> In contrast, when is the last time one of the greatest cathedrals were built? Probably not for hundreds of years.
Our Lady of Good Health[1] in India is 1962.
I think what the author means is "one of the famous ones in Europe", but the Sagrada Familia is still being built[0], tho arguably construction started two centuries ago :)
The Cathedral Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady Aparecida (Catedral Basílica do Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora Aparecia) was also built less than 100 years ago in Brazil.
I am not sure when it was first built, I think it was in the 50s, but they had a major renovation/expansion that I think finished ~40 years ago or so.
No offense to the people of Velankanni, but Our Lady of Good Health is rather rinky-dink compared to the great historical cathedrals. Looks like the nave is about 20 feet tall and the bell towers 40 feet maybe? Notre Dame it isn't. Per your Wikipedia link, it was designated a Basilica in 1962 but seems to have been mostly constructed before that.
I looked up the Jubilee Church. Supposedly it has a roof that breaks down NOx. So I asked ChatGPT to do some napkin math and…
Assuming ~1,200 m² of TiO₂-coated surface removing ~16 g NOₓ/m²/year → 1,200 × 16 = 19,200 g = 19.2 kg/year; with an average car emitting ~5 kg NOₓ/year (based on 15,000 km/year at ~0.33 g/km), the roof offsets ~3.8 cars annually.
microtherion · 1d ago
A church is a cathedral if it's a bishop's seat, which GP's churches are not. But it seems silly to characterize the Sagrada Familia as "minor".
AStonesThrow · 21h ago
The "silly familia's basilica" is in good company: there are 1,881 minor basilicas. That is relative to the 4 major ones, which are all in Rome.
St. Paul Outside-the-Walls was completed in 1840! Almost yesterday! However, re-consecration and construction continued after that. Interestingly, it seems that an automatic fire-detection and suppression system had been installed in the 19th century.
oa335 · 1d ago
I wish he write more about his day-to-day experiences and less about the history of Tunisia. I find his analyses of countries politics and history to be shallow.
arp242 · 1d ago
It's really hard to do that from three weeks of travel.
I like Matt's posts, but I always take them with a grain of salt. To really get an in-depth viewpoint you need to live somewhere for a year at least, and probably speak at least some of the local language. I've lived in a few countries over the years, and it's just such a different experience from just travelling for a few weeks.
skybrian · 1d ago
It shows the limitations of what you can learn as a tourist. He would have to team up local residents more to go more in depth. The language barrier doesn't help either.
Still, it's good to know about what your first impressions might be like without actually going there.
fuzztester · 1d ago
Yes, same here. And I wish he had written more about Tunisian food, the non-fast food kind that he mentions.
The history section was long and boring.
Some of the other stuff was a bit interesting, though.
decimalenough · 1d ago
I'm seeing a lot of comments here about how the history/politics part is "wrong". Would more enlightened readers care to give a summary of what, exactly, he got wrong?
My two cents: I haven't kept up on post-Arab-Spring politics, but the descriptions of Bourguiba (crafty politician, hopeless economics, then senile) and Ben Ali (thuggish, corrupt) seem pretty accurate to me.
doix · 1d ago
I lived in Tunisia for 3 months, mostly in Tunis. I'm surprised there was no mention of the doors there. They are pretty beautiful[0].
The Star Wars section is also pretty limited, if you're a fan, I recommend checking out the GalaxyTours map[1], the tours were outside my budget but the information they provide is extremely accurate and well researched. Chott el-Djerid [2] was my favourite, basically the outside of Luke's home located in the middle of a dry lake (on google maps it looks like water). Funnily enough, my favourite example of Wikipedia not always being right is also an alleged StarWars filming location, wikipedia claims[3] that Ep 1 was filmed at Ksar Ouled Soltane but GalaxyTours shows that it was not [4].
I'm also surprised there were no pictures of plants in the desert covered by plastic bags. It was pretty shocking, driving through the desert, nothing really around, but pretty much every tree/plant had plastic bags attached. I thought maybe they were intentionally put there to serve some purpose, so I stopped and got a closer look. Nope, just trash bags that blew away in the wind and got stuck there.
One of the things that the article does not mention is how extremely dirty Tunisia is. I've been there two or three weeks not long ago.
It was really sad to see how trash is all over the country no matter where you go. Dumpsters are extremely disgusting, full of trash left rotting for days in main streets. People throw away anything anywhere.
I've been to Djerba island and litter is even on beaches. I've seen litter floating in the water which deterred me from taking a swim. On one occasion I even spotted a half broken umbrella pole rusted and buried in the sand, just waiting for someone to be seriously injured which I obviously removed. Broken glass in beaches is also common, so be careful and always wear flip-flops.
