1.31.2005
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
Here's the latest round. Not much of a post accompanying them, but that's only because I already posted on the dunes which you can read below, or check in the archive (I think). Hope you enjoy them. I'm going to try to load a couple higher resolution photos to see how the blog handles it.
That's all for now.
Don't jump!
After I ran into myself (see the picture below) my other self had an existential crisis...and killed himself by leaping off of this really tall dune.
Wha-Hey! It's Me!
I came over the crest of a dune and then BOOM. There I was. It was insane. Not a mirage either. Heavens...I didn't know I was so handsome.
Sky and Sun
Sorry about the lens flare, but this effectively captures the dramatic shadows cast by the dunes.
1.28.2005
Clarification
Two things to clarify:
1) The latest pictures are previews for upcoming posts to keep people coming back. Each picture will be the center of its own slew of photos and an explanatory post, to come in series. For the next couple days, posts won't have pictures just because I've maxed out on bandwidth for the month, but since February will come soon that will change.
2) Hmmm, I can't remember for the life of me what number two is. Never mind then. Um, hope you enjoy.
Oh wait, I remember, you can old posts or look at old pictures by going to the archives, but I don't know if they work. Soooo...there you go.
Dunes
Thursday, January 27, 2005 4:47 PM
Dune-Walking:
Sometimes when you travel, you find that where you’re going isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Sand dunes do not fall in that category.
I think my general perception of sand dunes was that they were enormous mounds of sand, mostly akin to the beach in L.A., but with funny lines from the wind and a uniform color.
Sand dunes are incredible. Saharan sand dunes that is.
I should note that most of what makes those dunes amazing is the sand.
Saharan sand isn’t like anything you’ll find on a beach anywhere. The grains are infinitely fine. In a light breeze, you’ll only feel the wind on your face. But when you look at your clothes, you’ll realize there’s a slight rusty hue on the upwind edges. And if you lick your lips, there’s a hint of grittiness.
Running your fingers through it is like a mix of satin and silk, but as it runs through your fingers it just disappears. And when you brush your hands off, nothing remains.
All that wonderful softness makes walking through the dunes a trip. Literally. It’s easy to take a fall.
Though I spent hours stumbling over the dunes in light and dark, I never figured out where a dune is soft and hard. You can stroll along as if you’re wearing snowshoes for a bit, then without warning your feet will sink into the laces. Sometimes the crest of a dune is surprisingly firm, sometimes it’ll crumble without warning beneath your feet. And the slightest breeze skims a thin film of sand of the crest of a dune, whisking it up into your face. Fortunately, the wind barely blew when I was there.
The dunes themselves, particularly the Grand Dunes (they get rather huge for a stretch outside of Douz), are positively psychadelic. If you look at them in the sunlight, the unsullied waving lines are dizzying. Every hour, they change dramatically as the shadows shorten and lengthen.
Of course, walking in dunes can be a total pain in the keister. As the sun set, after watching it go down, I headed out of the oasis alone just to walk out into the night. It was absolutely terrifying. It’s like swimming farther out to sea, past the surf, when you’re not in a bay and it’s just the ocean extending out as far as you can see.
I always thought in the ocean I was afraid of sharks or the deepness of the water below me or all sorts of other things. By I don’t think that’s fundamental fear. At the core, it’s about being alone.
There aren’t any wolves in the desert around Ksar Ghilane, nor roaming bandits, nor deadly snakes (at least to my knowledge) or cliffs or quicksand or anything to really jeopardize your safety. And yet I was absolutely petrified when I got more than fifty yards outside the treeline. By the time I was about a mile away, I actually had broken out in a cold sweat and couldn’t stop getting shivers down my spine (it was cold, but not that cold.
I even thought out loud a little bit, just to hear the sound of a voice against the silence. It wasn’t even a deafening silence. Occasionally you’d hear noises from the oasis and there was a distant hum of a generator. There was no breeze at all and the sounds carried for miles. But mostly it was quiet.
And it was incredibly scary, in the same way that it’s scary to lean over the edge of a tall building and think to yourself, “I could throw myself off right now and I would die.”
Moreover, it was maddening to try and walk, particularly when the moon was over your shoulder and the you didn’t have the benefit of shadows to help judge distance. Since most rises in a dune aren’t above the horizon unless you’re down in a trough, I would walk suddenly into a slope. I couldn’t believe how many times I fell. Maddening, but an awesome experience.
The dunes are great. I’ll post pictures as soon as Flickr (the free online host) lets me.
Note: I’m only referring to the Dunes in between Ksar Ghilane and Douz. I can’t claim knowledge of Saharan dunes generally. I will say, though, that it would be miserable to hike at night in the desert. Or in the day. Miserable. I dunno how they did it in all those survival movies that feature people stranded in the middle of the desert.
1.27.2005
Water
I guess this moonshine beats liquid moonshine. Oh, and as a hint: I didn't take this picture in LA.
Bones
These are the bones of a guy who didn't make it. The sand ants ate away at them until they looked like twigs. Seriously...they ate off my big toe while I was watching. That really stinks.
Miracle
These steps are miraculous. They bleed on a daily basis. No joke. It's one of the household god's pilgrimage sites. Weird.
Glowing orb
They keep their babies in these...and harvest energy from them until they are old enough to walk.
Where or where?
This is a big city in Tunisia. The capital. I'll give you one guess (hint: it rhymes with Schmunis)...
Just so you know
The pictures from Sousse are way down below. The pictures most recently posted are actually just previews of what's to come to keep you coming back for more. That's why I give no explanations. They will be coming with more pictures next month. I've maxed out on bandwidth for the month so, I gotsa wait until February to get the next batch going. So, be sure to come back.
