in Tunisia. We weren't the only people there by a long stretch, but we were the only Westerners. Watching the other women, though, it was obvious that this is a completely communal and social experience. Women who didn't know each other would scrub each other's backs and share soap. There were people there from age 2ish to age 80ish. Additionally, this was about all the interaction we had with Tunisian women (except, of course, for Fatma,) who do not, as a general rule, work outside of the home, so we were glad that we were able to finally meet and interact with them, even if we couldn't actually communicate in words... Anyway, the whole experience was wonderful, and although it was scary, I'm so glad that we did it. Here is a picture of us freshly scrubbed ladies outside the door to the bath (notice the colors....)

After our bathing experience, we met back up with the guys, who shared a similar experience (although with less nudity), and we headed back to the hotel for our last dinner and sleep in Tunisia.

Day 8 - Tuesday
We were being picked up for the flight at 12:15, so we had the morning to pack and take one last look around. Kim and I headed to the beach and lamented the fact that we were leaving 70 and sunny for 30 and wintry-mix (my absolute least favorite kind of weather.) Alas, it had to be done. We made it to the airport and flew home to cold, wintry Vienna to jump right back into work!

As I said, I need a vacation from my vacation, which is why it has taken so long to post this and my photos (which are finally up!) It was a fantastic trip, and I'm so glad that we got to go and that the weather was gorgeous and that everything ran so smoothly! But, as much as it pains me to say this, it felt durn good to come back to a developed nation where a woman can walk down the street alone and not feel awkward, nervous, or like she's being given a price in camels in the head of every man who stares at her. I'm glad to have been able to visit, but I was equally glad to be able to come home :-)

posted by Carly Fowler @ 2:33 PM 2 comments

Sunday, February 19, 2006

The African Queen, or Adventures in Tunisia (part 1)

This will be a special, two-part entry, as there is way too much to "erzaehlen," as the Germans would say, in one blog.

This trip just proves again that I travel hard. I'm the kind of person who needs a vacation after my vacation, because I like to be on the go and see everything while I am visiting a place. We certainly did our best to fulfill those goals while in the Northern African nation of Tunisia! Here is a day-by-day photo-journal of our marvelous "spring" break vacation :-) (and by "spring," I mean early February.) By the way, just to warn you, this is a mighty long entry :-)

Day 0 - Monday
The night before we left, the group (Kim, Kelly, Jeff, Ted, Danny, and myself) headed over to Kim's for a pre-trip dinner (and a dessert of chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, those didn't last very long!) Ted, Danny, and I spent the night at Kim's because of our early start on Tuesday morning. Kelly and Jeff were close enough to walk, so they stayed at Kelly's.

Day 1 - Tuesday
Wake up call at 2:30am. Yikes. But when 4 people are using 1 bathroom and have a 4am pick-up time, that's just what has to happen :-) Miraculously, the airport service, our group, and Kelly and Jeff all managed to rendezvous at the correct time and place, and we made it to the airport by 4:45 for our 6:15 flight. Unfortunately, at that time of the morning, none of the airport coffee bars are open, so we basically sat around in a state of 3/4 sleep until our flight started to board. We landed in Nuremburg around 7:15 and had a little over an hour to kill before our flight left for Monastir (a small coastal town in Tunisia that boasts the airport serving European tourists.) When we landed there around 11:30am, we had been up for 9 hours and were feeling the short night, so it was a very good thing that our "package trip" included transport from the airport to the hotel. We were able to just hop on the bus and sleep for the next 2 hours.