This is a huge cultural and not so easy to solve problem as I've seen people dumping trash in front of me as if something completely natural. It is sad because if that problem is solved, it is actually a beautiful country.
Other countries suffering exactly the same problem that I've visited are Vietnam and Maldives.
croisillon · 1d ago
add Mauritius unfortunately
pyb · 1d ago
And Bali
robobro · 1d ago
Bali is not a country, but agree! Litter is a big problem throughout Indonesia, even in the more rural areas.
owebmaster · 1d ago
And Paris
curiousgal · 1d ago
> how extremely dirty Tunisia is
These generalized statements make my blood boil. Djerba in particular has had issues with garbage [0]. This is akin to me saying the US is an extremely needle ridden country based on a long trip to San Francisco.
That said, a lot of Tunisian cities do have issues with garbage management and littering but calling the country "extremely dirty" makes it seem like people are taking dumps in the streets which is not the case.
> "extremely dirty" makes it seem like people are taking dumps in the streets which is not the case.
That was not my reading at all. There are several paragraphs clarifying what they meant with "extremely dirty".
liendolucas · 1d ago
> These generalized statements
Generalized statements? I've been walking an average of 8Km a day while on holidays in Tunisia, so I've been to plenty of places and cities and the pattern repeated over and over again. I'm not the typical tourist that is moved from place to place like a puppet through tours. What do you expect from me? To walk all over the country to prove my point? Djerba was just an example. Give me break.
ashoeafoot · 1d ago
The delusional with cognitive dissonance are easily angered by description of reality hinting complexity.
mikhailfranco · 8h ago
Support for the Palestinian cause is to be expected in an Arab country.
But perhaps the reported strength of feeling is correlated with the history of the PLO, who moved there after being expelled from Lebanon by the Israeli invasion in 1982. Israel then attacked the new PLO HQ in Tunisia in 1985.
Correlation might mean causation in a couple of directions. Did the PLO move to Tunis because Tunisians already supported them sympathetically, or do they now support the Palestinian cause more strongly because they provided refuge and were attacked by Israel? Probably both.
csomar · 1d ago
I won't get into the politics, the author is way off base...
> Tunisian cities are mostly ugly as hell.
Bare a few touristic spots, yes. It is unfortunate as Tunisia could have looked more like Santorini and less like the nuclear apocalypse that it is today. I guess on the upside you have little to no homelessness?
> The only problem with Tunisian niceness is that it blends into Tunisian mercantile craftiness.
This is mostly a problem in touristic craft stores which I never visit. I guess tourists are attracted to the Medina; but most Tunisians "Medinas" have completely collapsed economically.
> Informality Has Its Advantages
Given how broken the system is, that's how anything can run in Tunisia.
> Tunisian butcher shops tend to hang not just hunks of meat but animal heads in front of their stores
This is kind of an ad that we just had the animal slaughtered now. Fresh meat.
> Sorry Tunisia, but your mosque game is weak.
He should have focused on Churches, Cathedrals and Synagogues.
> There aren’t many bars in Tunisia, even in the major cities.
There are lot of bars in Tunisia but the second major city is a conservative one. It is the last place where you want to have a beer.
> Alcohol is still fairly taboo in most Arab countries, even in relatively liberal Tunisia, so they probably adopted cafe cultural norms.
No, the cafe cultural norms came from the French. You can see a similarity with Vietnam in this regard.
> but he was most excited to tell me that the U.S. Ambassador had just visited the House of the Governor two weeks ago along with his “black wife” who “wasn’t white like you and me.” Ok, then.
You are reading too much into this. Tunisians are pretty chatty and gossip to unhealthy levels.
> ... where there’s a lot of lingering resentment against their former overlord
France was a popular (and the) destination until 10 years ago or so. France now sucks economically. It has nothing to do with it being a former overlord.
billfruit · 1d ago
Is there any analysis why there was major violent conflict in colonial Algeria with the French, but there was not as much in Tunisia.
jcranmer · 1d ago
The article mentions this briefly, but Tunisia just wasn't as important to the French as Algeria was. To France, Algeria (at least the populated northern coast of it) wasn't a colony, it was Metropolitan France--it received full representation in the French legislature, for example. (Note that this was in practice limited to the French settlers in Algeria, as the natives were largely excluded from civic participation--not unlike the apartheid system in South Africa). Given that native populations weren't particularly well-treated, especially after their lot failed to improve despite being the major backbone of the Free French Army in WW2, it's not much of a surprise that they resented French rule and chose to become independent.