Wi5pol3ne Goor
The title of this picture (which is of the meal I had en route to Tunis from Athens) is the result of sleepily trying to type, lying face down on a bed. So, there you go.
Hotel Maison Doree, round 1
Sweet little balcony, from the first time I was in Tunis. Smelt rather foul unfortunately, but the view was nice.
Greasy Hair
This is what happens when you don't use shampoo... for long periods of time. Hmmm, lovely.
Losing battle
This guy was trying to tow this boat back to its mooring...and wasn't making it. I watched him for ten minutes and every time he made some headway the wind would kick up and erase all his gains. Poor fellow. Obstinate as a mule, though.
Covert
I covertly took this shot of a local woman. Then, she haunted me. I heard her footsteps behind me for the next half hour, no matter how quickly I walked. I imagine some trick of the wind and the amplification of sound by the narrow streets, but it scared the daylights out of me.
Dots on doors
Another beautiful door. The medina was littered with these, in every town in Tunisia it seemed... well, at least most.
Light on the water
Okay, so it's not a good Deep Purple knockoff (since it's light and not smoke), but I thought the image was pretty enough by itself.
Lamb
Mary had a little lamb,
Whose fleece was white as snow,
But when el Kebir came,
That lamb just had to go.
Sheep's Blood
Hard to tell but that's a sheep head on that cart, in mid-sear. This fellow used the blowtorch to make the render the heads black and non-bloody. Made a terrible stink of burning hair; it wafted throughout the medina.
1.26.2005
Briefly
Hey folks,
Back in action. I'll be writing a bundle tonight and formatting pictures to make things interesting and pretty. If you have time to kill I posted some philosophical ramblings below. Warning: they are long and I don't know if they're worth reading. But if you're interested, see below.
More to the point, my travels.
I left Sousse, after Aid el Kebir, which basically shut down the whole country, and headed south to Gabes. Then, by louage, to Kebili, then another louage to Douz. One night at the exotic Hotel Touareg, then a half day putzing about Douz. Then, a four hour drive (turned into a five hour drive by a little accident which is a story I'll save for tomorrow), and arrival in Ksar Ghilane, a desert oasis on the northern end of the Grand Erg Oriental, a significant chunk of the Sahara desert.
The following day, we drove on to Matmata (turning northward mind you) where I dutifully made my pilgrimage to the Lars Homestead of Star Wars fame. Then, back to Gabes by hitching a ride (that's another story that will get the full treatment shortly) and north on an impossibly packed train to Tunis. I got into Tunis around midnight, crashed at the Maison Doree and recovered. The next was spent in Tunis (amazing) and Carthage (tragically incredible). Then, flight back to Athens and since then it's been CYA fun nonstop.
That's the broad sketch. I have a list of 140 discrete events, people, thoughts, that will eventually turn into blog posts...not as 140 discrete posts, I imagine, but you get the general idea. I'll be clumping pictures and stories together and try to craft a wonderful achronological narrative from post to post and limit myself to what someone besides myself will actually read.
That's the idea and it'll probably occupy the next week or two. I'll also be punctuating that with the latest from Athens (when the pell mell activity of registration and initiation and all wears off and I get more sleep) and imminent travels. This weekend I'm heading to Meteora to scale some mountain monasteries and do my best not to fall off any cliffs.
That's the deal, in case it gets confusing. These have been some of the three best weeks of my life, and the stories are far beyond my capacity to tell them. But I'll give it a shot.
All the best,
The Navigator
P.S. Okay, okay, I won't really sign off so pretentiously.
Billy
Very profoung thinking, mmmm, yes, indeed
Caveat: The following post doesn't address my recent travels. It actually started as a personal email(which should explain some of the oddities in tone), but then I realized the few people that actually check this blog are all close enough so that they could appreciate what I was talking about...and forgive me for a bunch of highfalutin ruminations that I will no doubt later regret and chuckle about (when older), saying "All the sophomoric wisdom of youth." But what the hell, what better time to write snooty "serious" things than when you're in college, alone, and halfway across the world. If I don't use this opportunity to write as many silly things as possible, I'll miss a chance that I won't again.
With that in mind, here's my latest and greatest magnum opus.
~
These past three weeks have been some of the best in my life. Hard to call it anything less. It's been rather hard, especially the traveling, and largely unpleasant, uncomfortable, and not much fun, to be brutally honest.
Experiences of this caliber, though, are ultimately immune to the hardships and discomforts of daily living. So much more has happened. Far more than I ever dreamed to see, in all honesty. Oddly enough, that's not hyperbole. I never hoped to witness and survive what I've seen.
The uniqueness of my limited traveling and its importance in the grand scheme of things; I can't make grand claims on either of those points. No doubt many thousands of hardy backpackers have trammeled paths far less worn than those on which I walked. I had no great window into the local culture, nor any special opportunities to get behind whatever facades surround a western tourist looking for something exotic.
In fact, I don't think at all that's why these past days have been so memorable, why I already treasure their memory, and anticipate tomorrow with a zeal I've rarely felt.
The source of my satisfaction is just in living, at the moment. I've met some incredible characters here in Athens. It's the people that are salt of the earth common-sense, tangible and have some solidity to them.
I guess from an outside perspective, it would appear that I'm just studying with a group of Americans, most who aren't that bright, in a city that's not that pretty. And that's all true. But there's an enormous amount going on. Mostly, I imagine, inside my head, but that's all well and good and unavoidable.