We arrived at the hotel around 2 in the afternoon, and we basically just explored the area within walking distance that day. The beach was about 5 minutes away, and since February in Tunisia boasts an average temperature of around 65 Fahrenheit, there were decidedly few beach-goers, which was very nice. We were staying in the town of Hammamet, which is the main tourist area of the country during the summer months, but since we were there in the middle of the offseason, it was (thankfully) not packed with Northern European vacationers. The hotel was very nice (especially given what we paid for a week there!) Here is a photo of the view from our balcony (obviously the swimming pool was out of commission, but it was a nice area to walk around.) The other photo is of the beach near the hotel. It was beautiful, and empty! Our empty afternoon was nice after such an early morning, I must say! We had dinner at the hotel (buffet breakfast and dinner were included in the price), and it was surprisingly tasty! After eating, we all hit the hay (this would prove to be a theme over the course of the week :-D)

Day 2 - Wednesday
The city of Sousse is the 3rd largest in Tunisia, after Tunis and Sfax. It is located on the coast, and is about 20 km north of Monastir (which means, it was about an hour and a half from our hotel.) When Ted was still in college, his French professor was visiting for the year from her usual position at the University of Sousse, so when she found out we were coming to Tunisia, she invited us to her city for the day, which was fantastic - our first real day, we had a native Tunisian as our guide :-)

Before arriving, both Kim and I did some research on the country (yay Lonely Planet!), and we found out that the best way to travel between cities is actually in shared taxis, called louages. They are extremely cheap (about $3 for a destination 60km away), and they take 8 people, so our whole group could fit in one louage. On this first day, however, when we got to the louage station in Nabeul (a town about 3km away), we got sucked into taking the bus (it only happened once because we didn't know what we were doing :-P) Which means, we did NOT end up where we originally thought we would, and we had to wait for Ted's friend, Fatma, to come pick us up. While we were waiting, I saw a dog hanging out on the roof, and I deemed it photo worthy.

Once Fatma arrived, she called her husband to come pick us up. Somehow, we fit 8 grown people into a VW Golf for the ride back to their apartment (see photo of where Kelly and Jeff had to sit), where we had a deeeeeeelicious lunch (Tunisian food is very tasty - usually consists of couscous and a spicy stew, with oranges - the best oranges I've ever tasted in my life - for dessert.) Their home was beautiful, but it was very atypical for Tunisia, which has its fair share of poverty-stricken people. Like all buildings in Tunisia, Fatma and Ritha's had an absolutely beautiful, ornate door. I don't know if fancy doors are Tunisian or North African, but I've never seen doors like this anywhere (they are even better than the doors in Dublin, which are also famous.) Here is a photo of Fatma and Ritha's door.

It was very interesting to talk to Fatma about something that was a little worrisome to us - the uproar over the Danish cartoons. I mean, it seemed like every time we picked up a newspaper, another European embassy was being burned in another Muslim country. Luckily, as Fatma explained, in Tunisia is a very westernized (if not the MOST westernized) country. They have even changed their day off from Friday (the traditional day of worship in Islam) to Sunday, to coordinate their economy with the western world. This also means that they are more tolerant than some of the more fundamentalist countries. When I asked her about the Tunisian reaction to the cartoons, she replied that Tunisians were upset about the blasphemy, but they deal with their anger singularly and internally rather than in groups and mobs, which means that there were no demonstrations or riots, and we never felt that we were in any sort of danger. Thank God. But it was still a little bit intimidating.

After lunch, Fatma and Ritha took us to see some of the sights of Sousse. First up was the medina, or the old walled city. Every major city has a medina, and they are all very cool. First off, they are usually all pedestrian, because the streets are too narrow for cars to fit through. Also, the medina is where most of the souks, or shopping areas are housed. Here is a photo of one of the souks in the medina in Sousse, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The other photo is of the outside of the medina, which was also very beautiful. The walls looked like what you would imagine castle walls to look like. They had towers and crenellations and what looked like murder holes ;-) Anyway, we spent a little bit of time walking through the medina, and we stopped by an exhibition depicting scenes from typical Tunisian and Berber (the Bedouins of North Africa - the people here before the Arabs came) life. After our tour, we all piled into the VW Golf again and headed to the port of Sousse for some coffee, since it was such a beautiful day. Finally, Fatma and Ritha dropped us off at the louage station, and we managed to actually take one back to Nabeul and home to our hotel, where we had dinner and headed to bed early (see? I told you - a theme) because we had an early start the next morning.