And quite like the settler colonies of other countries in Africa, the settler minority who held power in Algeria weren't particularly inclined to give it up to the majority they largely felt beneath them. And since it was a severe insult to national pride to let a core part of France become independent, the French government resisted to the point that it literally broke the government (the Fourth Republic fell because of it, leading to the Fifth Republic).
xwolfi · 1d ago
Well it has to do also with the European population in Algeria. Ofc Algeria was more precious to us in terms of resources, sheer size etc, but it was also home to millions of Europeans and extremely expensive to abandon or resettle them - a bit like if all the former countries of the Israelis citizens had to take them back today if Israel were to be taken back by its native original inhabitants: a complete nightmare nobody would support and we'd rather move along and let it be a bit of a mess rather than bring the mess back home.
That was at least the feeling at the time, and we still had to do it, and it is to this day a complete mess of people brought back who don't feel French and aren't Algerians really. We'll pay for it for many decades until it finally disappear, like every subgroup that got "imported" in France and had to merge painfully since France started.
Tunisia in contrast, we really didn't care all that much, there was no cost giving it back and we lost nothing. And fast forward 70 years, we probably actually saved tons of money doing so, so we're all good.
Note that if you talk people to people, it now seems to be in the past, Algerians are proud to be Algerians, French are ashamed to have damage the country so much for so long, and we try to be good friends. I've never met an hostile Algerian, as in a recent immigrant. I've met many hostile 3rd generation immigrants from Algeria whose grandparents fled back to France, and they still have trouble accepting that uprooting. There seems to be nothing to do except wait and smile and tell them it's gonna be ok, with a glass of wine and bit of saucisson.
tptacek · 6m ago
Just to note that a plurality of Israeli Jewish people are indigenous at least to the region. Their situation is not at all like that of Algeria.
mytailorisrich · 1d ago
> French are ashamed to have damage the country so much for so long, and we try to be good friends.
No. The French are being told they should be ashamed, apologise, and bend over continuously. That's not the same and most French aren't ashamed and, really France did not "damage" Algeria.
Especially when, as you mention, French in Algeria had to flee only for millions of Algerians to settle in France (why would they be hostile when they get it both ways?)
Spooky23 · 1d ago
When you say “French had to flee”, you mean European settlers. Your question is the answer.
mytailorisrich · 1d ago
They brutally kicked the Europeans out of their country and are allowed to settle en masse to Europe at the same time where it is 'incorrect thought' to criticise that. Why would Algerians in France be hostile? They got it both ways, bis repetita.
Spooky23 · 1d ago
There was a decade long rebellion and civil war.
The French followed the pattern of the British and Germans in Africa and put a couple of million people in concentration camps with the associated torture and repression. They took a nascent movement and empowered it, just like they did in Vietnam.
Empires are messy. Frankly, your argument sounds like the Americans complaining about Puerto Rican “immigrants”.
mytailorisrich · 1d ago
Sure, but unclear what this all has to do with my point.
> Frankly, your argument sounds like the Americans complaining about Puerto Rican “immigrants”.
If Algeria was still part of France then perhaps. But the actual situation is completely different as previously explained.
umanwizard · 1d ago
Probably just because Algeria was a way bigger deal to France than Tunisia was. It was considered an integral part of France (whereas Tunisia never was) and around a million ethnically French people lived there.
Which would the US have fought harder to keep: Hawaii, or the Marshall Islands?
csomar · 1d ago
The US asked France to get out of Tunisia. Then they created the country.
pier25 · 1d ago
I grew up in Tunisia during the Ben Ali dictatorship in the 90s and the conpiracy theory floating around is he was a CIA trained asset.
aspenmayer · 1d ago
Was this before or after the Vietnam War? I’m not that familiar with this part of history.
csomar · 1d ago
Way before. Also it is worth mentioning that the North African campaign liberated North Africa and Tunisia from the Germans. The idea that Tunisia got its independence from France is shallow. It was more like Turkish -> French -> German -> American -> New Republic.
mytailorisrich · 1d ago
Algeria wasn't considered a colony. It was annexed in 1848 and as such a fullblown part of France, and it saw large European settlement but with a segregated/apartheid system. Independence was therefore a very nasty and bloody affair on both sides that ended with all the Europeans having to live with nothing effectively on pain of death (114 years after Algeria had been annexed so enough time to create deep feelings).
The French invasion of Algeria has always seemed unique and odd to me: Annexing an Arab territory especially while denying equal rights to the "indigenous" population (the term that was used) was a recipe for disaster and ultimately it proved untenable.