At the moment, I'm having trouble expressing it, in case you didn't notice. But let me give it one more shot.
A book I recently read, The Knot of Vipers, opened with this quote from St. Theresa of Avila:
"Consider, O God, that we do not understand ourselves;
that we do not know what we want,
and that we set ourselves at an infinite distance from our desires."
I don't ever want to be a journalist. I mean, I'd love being a journalist and I want very much to be a journalist. But I don't want to be a journalist. I don't want my life, on reflection, to have been spent trying to influence people indirectly, of commenting on things passing before me. I have to do something productive and immersed. Otherwise...well, I don't know what happens
otherwise.
Too much of life at USC is spent being a journalist. I think that's why I enjoyed poker nights so much. What actually happened? We sat around drinking decent beer and basically taking turns handing money to the other players. By the end of the night, I was invariably toasted and usually paid for it the following day. But much more than that happened. Poker was something tangible, something that had weight, something that actually makes friendship happen through living and not through trying. Playing poker was a rare opportunity to get out of your head, where silence is valued instead of feared.
In the same way, traveling, for all my failures to get the most out of it (because I only got a tenth of someone with more language skills, travel-savvy, and more common sense, would have) was a raft of similar opportunities. Instead of sitting on the bridge, watching the water flow underneath, I was on the water, in my own canoe, getting wet. Granted, I didn't actually go under water, didn't actually go swimming (which a reasonable and seasoned traveler would have done). But my skin's really dry. Even just a drop or two or mist from rapids that I dare not ride dangerously and I have a chance to understand what it's like to be wet. Someday, hopefully, I'll be able to get out of the canoe and wade surely into the middle of my home river, making a difference in how the river flows (though of course, few people can actually change a river's course...those are the people who end up in history books and whose tombs won't be forgotten).
This actually works really well. You see, you can swim, but you'll never be able to breathe underwater except in your own river...sometimes only in your own stream. You can't become a different kind of fish just by swimming. That just doesn't happen. So, if you're only going to be on a river for a while, you can learn a lot just by being on the water and tasting it a little bit and feeling it on your face. So, you shouldn't worry about trying to drink in the whole river, nor worry about missed opportunities to get wetter.
Athens is different. It's a raging torrent and CYA is just a quay jutting out into the muddy waters. Now, you can actually hop in and swim about a bit, but usually not in the real river. Just in the eddies and tepid pools on the side.
But on the quay and swimming with you are other people. This is true of everywhere, of course, but some people are opaque and and unpainted. Others are varnished and polished and pretty...but just as opaque when you've looked for a while. Some are just highly polished metal, burnished so fiercely they become no more than a reflection of the water around them, blending into the water invisibly.
Some are quite transparent. You can actually see right through to the river running on the other side. They're completely empty, just a shell waiting to be looked through.
But some, some aren't any of those things. Some people have color, but it's not on the surface, at least not much. You can see into them, but not through. They've got all of their own hues, spinning inside. And very rarely, if you watch them for a long time and get quite close to them, sometimes, if you're lucky, the colors will change for a moment. For that moment, the water swirling around, the prisms that have been turning all through them will align or, if you're really lucky, pause of their own accord, and you'll see inside. Not a swirl of color, not the brilliance of a star. No explosion of light or tired rainbow. Just a series of spectral lines.
Nofigure, no revelatory picture that makes everything clearer. Just spectral lines. Spectral lines.
Of course, they have a little color of their own. And that's been the source of all those swirling colors; magnified by the infinite orbs turning inside, all the broken bits of glass, the magnificent prisms, the spinning mirrors and the turbid water (this water is on the inside, that is -- we are, after all, seventy five percent water).
But their just inscrutable lines. Except everyone in the whole wide world has a rudimentary knowledge of spectral analysis, whether they realize it or not. So, everyone can have a go at figuring out what those lines mean.
And that can take forever, literally, to get the whole picture. But to get some of it, that can be done, if not quickly, then fast enough for the the pace of life.
That's why I'm so happy to be here, so eager for the semester to come. I've no compunction about it failing to live up to my expectations. In fact, I will be surprised indeed if it does not fail miserably to meet my expectations. That's not a problem. I've just got to remember that expectations have no impact on the importance of what has already occurred.
And that's all I've got at the moment. But as soon as a fuller picture of the meaning of life, the universe and everything in it pops up, I'll be sure to burden you with it.
1.24.2005
Alive
I am alive and in a big way. Even though it's started to rain here in Tunis and it's been cold and overcast most of the day it's hard to imagine how this trip could have ended better. The sheer volume of insane experiences in the past several days boggles my mind. If I actually were the doughty traveler I ostensibly claim to be, given the title of the blog, I might do the whirlwind of madness justice. However, I am an often timid, perpetually paranoid, and maddeningly self-conscious traveler (that much I have decisively learnedà. Traveling for me is like getting on roller coasters; I despise the thought but commit myself to it. When I can't back out, I spend much of the time screaming and fighting to maintain sphincter control. But when it's all over, or at least in this case, I can't wait to get back on the rollercoaster, even though I am delighted to get off.
More coming soon, I promise. (And if no one is actually reading this, then I will definitely continue writing as if I had an audience waiting feverishly on my every word. So HAH)
1.21.2005
Douz
I'm in Douz. This place is the end of the world. I'll post more later, but I've got to find a place to stay for the night. Hopefully Sahara tomorrow. If not, it's up to Tozeur and then on to Tunis for Monday. I'm torn: I both wish could stay here another two weeks, just in this area, and on the other hand I wish desperately to be back in Athens. Ah well that's living on the edge for you. Met a crazy Canadian who just got here from an island of Madagascar where he was studying volcanoes. Bizzare, the people one meets. Right, I'm off.