Day 3 - Thursday
Thursday morning at 5:15am, we were picked up by the Eden Tours bus for our 2-day "Desert Safari," during which we would cover about 1500 km, see several sights all over the country, and ride camels in the Sahara desert (which is actually a redundant name. Did you know the word "sahara" actually means "desert?") Anyway, we, along with 8 other people - 2 British women and 6 obnoxiously and habitually late Italians, arrived at our first stop around 8:30am. El Jem is a small town, but it houses what was once the 3rd largest amphitheater in the Roman Empire. Ironically enough, the amphitheater, which at one point could seat 30,000 people, could hold more people than actually live in El Jem. Here is a photo of the outside of the amphitheater. Inside, we were able to explore a bit - we climbed to the top seats, and we were able to see the tunnels underneath, where animals, gladiators, and Christians were kept before fights. Here is a photo of the inside of the amphitheater. It was at El Jem that we had our first taste of "being had" by Tunisian merchants. When we got off the bus, a man with a camel asked if Danny wanted to take his camel's photo. After Danny took the picture, the man told him that such a privilege would cost him 1 Dinar. That isn't a lot of money, and Danny paid, but this is where we first realized that we had to be careful about such things, because people won't necessarily tell you up front that they are going to charge you. I learned this the hard way later.

After El Jem, we loaded back into the bus and headed out for the town of Matmata, where we had lunch. Matmata is better known as being one of the areas where Star Wars was filmed. It is an old Berber town, and people here still live in troglodyte homes (aka...in caves.) After lunch, as part of our tour, we got to visit the family home of one such family, and let me tell you, it was an uncomfortable exercise in voyeurism. I know the family is paid to have visitors, but it was just a weird feeling, going to someone's HOME as a tourist destination. Anyway, all discomfort aside, it was interesting to see how they live. The caves are actually small rooms hollowed out of a stone hill, and they are meticulously clean. All the rooms open up into a center, outdoors courtyard, so it is impossible to go from room to room without going outside. This photo shows the "front door" of the home.

After Matmata, we headed to the town of Douz, which is known as the gateway to the Sahara. In Douz, we were given the option to go for a ride on a camel, so of course, we all said yes and paid our 18 Dinar for an hour and a half jaunt into the desert. After getting all saddled up and mounting our camels (which is a rather exciting enterprise, I must say), we headed out. Here is a photo of Jeff and Ted on their camels (and my camel's head) going towards some dunes. We rode for about 45 minutes, and then we took a rest. About 20 minutes into our trip out, we had been joined by a man on a horse (the horse was wearing some sort of crazy decorations), and a man on a camel with a fancy saddle. When we got to our rest stop, the man on the horse came over to me right after I got off my camel and offered to let me ride. I, being a very trusting person who likes adventure, took him up on it right away, and he hopped up behind me, and we went for a 30 second gallop. When we got back, Kim hopped up and they did the same thing. At the same time, the man with the fancy camel had Kelly up and walked her around in a circle. After we three had had our rides, they came over and told us that we each had to pay 5 Dinar. Now, again, that isn't a lot of money, but it is just wrong to not tell someone up front that you will charge them, and they definitely took advantage of us being dumb tourists. I didn't have any Tunisian currency on me at that point, so I gave the guy 10E for us, and that was that. I don't begrudge the money, because it is only 10E, but still, it definitely added a sour flavor to our camel trip. Oh well, you live, you learn, and that is a mistake I'll never make again. Our ride back was nice. We got to see the sun set over an oasis (see photo), and after we got back, we headed to our hotel for the night, where we had dinner and went to bed (with yet another early morning ahead of us.)