In contrast Tunisia was only a protectorate after the French invaded from Algeria in 1881.
natmaka · 1d ago
> The French invasion of Algeria has always seemed unique and odd to me
A military action, even a colonial invasion, to "pacify" a place and to take control of it has little to do with a full annexation. The US did not make Afghanistan a State... And even among European colonial empires Algeria is quite unique.
France had lost most of its Empire during the Revolution and Napoleonic period so was keen to rebuild one. France did not have a settled Canada or Australia, either, so perhaps this also played a role but it seems unrealistic to believe that trying that with an Arabic Muslim country could have ever worked.
natmaka · 14h ago
> "pacify" a place and to take control of it has little to do with a full annexation
Indeed. No objective is intangible. Actions taken to reduce an aggressive enemy to inaction can lead to a promising discovery (in this case, that of what would become Algeria, which was then a rich agricultural and pleasant territory occupied by non-unified tribes) leading to a desire to seize it.
melling · 1d ago
Tunisia is on my short list. In addition to a lot of Roman ruins, it has been used in movie locations. eg Tatooine in Star Wars.
While itself not an amazing Roman building, I also enjoyed going to Ksar Ghilane - https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ru5sEqEtJDEWNg3R7. There's a small touristic oasis where you ran rent a quad bike, zip over some dunes in the Sahara, and then stop at the small Roman fort. It's fun to imagine being a Roman stationed at one of the southern most outposts of the empire. It's also fun to rent a 4x4 w/ driver and drive through the desert from Douz to Ksar Ghilane.
ks2048 · 1d ago
In addition to Roman ruins, one of the best museums I've been to - the Bardo, with lots of roman mosaics.
Regarding his section on leaving luggage at a museum, when I went to the British museum in London and the National museum in China they both had cloak rooms where you could store your luggage while you were visiting.
One reason for grabbing onto tourists and pushing things into their hands is that a lot of the ones during high season got drunk already on the flight and then spend the rest of their visit at some point between hungover and intoxicated. They're both profitable and require intervention to bring their attention to whatever trinkets or they'll just amble along without spending any money.
It was many years ago so it might have changed but my experience in Tunisia (as well as Egypt and other places around the Mediterranean) was that if you look and move like you belong in the area most merchants won't bother trying to push you around. I bought some of my favourite clothes in Tunisia and Egypt by asking tourist merchants about theirs and insisting that I want something like that and not the stuff in the souvenir market, many were willing to ask someone at a neighbouring stall to keep an eye on theirs and lead me to a 'real' shop in an area where locals trade with each other.
That's where the good cafés are, and that's the place to meet honest people who might be willing to act like taxi and guide for a day or two, or even invite you to meet their family and share food with them.
optimalsolver · 1d ago
Also interesting is his Notes On The Gambia, which for some reason is the premier destination for female sex tourism:
> Note that “ugly” can still be interesting, as is the case with many Eastern European cities with their brutalist Soviet apartment blocks...
As someone who grew up there... he's being generous here. I hated those buildings, extremely depressing.
> he said he was from my hotel
I've almost fell for this while in New Dehli. Friendly walk and talk until he lured into some travel agents shop proceed to sell me some trips.
myflash13 · 1d ago
> As someone who grew up there... he's being generous here. I hated those buildings, extremely depressing.
As someone who did NOT grow up there, I understand why he finds them interesting. They can, indeed, be very interesting to the foreigner, especially when people invite you inside.
mytailorisrich · 1d ago
> But when I asked whether they wanted to move to the most logical foreign destination – France – they all said, “no.” Tunisia is yet another former French colony I’ve visited (including the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Mauritania, etc.) where there’s a lot of lingering resentment against their former overlord.
All those countries are still close to France, with higher education in French and educated people speaking better French than most French. Arabs countries like Tunisia have adopted policies of Arabisation but French is still widespread.
It is perhaps a bit like India: Nationalism in reaction to colonialism but with major cultural links and the old coloniser is a major emigration destination.
France is the main emigration destination for Tunisians (55% if you look it up), with almost a million Tunisians in France (Tunisia's population is 12 million).
> Throughout this trip, I talked to many Europeans, including Frenchmen, Italians, Maltese, Germans, and a few Brits, and from an American perspective, it was surprising how often the topic of conversation turned to immigration. Or rather, anti-immigration.
Well, see numbers above. Anti-immigration sentiment is growing in Europe because of the numbers and negative impact. It should not be a partisan issue, really, but plain realism.
juniperus · 1d ago
Great, but I don't see why it was necessary to present the situation surrounding Jeffrey Epstein or whatever as being a loony radical conspiracy theory. Clearly blackmail is a big component of western political life, he says he's from a western country, but I don't know if this is really a partisan issue. Making that sound like some Q cult alien belief is silly.
acquisitionsilk · 1d ago
> Sorry Tunisia, but your mosque game is weak.