Training
Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:54 PM
Just so you know, the reason I did not post today was because of Islam. Specifically, the feast of Aid el Kebir.
I must say, I’ve been able to learn precious little about the feast, other than its enormous significance and the custom of every household slaughtering a sheep. I witnessed this firsthand.
Well, not the slaughtering so much as its aftermath. When the rain finally ceased in the late afternoon, I headed into the heart of the medina, wandering through its twisted streets without any direction in mind. I came across countless spots where some poor ram or ewe had met its fate. The spots were typically marked by copious amounts of sheep excrement, and hardly any blood. Oddly enough, the gallons you’d expect must have been mopped up or captured during the process. Often I would only find a single drop to alert me to the rite that had occurred there.
I did see plenty of evidence for one custom, though. Apparently the head of the sacrificial lamb, or ram I should think, is preserved. But to avoid its immediate decay and the resultant stink, families send the heads off to a character with a singular job. Armed with a blowtorch, an old man chars the outside of the head and the brain stem so that the stink will remain inside for a time. This I did witness firsthand, standing awestruck at the plastic bags full of rams’ heads and the old man happily going about his working rendering each into charcoal before passing it off to a small child to run back to the proper family. Throughout the medina, I periodically captured the acrid scent of burning sheep’s hair, providing ample evidence that the one man I witnessed was not alone in this task. Fascinating.
Sousse
Thursday, January 20, 2005 9:53 PM
What to say about Sousse? I’ll bundle everything together, but under different subheads, so if you’re bored out of your skull, just skip down to the next scintillating talking point.
Sousse:
Most cities respond to rain positively. Los Angeles, after the clouds have gone, invariably feels vastly cleaner as if a city-sized Molly Maid service had scrubbed the sky clean and washed most of the city’s filth away (most likely into the ocean). More recently, Athens profited, doubtless, from the wind and rain sweeping her streets, as the air and water literally swept much of the grunge and dirt off street and building.
Sousse, no.
Rain has been absent too long. The silt in the street is layered too deeply. The filth in the medina has gone unwashed for too many days.
The presence of rain, in short, is a disaster. Take, for example, the center of town. Walking through the main square yesterday, I witnessed the worst of the weather’s effects. The sewers on several streets had flooded. In the distance, manhole covers were threatening to shoot off as small geysers of fecal matter and lord knows what else did their best to escape to the street. The smell overpowered the senses, demanding I hurry on my way, dodging the spray from cars speeding through the rivers of murky sludge.
Later in the day, and thankfully all through today, the rain never came down in enough volume to threaten those on the surface, but the smell remained.
Throughout the city, the small mounds of trash were not washed away by the flood. Instead, they clung mustily to every thoroughfare, making walking a demanding exercise, a continuous effort in dodging piles of refuse in various stages of decomposition. Of course, such debris is hardly unique to this city. A problem that reared its ugly head often enough in the suburbs of Athens, littering is some kind of national pastime here. The train ride to Sousse, remarkably unremarkable in flora and fauna, was prevented from being forgettable by the boils of trash erupting at every opportunity. Every windbreak or natural depression had caught mounds of the detritus of human life, and not only immediately along the train’s path. Well into the middle of lonely fields, one could see building materials from some forgotten project littered with all kinds of filth; broken chairs, tattered clothing, paper and plastic cast about. A depressing sight.
In fact, much of Tunisia thus far, and Sousse particularly, could be labeled depressing. But the employ of such an adjective could only be justified in its connotations. For, in fact, Tunisia has been anything but depressing. The farther I descend into this country, the happier I’ve become. No doubt, I’ve been buoyed in large part by The Knot of Vipers and Zorba the Greek, two incredible novels that helped me survive a packed train and a pair of miserable (in terms of weather) days in Sousse. Even so, my good humor extends me the reach of Mauriac and Kazantzakis. There’s an enormous amount of beauty in this derelict town and much to observe.
The French Influence:
Touching only briefly upon this, I can’t help commenting on the profound effect the French had. Outside of the truly rural areas, both the French language, and French cuisine are just as common as the Arabic versions. Perhaps more strikingly, there hasn’t been any kind of material aversion to reminders of the former colonial imperialists. The olive orchards are maintained, the language still prominent, the diet consumed by the locals...even French cars hold a monopoly over the vehicles on the road. I find it bizarre. Nowhere near the degree of reaction against a former ruling power that I would have assumed to be typical. Ironically, enough, I’ve been listening to Yves Montand for the past half hour or so as I write.
The Medina (of Sousse):
A strange and rather tragic place. Most of it is consumed by stores hawking knockoff Western goods, from sneakers to sunglasses and everything in between. Unlike the souks of Tunis or Kairouan, there’s little evidence of local independent industry. I can only imagine that reflects the summertime status of the city as a beach getaway for Europeans looking to worship the sun on the cheap.
Countless doors and windows have a fading beauty, fading because every single one could use a paint job. Nor is the state of every building a romantic kind of ruin; it’s a little bit tragic and mostly off-putting. Not a soul in the entire city center seems to have the do-it-yourselfer attitude. I imagine that Popular Mechanics would be as popular as the Jerusalem Post here. From the glances I was able to catch of interiors, as locals hustled inside as I passed, things seem to be much better maintained. That being said, many of the buildings were rather disgusting.
Even so, beauty abounded, as my pictures, I hope, will testify.
Me, as a tourist:
Thursday, for reasons you’ve already read, I spent twiddling my thumbs in large part. About halfway through the day, I’d had enough.