Day 4 - Friday
Wake up call came at 5am. Again. Blah I want to sleep in. That is, I wanted to sleep in until we reached our first destination - Chott el-Jerid, which used to be a ginormous salt lake, but is now just a great, dry, flat area with salt in the soil. We made it about 15 minutes before dawn (the pre-sunrise colors were phenomenal - see phot0), and we got to watch the sunrise. Frankly, it was the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen (not that I've seen too many, but this one even beat out the sunrises in the Grand Canyon.) Here is one of my (many. too many.) sunrise pictures. We also got to do a little shopping at the place we stopped, and I bought a Berber bowl (hurrah for souveniers!) Anyway, it was a lovely start to the day, that's for sure! I don't mind waking up that early, as long as there is some pay-off.

After dawn, we headed towards the town of Tozeur, which is an oasis town near the Algerian border. In Tozeur, our group of 14 split up into 2 4-wheel-drive Jeeps for a drive out to two oases - Tamerza and Chebika. It was a fun trip out there - we went off-roading for a bit, and we got to do some (very little) hiking at both oases. It was rather interesting to note that one of the oases was in a canyon that looked like it could be a side canyon off the Grand Canyon (wow I just used the word "canyon" three times in one sentence. Oops.) Also, here is a photo of our group in front of the mountains that mark the border between Algeria and Tunisia. And just to scare the you-know-what out of parents, look where we were as we drove back to the city of Gafsa meet the bus :-D In case you didn't notice, that's a road sign pointing towards the Algerian border, 8 km away. Mwahahahaha. We tried to convince the driver to take us to the border, which is apparently an open border in the desert, but he was a good employee and wouldn't give in to the dangerous whims of young, stupid Americans (oh wait, I think we told him we were from Toronto.) Actually, this is a good time to mention our strategy of telling people we were Canadian. We thought this was a good idea until we realized that none of us could remember the name of the new Canadian prime minister. Oh well.

After the Jeep tour, we had lunch at a beautiful hotel that was completely tiled on the inside. Floor, walls, ceiling. Check it out. After lunch, we had a long stretch of driving ahead of us to Kairouan, which is the 4th holiest city in Islam, after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. We were only there for a few minutes, to check out the Great Mosque. After that, we headed back to Hammamet, and we arrived just in time for some dinner and some bed. It had been a long couple of days, but they were probably my favorite two days of the trip. As much as I enjoyed the time we spent in the cities (Sousse and Tunis), I just liked the peace and quiet of the south much better. I'm soooo glad we were able to do this tour, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in going to Tunisia :-)

Okay, this is the end of part one. I've been typing for about 3 hours now and I'm tired. Part two will come tomorrow, along with pictures on my photo website :-)

P.S. Anyone who can name the reference in the title (without googling it!!) wins a special prize :-D

posted by Carly Fowler @ 2:30 PM 3 comments

Sunday, February 05, 2006

I Could Have Danced All Night

Yesterday - Saturday, February 4 - marked the halfway point of my time this year in Austria. Whoa. Somehow half my Fulbright year is over! And the next 4.5 months are going to be so busy with visits and work and trips that I know they will fly by. I leave for Tunisia on Tuesday, and I'll be there for a week. Two and a half weeks after I get back, Gregory arrives and will be here for a week. About two weeks after he leaves, Meg and her man will be here, and a few days after they depart, my parents get here and will stay for almost two weeks. Once they leave towards the end of April, I'll only have about six weeks of work left. At the end of May I will go be a College Choir groupie while they are in Italy (and see Gregory again :-D) After that, my sister will be here, and Emily might come sometime in June as well. AND I don't work in June, so that month is basically free for fun. This is going to be crazy, but I have to admit, I am very VERY excited to be able to play tour-guide to all my loved ones! So, I fully expect this spring to pass without me even realizing it. And the next thing I know, it will be July, and I will be back in the States, moving on to who knows what.