I got this far. I almost stopped several times before that, but the morbid curiosity in me won up until this point.
It's hard for me to accept people like this exist, who view entire nations as objects to be collected and compared like Pokemon cards. The level of engagement (at least up until that point in the article) was no greater than that. Modern tourism at its lukewarm and shallow zenith.
The part of this article I read could be summarised as:
"Rich Westerner goes to non-Western country, spends a very brief time there, reads Wikipedia articles, visits a few things, while engaging deeply with not a single human in the local area".
If the author is sincerely interested in learning about new places then they have to get to know the people there. I don't know when exactly that became non-obvious, travellers used to know that (or perhaps I'm romanticisng, but anyway).
There are many ways one can actually engage with locals in new places, maybe the best of which are the various volunteering websites. You can do a bit of work, and get bed and board, along with actual locals. I'm hesitant to mention ones I've used, lest they be swarmed by Pokemon-card-travellers like the author here.
badc0ffee · 23h ago
I had the opposite reaction - it's like a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of contemporary travel writing. It's honest.
Sometimes you're not visiting a place to engage deeply with humans, but to take in the natural landscape and the historic sites, or simply to exist for a short time somewhere that's not like home. Sometimes while travelling (especially while travelling!) you have limited time and need to have a quick bite and keep moving, because long meals and deep conversations are not your priority.
Sometimes it's ok to say "here's my brief impression of this place, and here are its highlights and its faults from my perspective" because at least that's expressing an opinion. I don't need another Instagrammer making the most vague statements about a foreign place, telling me how beautiful/resilient/spirited the people are despite their circumstances, and saying noting more concrete, because anything more specific will be met with offense that the traveller could never possibly understand the context of this people or that country, and is just a spoiled westerner.
ashoeafoot · 23h ago
well, its more then "smoked weed at the hostel for 3 days, all people there share my views and speak perfect english"
tupac_speedrap · 1d ago
Could you please not turn travel into a pissing competition? People enjoy different things in different ways, also you are making a huge number of assumptions with little information and ranting quite a bit which makes it hard to take you seriously since you take yourself too seriously.
acquisitionsilk · 1d ago
This response is quite the surprise - I am explicitly saying that I think this article reduces travel to "a pissing competition", as you put it, and that it is shocking to me to see it done so shamelessly.
The author will be describing interesting things about the place in a neutral or respectful tone for a line or five, and then suddenly switch to a sort of review-and-compare-mode, as if it were not a real place with 12 million people in it, but a product that just arrived in the post with this feature and that.
Or like a pokemon card, as I said, but for grown-ups. I have a Tunisia, it does xyz. It's good at this and bad at that. I mean that metaphor seriously, I think it really applies.
I mention the idea of putting in the extra effort to interact with locals - through volunteering, or whatever - not to make some comment about myself, or make some appeal to purity, but rather because it's a very good way to avoid turning travelling into stamp-collecting. It's a way of forcing yourself to see the subtlety and variety in a place.
The one assumption I felt myself to be making was that he reads Wikipedia, but that's hardly a heinous crime or anything. It was of no relevance to my point anyway.
Otherwise, regarding ranting - that's just, like, your opinion, man
sampullman · 1d ago
Maybe GP takes themselves too seriously, but I read article and the assessment seems valid. The article's thoughts on train etiquette came across to me as particularly condescending.
The author decided to write an article about their experience and limited research, which opens them up to criticism.
bugsense · 1d ago
The fact that this kind of articles trend on HN show how much of a cultural backwater most SV engineers are in.
Our Lady of Good Health[1] in India is 1962.
I think what the author means is "one of the famous ones in Europe", but the Sagrada Familia is still being built[0], tho arguably construction started two centuries ago :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Good_H...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Cathedral [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Metropolitan_Cathedr...
I am not sure when it was first built, I think it was in the 50s, but they had a major renovation/expansion that I think finished ~40 years ago or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Aparec...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_St._John_the_Di...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_the_National_Shrin... (consecrated 1920; dedicated 1959; minor basilica 1990)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Our_Lady_of_the_A... (1998-2002)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Cathedral_of_the_Russian_... (2018-2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Resurrection_Cathedral (Japanese Orthodox; consecrated 1929)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary%27s_Cathedral,_Tokyo (1964)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Theresa%27s_Cathedral,_Cha... (2008)
As for Italy? Get a load of this "crown jewel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_Church (2003)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilicas_in_the_Catholic_Chur...