“Look, this here is a beachfront ‘palace,’” I said loudly to the mirror, “so, go out and enjoy the beach...test of manliness.”
And with those lines it was decided. I would go for a swim.
That task may not sound that intimidating, but given that the wind was blowing harder, perhaps, than I’ve ever seen in my life and the temperature was threatening to turn rain into snow, those were fighting words.
Nonetheless, I donned my trunks, faithfully brought along to serve just such a foolhardy task. I steeled my courage, basked for one final moment in the steamy warmth of my heated room, and then took off down the hall.
It was a mad dash past dozens of rooms, down several flights of stairs and then out past the pool, before I even got close to the waves. I had to scale the rusty fence and store my clothes under the remains of a cabana that had blown over. The wind was raging, kicking up pellets of sand that threatened to pierce the skin, or at least it felt like it. The rain was being blown in so many directions, I think it went up my pants rather than down them. With a rebel yell, I threw myself into the waves.
I can imagine what you’re thinking and yes the water was stormy and turgid. I didn’t fear being sucked out to see; the hotel is on a small inlet and I never went past waist depth before turning round and heading back into shore.
Just as my head was going under with my initial dive, I had a vision that slowed time. The sewers, bursting at the seams the previous day, could only have been flowing in one direction... to the sea.
The next second I was under water, begging myself why on earth I had submerged myself in this brown slurry. Exploding upward I took a whiff and sure enough there was a dank scent in the air (that or my overactive imagination was pulling a fast one on the olfactories). I splashed about for a bit, somewhat stupefied by my horror at the potential rankness of the surrounding waters, storm-tossed though they may be.
Unable to bear the thought, I swiftly fled the roiling ocean. In a flash I was atop the fence and then pool-side. Desperate to rid myself of the ocean’s patina (and being assailed by wind-blown rain that felt like grapeshot), I threw myself into the clear waters of the pool, expecting no worse than the ocean had served up.
How wrong I was: a pond fed by the slow-drip of melt from a Ross Ice Shelf calf could not have been colder than that bastardly pool. In under a second I must have lost a good ninety percent of my progenitor capabilities. With the water threatening my future offspring and current health, I was back topside faster than the Rat Pack could kill a round.
I spent the next hour soaking in the tub, and then using the built-in blow dryer to render myself dry.
That ended Bill’s attempts to simply ignore the weather. The other idea, to fly the small parafoil kite I’ve been carrying with me (thank you very much, Emmy), died in infancy. Instead I wallowed in Zorba the Greek and mused on what it could possibly mean to be Macedonian, instead of Cretan.
Tunis to Sousse
Warning: This post strives at times to be very serious. The effect, upon rereading, can a be a little goofy. I beg your forgiveness.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:30 PM
I saw a different side of Tunis today.
Arriving on Tuesday night, the sky had been clear. By the morning of Wednesday, however, the heavens had opened up, announcing their siege of the city with a might bombardment of hail, sleet and rain.
Short of tornadoes appearing over Sidi Bou Said, there hardly seemed like a better time to leave the city. Worst case scenario, I was putting off the crap weather until the end of the traveling week. Best case, I’d avoid the worst of things by heading south and inland and then return to the north when the worst had blown over.
In this frame of mind, I’d dodged the crusty metro buses crossing Place de Barcelone and entered the train station of the SNCF-Tunisian edition. When I first poked my head in, it was about 9:30 and the station, while busy, appeared to be no more so than any of its European counterparts. I noted the relative levels of chaos and confusion, snagged a schedule for La Sud, and headed over to the Publitel to consult the weather gods.
By the time I returned to the station, with the destination of Sousse in mind, things had changed dramatically. Simply getting through the door was a bitter struggle. I had been thinking that to save space, I’d wear my daypack on the front and backpack, with clothes and all, on my back. Swiftly I realized that was not to be the case; the crush of people demanded I waddle carrying my backpack between my legs, my only hope of actually squeezing between the groups of people going in every direction and those who had decided to seek refuge from the rain by planting their collapsible canoes and assorted gear (see Scoop by Evelyn Waugh for the explanation of that one) in the middle of the station.
It took me about five minutes just to determine where the lines to purchase tickets began, much less where they ended. By the time I had fought my way to the end of the line, odd though that may sound, the train I had planned on taking was due to depart in under five minutes. I resigned myself to the alternative train, an hour and a half later.
Standing in line, though, I began to wonder if I was going to make it. No, not just the time it took to get to the front of the line...I was worried about much more than that. The people in the station (I dare not label them by race or generalized kind, lest I incur the righteous condemnation of those quick to find bigotry) were the anthropomorphic manifestation of rats. Once upon a time, I had the chance to witness humans metamorphosize into squealing piglets before my very eyes (in Santiago de Compostella as the traditional pilgrimage reached its conclusion). Now, I saw the mass of humanity around me meld into vermin.
I should correct that statement. The men-made-rodents were exclusively male and primarily young. That they became vermin is beyond question.
I imagine its difficult to understand just what a statement like that could mean. Even with the aid of a couple lucky pictures I was able to take before being swept into the mob, it must be near impossible to conceive. But I’ll try to paint a bit of the picture.