Who knows what. That's for sure. I am currently sitting in what I would deem to be the most painful part of any application process - the waiting phase. I just want to know, and this waiting is rather excruciating. Alas, I still have at least a month left to go. Blah that! :-) But whatever happens next year, whether I'm back in school or join the workforce, I know it will be good and it will be what I'm supposed to be doing.

Enough worrying for now! I can't let myself think too hard about stuff like that. Anyway, as I mentioned above, I depart for Africa in just two days!!!! I am traveling with Kim, Ted, Danny, Kelly, and her boyfriend Jeff, and we will be staying in the Tunisian resort town of Hammamet, which is in the northeast. Two days of our trip will be spent on an overnight "desert safari," where we will see the southwest part of the country (including, obviously, the Sahara!!), and one day we will spend in the town of Sousse, which is a moderately large city. Ted has a professor friend who lives there, and she is going to be our tour-guide for the day so we will get to see some authentic Tunisia to go with our typical tourist fare, so overall, it should be a great trip!!! I really can't wait (and frankly, it will be nice to go somewhere where the temperature is a solid 30 degrees ABOVE freezing rather than under it!!!) I plan on taking plenty of photos, so check back in about 2 weeks for some North African flavor in my very European blog.

As for that city that I am still living in, as beautiful as Vienna is in all weather, there is something about it that makes me think of it as a winter city. The buildings are just too solid for summer. The snow on the rooftops, the people all bundled up, the dogs in their sweaters really add something to the city, and I swear, the Rathaus is best viewed at night with the snow swirling. Things here are going wonderfully, as usual. Work has been fine recently. I had a slow week last week because it was the school's "Projekt Woche," or Project Week. It is the last week before break, after all finals are finished, and each day, instead of having normal lessons, classes do projects that help them bond. Some classes go camping, some go to the theater or movies, and one class painted their classroom. I was called into action to help one poor class of 2nd formers (equivalent to 6th graders.) These poor kids have a math teacher as their homeroom teacher, and for Tuesday's project, she decided that she wanted the kids to learn math in English. Oh boy. So, she enlisted their English teacher and myself (and surprisingly, the math teacher did NOT take part) to teach these kids how to say fractions, decimals, and simple problems in English. What a nightmare. Three hours of math in a foreign language. So anyway, needless to say the kids weren't thrilled to be there, and their behavior was terrible. Basically they were just counting down until the day ended, and I can't say that I can blame them, frankly. How dull.

Other than that, the only other class I taught last week was the dreaded 8B, the class that hates me. I went to them on Friday, the last day before break, and talked to them about U.S. history in the middle of the 20th century (per their teacher's request.) Naturally, after about three minutes, this evolved (yet again) into a debate as to why the U.S. is evil. Are we warmongers? Or just hypocrites? See, they agreed that the U.S. is bad, they just can't agree on WHY specifically. One girl said that we can be condemned for all the wars because war is inherently evil. And another guy said no, we just suck because we are hypocrites, and if we attack Iraq, we should attack North Korea as well to stop they hypocrisy. As you can imagine, it was a thoroughly unenjoyable 50 minutes, but oh well. At least their attacks were made in English, right? So, even though I only taught about 5 hours total last week, I feel as though I've really earned my week off ;-)

Other milestones achieved....on January 26, I attended the Vienna Technical University's Ball. It was held at the Hofburg (the Hapsburg winter palace residence), and it was something else, to be sure!! Kim and Alexis came over beforehand to get ready (being a girl is so much fun, if only because of primping!) We knew that food at the ball would be ridiculously expensive, so we made chocolate-chip pancakes for dinner. Here is a photo of my (failed) attempt to make a Mickey Mouse pancake - notice how his head splattered when I flipped him. Anyway, dinner was delicious, as chocolate-chip pancakes usually are, and afterwards, we proceeded to dress ourselves, fancy up our hair, and apply our makeup so we would look bee-utiful. Here is a photo of me fixing Alexis' hair to go with her hot dress.