St. Paul Outside-the-Walls was completed in 1840! Almost yesterday! However, re-consecration and construction continued after that. Interestingly, it seems that an automatic fire-detection and suppression system had been installed in the 19th century.
I like Matt's posts, but I always take them with a grain of salt. To really get an in-depth viewpoint you need to live somewhere for a year at least, and probably speak at least some of the local language. I've lived in a few countries over the years, and it's just such a different experience from just travelling for a few weeks.
Still, it's good to know about what your first impressions might be like without actually going there.
The history section was long and boring.
Some of the other stuff was a bit interesting, though.
My two cents: I haven't kept up on post-Arab-Spring politics, but the descriptions of Bourguiba (crafty politician, hopeless economics, then senile) and Ben Ali (thuggish, corrupt) seem pretty accurate to me.
The Star Wars section is also pretty limited, if you're a fan, I recommend checking out the GalaxyTours map[1], the tours were outside my budget but the information they provide is extremely accurate and well researched. Chott el-Djerid [2] was my favourite, basically the outside of Luke's home located in the middle of a dry lake (on google maps it looks like water). Funnily enough, my favourite example of Wikipedia not always being right is also an alleged StarWars filming location, wikipedia claims[3] that Ep 1 was filmed at Ksar Ouled Soltane but GalaxyTours shows that it was not [4].
I'm also surprised there were no pictures of plants in the desert covered by plastic bags. It was pretty shocking, driving through the desert, nothing really around, but pretty much every tree/plant had plastic bags attached. I thought maybe they were intentionally put there to serve some purpose, so I stopped and got a closer look. Nope, just trash bags that blew away in the wind and got stuck there.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina_of_Tunis#/media/File:Me...
[1] https://galaxytours.com/starwars-locations-tunisia-map/
[2] https://galaxytours.com/starwars-tunisia-film-sites/chott-el...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksar_Ouled_Soltane
[4] https://galaxytours.com/research/ksar-ouled-soltane-debunkin...
It was really sad to see how trash is all over the country no matter where you go. Dumpsters are extremely disgusting, full of trash left rotting for days in main streets. People throw away anything anywhere.
I've been to Djerba island and litter is even on beaches. I've seen litter floating in the water which deterred me from taking a swim. On one occasion I even spotted a half broken umbrella pole rusted and buried in the sand, just waiting for someone to be seriously injured which I obviously removed. Broken glass in beaches is also common, so be careful and always wear flip-flops.
This is a huge cultural and not so easy to solve problem as I've seen people dumping trash in front of me as if something completely natural. It is sad because if that problem is solved, it is actually a beautiful country.
Other countries suffering exactly the same problem that I've visited are Vietnam and Maldives.
These generalized statements make my blood boil. Djerba in particular has had issues with garbage [0]. This is akin to me saying the US is an extremely needle ridden country based on a long trip to San Francisco.
That said, a lot of Tunisian cities do have issues with garbage management and littering but calling the country "extremely dirty" makes it seem like people are taking dumps in the streets which is not the case.
0.https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/31174
That was not my reading at all. There are several paragraphs clarifying what they meant with "extremely dirty".
Generalized statements? I've been walking an average of 8Km a day while on holidays in Tunisia, so I've been to plenty of places and cities and the pattern repeated over and over again. I'm not the typical tourist that is moved from place to place like a puppet through tours. What do you expect from me? To walk all over the country to prove my point? Djerba was just an example. Give me break.
But perhaps the reported strength of feeling is correlated with the history of the PLO, who moved there after being expelled from Lebanon by the Israeli invasion in 1982. Israel then attacked the new PLO HQ in Tunisia in 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wooden_Leg
Correlation might mean causation in a couple of directions. Did the PLO move to Tunis because Tunisians already supported them sympathetically, or do they now support the Palestinian cause more strongly because they provided refuge and were attacked by Israel? Probably both.
> Tunisian cities are mostly ugly as hell.
Bare a few touristic spots, yes. It is unfortunate as Tunisia could have looked more like Santorini and less like the nuclear apocalypse that it is today. I guess on the upside you have little to no homelessness?
> The only problem with Tunisian niceness is that it blends into Tunisian mercantile craftiness.
This is mostly a problem in touristic craft stores which I never visit. I guess tourists are attracted to the Medina; but most Tunisians "Medinas" have completely collapsed economically.
> Informality Has Its Advantages
Given how broken the system is, that's how anything can run in Tunisia.
> Tunisian butcher shops tend to hang not just hunks of meat but animal heads in front of their stores
This is kind of an ad that we just had the animal slaughtered now. Fresh meat.
> Sorry Tunisia, but your mosque game is weak.