Simply standing in line took constant concentration. The station roared with shouts, screams, and a thousand conversations competing with one another. Threads of the fabric the stifling blanket of humanity shifted this way at that, without order or consistency, each thread a string of humans pressing to force their way to another impossibly packed side of the hall. Even when I wasn’t moving, I was in constant jeopardy of being bowled over by the reckless youths, smoking and swinging bags labeled “Ferrari” or bearing a knockoff’s perverted logo; by bustling women, shrouded and oblivious to three quarters of the world around them, the portion denied to their peripheral vision by their headdress; by columns of self-important soldiers, certain of their status in spite of the lack of regard by their citizen peers. If that wasn’t enough, I had to fear the people behind me. I could almost hear the hushed fear of those behind me the moment I allowed an inch to appear between my chest and the back of the woman in front of me. The one time I allowed a space of a foot or so to develop betwixt me and said woman (I was moving slowly), I was anxiously nudged forward by the man behind me.
I couldn’t stand up straight; I had to brace myself against the weight of the man behind me, who seemed desperate to lean his fall bodyweight onto me, as if to crush the people ahead of us and advance through their parted flesh to the ticket counter.
Finally purchasing a ticket, I discovered, with a small measure of horror, that they only had second class left. Now, before you decry my snobbish reaction, let me remind you that there are three classes on Tunisian trains, with second class being the lowest. Traveling second class, from the way the guidebook described it (and from what I had witnessed in the station thus far, would be like traveling with the immigrants on the Titanic.
I forced my way out of the line and battled to the doors leading to the platforms. Getting to those doors was such an odd trial. Indicative of how people in the station thought (or failed to think), there was a small group of travelers standing directly in front of the door, talking importantly about something or another, but very clearly not planning to actually pass through the doors any time soon (to the train platforms just beyond). Ignoring my pathetic, “Excusez-moi”, I eventually had to simply push two of them to either side and squeeze through, as did those behind me.
None of this, though, prepared me for the platforms.
If there could ever be a term that was an amalgam of bedlam, mayhem and utter confusion, then perhaps there would be words to describe the chaos that reigned on those platforms. A sea of people crushed even tighter together than in the station, the viscous mass punctured by lines of travelers thrusting their way to a more distant quay. Above all reigned desperate cries, near-shrieks rending an air already heavy with the wailing of hundreds.
Even to this madness, though, there were regular patterns. At each platform, long before the train actually approached, a mass of people would start to surge against the railings the police had erected to block off the quays themselves. There was some kind of an effort to allow first class passengers onto the “Voie” first, leading to a frenzied battle at the gates between the first-class travelers, the surrounding second-class opportunists, and the police. Soon, only second-class passengers would be surging against the gates, and the police would simply block all access. Young men would fight their way, by the most vicious methods, to get up to the gates and contest bitterly with the police, shoving and screaming. On more than one occasion the police called in their backup: men in all black, wearing steel-toed boots and leather jackets. They would plunge into the heart of a seething mass of humanity and extract the worst trouble maker. Then they would brutally remove him from the station. If he shrugged off their hands, they would shove him (more like a directing slug) through the crowd. I saw one such trouble-maker removed right in front of me. Within ten feet he had lost both his shoes and had fallen a number of times. The men in black weren’t in his face so much as deadly serious about kicking his ass (if you’ll excuse the bald language).
The blackjackets, though, never had more than a temporary effect. Within minutes, young men would literally climb on the retaining walls, using women’s heads and shoulders as support (most often, though occasionally they would try to lean on other men) and simply leap over the barriers and onto the tracks. They were never successful and often simply succeeded in stumbling and falling back into the crowd, winning them no friends there either.
Eventually, as the time of departure drew nearer, the police would lose more and more control. The mass of people would surge and seethe and rail and with a roar would break loose like a torrent, washing onto the long finger of the quay. Dozens would simply run down the tracks, while others would flood the platform and lean dangerously off the sides, eagerly awaiting the train’s arrival.
When the train finally did arrive, then all hell would break loose. Typically the trains were incapable of pulling all the way in, because too often people through themselves onto the tracks to arrest the locomotives advance, then would spring down farther, pulling open the doors prematurely.
In other cases, the train would barrel in recklessly. Just as recklessly, one or two young men would leap onto the sides and cling to the doors, preventing them from being opened so that they would be the first inside.
As I watched countless hands snatch at a man clinging to the door of a car, I couldn’t help feeling sick. He swatted them away furiously until he could throw open the door and sprint to a seat. Then, the man and woman would fight, literally fight, to get through the narrow doorway and get a seat. At times it seemed like I was watching the Keystone Cops: people actually got stuck in doorways because too many tried to fit through at once and they were all pinched together like pigs fighting for the trough. I even saw several men break open the cargo door for the dining car on one train. The size of a doggie door, it was intended for passing food and drinks inside. These men broke it open then crawled through like rats escaping into a hole. Grown men throwing their briefcases inside and then heaving their girth through this tiny opening. Or well-dressed twenty somethings leaping onto trains still moving speedily, forcing open a window and then falling through.
It was truly disgusting, just sickening. Happily, though, I didn’t feel so perturbed as to feel bad. Instead I wondered at a culture that regularly accepted simple travel (the farthest any of the people going on any of these trains was five hours mind you...not a terribly long distance) as demanding the most animalistic competition for seats. It seemed like a culture in its infancy: not one like ours, which seems determined to coddle the youth and feign their infancy, but rather one that couldn’t be guilty of such a crime because it hadn’t yet advanced to such a stage.
It might help to understand that ninety to 85-90 percent of all travelers were male. On the plane to Tunis, the proportion was significantly higher, 95 percent or so. Women aren’t as visible traveling, in cafes, or in many places outside of working in the service industry. A truly bizarre society, especially given it is the most Westernized and “liberal” of Arab states.
The train was disturbing. Perhaps it is limited to travel, but this is not a society that breeds charity. Opening doors, conceding your place in line, or aiding another onto a train, all seem inconceivable. When things come to competition, this society can be brutally barbaric.