We arrived at the ball at around 8:30, which gave us a chance to wander through the various rooms before it got too crowded. Seriously, these rooms are amazing - just out of a fairy tale, really!! The ball opened officially at 9:30 with the TU debutantes and their escorts entering the room, along with the VIPs. After a short speech, the debs and their guys did a rather complicated version of the Viennese waltz that seemed to end in a cheerleader-esque pyramid. It was quite a spectacle, and I sincerely wish that I could upload the video that I took of it to this, but alas, Blogger doesn't permit it. Anyway, they were whirling and twirling in perfect rhythm, all while moving around the dance space in intricate patterns. It was very very cool to see, and it really made me wish I could dance well!

After the opening sequence, couples started to move onto the dance floor, and within about 20 seconds, it was packed!! We moved off to our side room, where our table was located, because tragically, at that point, only an hour and a half into the evening, my shoes were already becoming instruments of torture (oh, what we women put up with in the name of beauty and fashion!) Here is a photo of my shoes (which are cute) and my still-swollen sprained ankle (which is not cute.) Actually we were seated in a really good location - we were literally the room right next to the big ballroom, and there were a few sets of double doors leading into to the dancing, which meant that we had a good view of what was going on on the dance floor. It was also really nice for the whole Fulbright crew to be together in one place again, which rarely happens because of everyone's crazy schedules. Also, who can resist getting dressed up and getting to hang out with friends? Here are some of the ladies looking classy and stunning (Kelly, me, Nancy, Alexis, and Kim.)

What else - oh yes, I did dance. The first was a waltz with Danny, which took place when the dance floor was still packed. It was terrifying, because couples kept whirling at us, and they didn't stop! They would hit us, bounce off, and twirl off on their merry way. Thus, we sort of kept to the edge of the floor, where it was safer. That's where all the non-Austrians were dancing, you could just tell! It was definitely fun, though, and I'm so glad I was able to dance one true Viennese waltz! The only other time I danced occurred when I was trying to take a photo of the dance floor. After I took my picture, I got tapped on the shoulder, and "Peter," an Austrian, asked me to dance. However, the music was swing (which I am slightly more comfortable with.) It was rather awkward making conversation with a stranger who only seemed to speak Austrian dialect with a very thick accent, though. Alexis took some paparazzi photos of us out there, for your viewing pleasure.

After about three hours of this wandering/dancing/sitting, Alexis and I decided we were in need of sustenance, so we headed down to the student bar, where we could get cheap beer and wieners (haha pun!) At 2am, we were drinking beer out of a plastic cup and eating hot dogs. I still can't decide if that felt more like a Braves game or college. Anyway, we were a bit punchy at that point (and I finally caved and took off my shoes, which led to the greatest feeling of relief of my life), and we took the following photo. Finally, around 2:30, we decided to call it a night, and Kim and Alexis and I headed back to my place to crash before work on Friday morning (can you say "ugh?") And that, my friends, was the end of my first ball experience. It was a lot of fun, and it was certainly a spectacle. How Viennese :-) Oh, and if you are interested in more photos, there are a ton on my photo site, to which there is a link on the menu bar to the right.

Hmmm what else has happened since my last update? Guy and Nancy threw themselves a going away party, since they left to go home to Mississippi on January 27. We miss them already, but the party was definitely fun (as always!!) Happily enough, they were able to come to the Ball for a little while before they took off (their plane literally left two hours after the ball officially closed at 5am.) This past Thursday, I took my first Austrian exam, and I think I did well. Lord knows I put in enough hours at Starbucks with Alexis going over the material!! (yes Starbucks - no smoking in Vienna is hard to find!) Other than that, not much is going on. After I get back from Tunisia, Alexis and I (and anyone else who's interested) are going to join a gym (hurrah for student rates! I'm going to be a student forever!!!) I'm looking forward to spring, when I can recommence walking everywhere. And I guess that's it for now :-)

Talk to you soooooon :-)

Tschussi!

posted by Carly Fowler @ 4:03 PM 3 comments