He should have focused on Churches, Cathedrals and Synagogues.
> There aren’t many bars in Tunisia, even in the major cities.
There are lot of bars in Tunisia but the second major city is a conservative one. It is the last place where you want to have a beer.
> Alcohol is still fairly taboo in most Arab countries, even in relatively liberal Tunisia, so they probably adopted cafe cultural norms.
No, the cafe cultural norms came from the French. You can see a similarity with Vietnam in this regard.
> but he was most excited to tell me that the U.S. Ambassador had just visited the House of the Governor two weeks ago along with his “black wife” who “wasn’t white like you and me.” Ok, then.
You are reading too much into this. Tunisians are pretty chatty and gossip to unhealthy levels.
> ... where there’s a lot of lingering resentment against their former overlord
France was a popular (and the) destination until 10 years ago or so. France now sucks economically. It has nothing to do with it being a former overlord.
And quite like the settler colonies of other countries in Africa, the settler minority who held power in Algeria weren't particularly inclined to give it up to the majority they largely felt beneath them. And since it was a severe insult to national pride to let a core part of France become independent, the French government resisted to the point that it literally broke the government (the Fourth Republic fell because of it, leading to the Fifth Republic).
That was at least the feeling at the time, and we still had to do it, and it is to this day a complete mess of people brought back who don't feel French and aren't Algerians really. We'll pay for it for many decades until it finally disappear, like every subgroup that got "imported" in France and had to merge painfully since France started.
Tunisia in contrast, we really didn't care all that much, there was no cost giving it back and we lost nothing. And fast forward 70 years, we probably actually saved tons of money doing so, so we're all good.
Note that if you talk people to people, it now seems to be in the past, Algerians are proud to be Algerians, French are ashamed to have damage the country so much for so long, and we try to be good friends. I've never met an hostile Algerian, as in a recent immigrant. I've met many hostile 3rd generation immigrants from Algeria whose grandparents fled back to France, and they still have trouble accepting that uprooting. There seems to be nothing to do except wait and smile and tell them it's gonna be ok, with a glass of wine and bit of saucisson.
No. The French are being told they should be ashamed, apologise, and bend over continuously. That's not the same and most French aren't ashamed and, really France did not "damage" Algeria.
Especially when, as you mention, French in Algeria had to flee only for millions of Algerians to settle in France (why would they be hostile when they get it both ways?)
The French followed the pattern of the British and Germans in Africa and put a couple of million people in concentration camps with the associated torture and repression. They took a nascent movement and empowered it, just like they did in Vietnam.
Empires are messy. Frankly, your argument sounds like the Americans complaining about Puerto Rican “immigrants”.
> Frankly, your argument sounds like the Americans complaining about Puerto Rican “immigrants”.
If Algeria was still part of France then perhaps. But the actual situation is completely different as previously explained.
Which would the US have fought harder to keep: Hawaii, or the Marshall Islands?
The French invasion of Algeria has always seemed unique and odd to me: Annexing an Arab territory especially while denying equal rights to the "indigenous" population (the term that was used) was a recipe for disaster and ultimately it proved untenable.
In contrast Tunisia was only a protectorate after the French invaded from Algeria in 1881.
It began with centuries of piracy and enslavement in the Mediterranean sea, leading to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Wars , which in turn led to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1816) . All this doesn't set a path for the invader to offer equal rights to the "indigenous" population.
A military action, even a colonial invasion, to "pacify" a place and to take control of it has little to do with a full annexation. The US did not make Afghanistan a State... And even among European colonial empires Algeria is quite unique.
France had lost most of its Empire during the Revolution and Napoleonic period so was keen to rebuild one. France did not have a settled Canada or Australia, either, so perhaps this also played a role but it seems unrealistic to believe that trying that with an Arabic Muslim country could have ever worked.
Indeed. No objective is intangible. Actions taken to reduce an aggressive enemy to inaction can lead to a promising discovery (in this case, that of what would become Algeria, which was then a rich agricultural and pleasant territory occupied by non-unified tribes) leading to a desire to seize it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/star-wars-tunisia-f...
https://depart-travel-services.com/en/discover-the-iconic-st...