Of course, this is a massive generalization to be making from one day of experience on a train. But as I left the train in Sousse, and the cars were bordered by others making the return journey, I witnessed a similar phenomenon, replicated in miniature. The fascinating thing was that there was no possible way all the seats were to be filled; there just weren’t enough passengers. Everyone was guaranteed a seat on the train...it was apparent to all. And yet, as the doors opened I saw that familiar desperation as one pushed off another, to force his way in first. Lord knows what primal instincts were driving that reaction, but primal they were, for they were utterly irrational.
I’ve often had visions of trains, boats, helicopters leaving war-torn areas or utterly impoverished areas, packed with those desperate to go somewhere else. I kept thinking to myself, this doesn’t seem like a place where three million Europeans come to holiday every year...this seems, well, like Africa. And of course, I had to realize; hell, this is Africa.
1.19.2005
Tunis is like, well, Africa
I'll save the bulk of this post until tomorrow morning. Since they have USB drives here I think I will be able to post a picture or two and I will work on most of the details in my room tonight.
For now, I'm in the beach town of Sousse, finally in the company of a number of Westerners (all bemused and sitting inside looking at the absolutely terrible weather tearing the city apart outside). I am staying at a beachfront resort that slashes its prices by eighty percent for the winter. As a consequence, I have an absolutely sweet room. Tomorrow, after I visit El-Jem, I plan on getting a massage and possibly a sea weed wrap at the in-hotel spa (together they cost about the price of a movie ticket at the Grove), and then send my worst socks and clothes off to the in-hotel launderers (very cost-effective considering I have only two outfits that I alternate between). Tonight, I'll partake in the included meal, hit up the bar, and write the premature memoirs of my trip to Tunisia (mainly because there are so many old fogeys in this fancy place that I feel guilty not to be on my deathbed and ruminating on the passage of a long life).
That's all for the moment, but tomorrow will feature vastly more interesting tôpics, including:
- Why Tunis seems like it's a place in, well, Africa
- Men, Tunisia, and traveling
- Trash...everywhere
- French and my inability to speak it
- When is a pizza not a pizza?
On Tunis
Be sure to reqd the post below. Here are some quick thoughts on Tunis before I head to the train to go south.
The city is too big for the people living in it. This is an entirely unjustified and mostly irrational statement I am making but I can't shake the sensation. Everyone speaks French in and out of the tourist areas, and all the street signs and literature is in French and Arabic. The city nouvelle, built in the fifties by the French who didn't feel welcome in the medina, is well laid out and orderly, in its design. THe buildings are taller than those in Athens; giving the city the height and stature of a major city. But it doesn't take long to realize this city is not operating at that plane.
There's a fairish amount of foot traffic, but not enough to fill the streets. The cars pile up in traffic, but not enough to fill the streets. The cries of street vendors rend the air but not enough to fill the silence. You quickly realize the city is declining, collapsing on itself. No part that I have seen bears traces of any kind of regular maintenance. It has a forlorn kind of beauty, but that betrays the underlying morbidity of the city itself. Unlike most big cities, where I can get some kind of a sense of the life that exists beyond the mere people, here when a person passes, in his wake is only the scent of vitality. Nothing about the city itself, the buildings, the streets, signs...nothing indicates things would change that much if the people left. That is, the city is like a coral reef, swarming with fish of different colors. But the little polyps buidling the reef died a long time ago. The buses and the cars are the just residents of a skeletal grandeur, the corpse of a city that history ought to have buried or enshrined, but has been left to be slowly ground into dust by those living inside it.
Difficult to convey, but I had to give it a shot. I have never been struck as strongly by the sense coming from the city around. Only echoes of what should be exist. It's not even mournful; the city's passing was so long ago, it has ceased being tragic and now is just an inscrutable phenomenon.
I doubt this sensation would last a long time, but I won't be in Tunis long enough to discover. Note that I only refer to the French city, built outside the Tunisian core, the bustling medina, which, by all accounts, remains vital.
Right then, I must run to make the train. Wish me luck and be sure to read the below post to get last night's sentiments.
WOW
Tunis is crazy. An explosion of hail the size of golf balls just shot down, stopping traffic and sending people fleeing under the eaves of nearby buildings.
Needless to say, the weather is not on my side. The storm that hounded me out of the islands and then out of Athens has followed me here. Holy Mackerel, I just heard a crack of thunder that sounded like a howitzer going off in my cochlea. This is one intimidating storm.
I am going to hop on the 1205 train heading south and I am just going to keep going south until I can't go any farther. Seriously, though, I am heading to Sousse, where supposedly it isn't raining. If the storm keeps pushing me, I'll take a bus to Douz or Tozeur, two Saharan gateways and just get on a camel trek into the Grand Erg for a couple days.
Can't say this is what I hoped for, but this is enjoyable in its own right. I vastly prefer extremes of weather to middlin in betweens. Better pouring rain and threatening hail (and vicious winds I might add) then merely murky days with periodic sprinkling.
That's one thing to be thankful for; there's always farther south to go and eventually, I can always just get on a tour into the Sahara. If I can't beat the rain there, then there is no hope for me.
1.18.2005
Bizarre
That's the only way to describe Tunis in my few hours thus far. From the Liberace fan who is in charge of most of the decorating in official areas to the weird organic odors, all variants on rotten egg with spice, to the guy operating this tiny government controlled Publinet internet room (you wouldn't believe what it looks like), to the disturbingly odd American pop song that is on repeat. It is nuts. People leaving in a city that has the infrastructure of a capital, but it's just a skeleton. Even the streets seem to wide given the volume of traffic. There's an absence of a lot of typical visual stimuli: not nearly as many billboards or obnoxious advertisements, but it goes beyond that. The city seems to be oddly unadorned...and I am referring to the city center and the main blvd which I have driven the length of.
Which brings me to my next story: the cab from the airport. At some point on the plane flight (which was an experience in itself...you'll love the pictures of what they served on the one hour flight), I decided to have some huevos and try to use a cab instead of the bus. Everything's a lot cheaper here, so it makes much more sense, especially given that I was coming in after dark. No sooner did I clear customs than a man offered to take my bag and take me to his taxi.
And just like that he had me...all the while I was thinking he was a nice guy. Then, I got in the taxi. As soon as the door closed, was talking a thousand miles a minute trying to convince me to go Hammamet, an hour's drive away. I understood his game, but my refusals weren't strong enough at first and it took me close to ten minutes not to drive me anywhere but the Maison Doree, a cheap hotel in the center of town. We finally departed...after driving in silence for all of two minutes he sprung his fare on me...triple what the guidebook said was typical even for an exorbitant jerk. We had a rather manic exchange in French (oh yeah, thanks to the Frogs' colonial ambitions, the lingua franca for communicating with Westerners is, well, French. Go figure). I recalled enough of Mr. Ebiner's class to call my cabbie crazy and mutter awkwardly that he "had no head."
When I got out at the hotel, I handed him ten dinars and walked away ignoring his pathetic cries for a couple more dinars for a coffee. Considering that was still double the usual fare (though not the triple he'd asked for) I'm sure he cried all the way to the bank. I just take comfort in saving a sliver of face by only getting ripped off, not taken to the cleaners.
Just to clarify, right now the dinar is about 1.5 to the euro...I couldn't tell you what it is to the dollar.
Anyway the Hotel Maison Doree is the oldest operating Hotel in the city and it has certainly seen better days. But the price is right and the rooms are actually better than even Hotel Metropolis, so I'm not about to complain. Even the putrid egg smell (which isn't exactly offensive...more startling than anything else) doesn't really reach up to my room. And I've got a little balcony to boot with a sweet view.
So, all is well. This beats the tar out of backpacking if you ask me. I definitely wish I had someone to travel with me (Lord knows I do...he's been burdened by my griping about it more than anyone), but as I was thinking the other day, it's better to travel alone than not at all and about fifteen to twenty percent of the time, I'm having experiences that make me glad that I am on my own and can change plans on a whim.
Well, that's it for now. I'm going to grab a snack and save the medina, Carthage, and Sidi Bou Said for tomorrow and the following days. I do know, that this promises to be an adventure that will blow past challenging experiences out of the water. Fortunately, I'm looking forward to it and getting more optimistic with every whiff of that weird egg smell.
Aeroporto
Well, the wireless in the airport wasn't free, as I'd been led to believe (probably by my imagination). But I shelled out for it since opportunities to use the iBook, and get files on and off of it, are few and far between.
A couple thoughts on Athens and traveling at the conclusion of my first week there:
Athens:
The city is hardly the most pleasant thing to look at. In fact, in most places, it's filthy and it's often difficult to determine which are the ancient ruins and which are more modern. Mary tells me this stems from a flaw in the property tax system, whereby those who allow unused properties to fall into dereliction aren't punished. Rather, they're rewarded with a tax break. I can't say I have any grasp on the technical aspect of the problem, but the results are striking. Buildings, above eye-level, don't appear to have been renovated, or even cleaned, since Zorba was plowing his fields. Caked in the filth of a million sooty scooters, the exteriors of just about every building in town, including those on Ermou, the main fancy street leading away from Syntagma Square, are more than just unappealing. They're often disgusting. Inside, you can find chick boutique outlet stores or hip travel agencies (see: GINIS, where I got my ticket). The outside of most buildings matters very little and in no way represents what you'll find on the inside. GINIS, for example has one dingy, beatup sign hanging high above Ermou. To get to the offices, you have to climb a dark stairway, passing floors that hold only the remains of other failed businesses. Once inside the agency itself, though, it's clean, sleekly decorated and has an edgy futuristic kind of look that is much more impressive than a lot of U.S. institutions of similar caliber. (Note: I HAVE looked into the windows of some travel agencies in L.A., so I didn't just pull that line entirely out of my hinder). A dichotomy that never ceases to amaze me ( ed.- give yourself another week, Bill ).
Another thing about the city, that also goes for me and this one is really really important, in fact it could revolutionize the way the world conceives of cities entirely...oh wait, looks like we're boarding. Guess I'll have to save that one for later. Wish me luck, I'm off to Tunis. I'll post from there, but I can't guarantee anything regular until the 25th when I'm back Athens.
1.17.2005
Service
First, it was Buddy Hackett, now this guy. All of Hollywood is serving me gyros. The server last night was Rizzo down to the limp, no kidding.
1.16.2005
The latest
Hope you enjoy the pictures below.
The bad weather that chased me out of the islands has followed me to Athens.
It's gray and windier than the a Boeing test-tunnel, but I've got a copy of the Economist, some writing to do, and an English Mass at 6pm. Nothing else is open, so I'll wander the streets, get wet, and eat until the sun goes down. Life is good and I'm sure it will get even better come Tuesday when I head off to sunny Tunis.
Tomorrow I'll go museum hopping and hopefully get some interesting pictures. That's all for now.
Perilous Bridge
I actually had to cross over this arch to get to the little island/tip of the peninsula. Crazy, eh?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