If you like Roman ruins, here's my favorite sites that I've personally visited:
- Amphitheatre of El Jem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphitheatre_of_El_Jem
- Dougga - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dougga
- Bulla Regia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_Regia
While itself not an amazing Roman building, I also enjoyed going to Ksar Ghilane - https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ru5sEqEtJDEWNg3R7. There's a small touristic oasis where you ran rent a quad bike, zip over some dunes in the Sahara, and then stop at the small Roman fort. It's fun to imagine being a Roman stationed at one of the southern most outposts of the empire. It's also fun to rent a 4x4 w/ driver and drive through the desert from Douz to Ksar Ghilane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo_National_Museum_(Tunis)
It was many years ago so it might have changed but my experience in Tunisia (as well as Egypt and other places around the Mediterranean) was that if you look and move like you belong in the area most merchants won't bother trying to push you around. I bought some of my favourite clothes in Tunisia and Egypt by asking tourist merchants about theirs and insisting that I want something like that and not the stuff in the souvenir market, many were willing to ask someone at a neighbouring stall to keep an eye on theirs and lead me to a 'real' shop in an area where locals trade with each other.
That's where the good cafés are, and that's the place to meet honest people who might be willing to act like taxi and guide for a day or two, or even invite you to meet their family and share food with them.
https://mattlakeman.org/2023/07/10/notes-on-the-gambia/
As someone who grew up there... he's being generous here. I hated those buildings, extremely depressing.
> he said he was from my hotel
I've almost fell for this while in New Dehli. Friendly walk and talk until he lured into some travel agents shop proceed to sell me some trips.
As someone who did NOT grow up there, I understand why he finds them interesting. They can, indeed, be very interesting to the foreigner, especially when people invite you inside.
All those countries are still close to France, with higher education in French and educated people speaking better French than most French. Arabs countries like Tunisia have adopted policies of Arabisation but French is still widespread.
It is perhaps a bit like India: Nationalism in reaction to colonialism but with major cultural links and the old coloniser is a major emigration destination.
France is the main emigration destination for Tunisians (55% if you look it up), with almost a million Tunisians in France (Tunisia's population is 12 million).
> Throughout this trip, I talked to many Europeans, including Frenchmen, Italians, Maltese, Germans, and a few Brits, and from an American perspective, it was surprising how often the topic of conversation turned to immigration. Or rather, anti-immigration.
Well, see numbers above. Anti-immigration sentiment is growing in Europe because of the numbers and negative impact. It should not be a partisan issue, really, but plain realism.
I got this far. I almost stopped several times before that, but the morbid curiosity in me won up until this point.
It's hard for me to accept people like this exist, who view entire nations as objects to be collected and compared like Pokemon cards. The level of engagement (at least up until that point in the article) was no greater than that. Modern tourism at its lukewarm and shallow zenith.
The part of this article I read could be summarised as:
"Rich Westerner goes to non-Western country, spends a very brief time there, reads Wikipedia articles, visits a few things, while engaging deeply with not a single human in the local area".
If the author is sincerely interested in learning about new places then they have to get to know the people there. I don't know when exactly that became non-obvious, travellers used to know that (or perhaps I'm romanticisng, but anyway).
There are many ways one can actually engage with locals in new places, maybe the best of which are the various volunteering websites. You can do a bit of work, and get bed and board, along with actual locals. I'm hesitant to mention ones I've used, lest they be swarmed by Pokemon-card-travellers like the author here.
Sometimes you're not visiting a place to engage deeply with humans, but to take in the natural landscape and the historic sites, or simply to exist for a short time somewhere that's not like home. Sometimes while travelling (especially while travelling!) you have limited time and need to have a quick bite and keep moving, because long meals and deep conversations are not your priority.
Sometimes it's ok to say "here's my brief impression of this place, and here are its highlights and its faults from my perspective" because at least that's expressing an opinion. I don't need another Instagrammer making the most vague statements about a foreign place, telling me how beautiful/resilient/spirited the people are despite their circumstances, and saying noting more concrete, because anything more specific will be met with offense that the traveller could never possibly understand the context of this people or that country, and is just a spoiled westerner.
The author will be describing interesting things about the place in a neutral or respectful tone for a line or five, and then suddenly switch to a sort of review-and-compare-mode, as if it were not a real place with 12 million people in it, but a product that just arrived in the post with this feature and that.
Or like a pokemon card, as I said, but for grown-ups. I have a Tunisia, it does xyz. It's good at this and bad at that. I mean that metaphor seriously, I think it really applies.
I mention the idea of putting in the extra effort to interact with locals - through volunteering, or whatever - not to make some comment about myself, or make some appeal to purity, but rather because it's a very good way to avoid turning travelling into stamp-collecting. It's a way of forcing yourself to see the subtlety and variety in a place.
The one assumption I felt myself to be making was that he reads Wikipedia, but that's hardly a heinous crime or anything. It was of no relevance to my point anyway.
Otherwise, regarding ranting - that's just, like, your opinion, man
The author decided to write an article about their experience and limited research, which opens them up to criticism.