I’ve had some truly great hosts along the way so far, but I have to say Anita and her family gave them all a run for their money. You can chalk it up to my bias towards anything Italian, or my desire to escape ninety-degree heat every day, but the ten days I spent with the Ruggeri family was pretty much heaven. It took me less than four and a half hours to get from Napoli Centrale to Bologna Centrale thanks to Italy’s slick high-speed train, the Freccia Rossa (Red Arrow), and Anita picked me up there, all smiles. It was hot as hell in Bologna, but Anita said the weather su (up in the mountains) was much nicer. Her family lives in Monzuno, a small town about forty minutes outside (and a few thousand feet above) Bologna. I was absolutely beat (I had only gotten a couple of hours sleep the night before) and sweating profusely, so su sounded like a great idea.
In the ten days I spent with Anita and her family, I only left Monzuno twice: once to explore Modena for a day (Anita had an exam there), and once more for a night out in Bologna in which I happened to see pretty much every Italian person that I had been friends with during my time in Bologna under one roof. Aside from these brief trips, my daily routine consisted of getting out of my queen-sized bed (Anita’s brother was out of town, and I stayed in his room on the top floor of the house) around noon, eating a delicious lunch (either prepared by Anita or brought over by her boyfriend, who worked at his father’s seafood restaurant), taking a long walk with Anita and then enjoying a delicious dinner with her family.
I had some great conversations with Anita’s father, who had just gotten back from a two thousand kilometer drive along the northwestern coast of Africa with his wife, and who took an instant liking to me on account of my traveling habits. He had some great stories about his trip, and also left me with some sage advice about how to go about looking for jobs…whenever it is that I get around to it. Both of her parents made me feel at home from day one. They struck the perfect balance between being incredibly generous hosts and not making me feel like I was imposing on their normal life in anyway. Aside from taking time from her studies to go on some great walks around the hills of Monzuno with me, Anita also spent an afternoon teaching me how to make tortellini, which was a ton of fun. I even got to contribute a little to the family business by helping fill small bottles with black ink for an afternoon. They were easily the most relaxing ten days I’ve had in a long time, and some of the most enjoyable as well.
After Monzuno, I spent three days in Cinque Terre…well, I basically spent two days in a hostel bed with a terrible fever and a splitting headache and one day actually exploring one of the most scenic (and touristy) areas in northern Italy, having recovered surprisingly quickly from what I figured was either Swine Flu or Italian-Family-Withdrawal.
Considering it was technically the off-season, I was impressed by the number of foreigners that still filled the five small coastal towns that sit inside the Cinque Terre nature reserve; but even the huge groups of German senior citizens decked out in unflattering athletic gear couldn’t spoil the place for me. Sure, it was a tourist trap, but it was also pretty damned beautiful. The views weren’t as grandiose as the Amalfi coast, but the area was less developed, so the small villages did a better job of holding onto their charm. I was still feeling too weak to tackle the whole trail that connects the five towns, but I think the few miles I did walk combined with the dip I took in the crystal-clear water polished off the last of my “withdrawal” symptoms. The next day I took a train down to Rome, paid a quick visit to the coliseum and enjoyed a huge plate of spaghetti alla carbonara, and then hopped on an early evening flight to Tunis.
Sarah Antos, a friend of mine from high school, has been living in Tunisia for almost four months now and is pretty much the only reason I even thought to go there. I had originally planned to go to Sardinia after Cinque Terre, but a few e-mails from Sarah changed my mind and I bought a ticket on TunisAir’s French-only website (a bit of an adventure in itself) just before I left Anita’s house. In the end, I’m pretty sure I made the right call. It was great to see Sarah, and Tunisia was one of the most interesting countries I’ve visited so far.
Sarah kindly booked my hotel in Tunis for me, which was just outside the city in a picturesque suburb called Sidi Bou Said. The whole area perches on a big hill that overlooks the Mediterranean. All the houses are painted bright white and have blue, arched doors and window shutters. Although there were hordes of tourists in the area, my hotel was a great place to relax during the day, and the view of the Mediterranean (which looked flatter and lighter-colored in Tunisia than it did in Cinque Terre) was beautiful.
I spent a long weekend in Tunis, touring the Bardo museum (which houses the largest collection of Roman mosaics in the world, no big deal), wandering through the medina (the former walled-in center of the city, now an insanely crowded marketplace), and enjoying cups of tea at night with Sarah and her boyfriend. I knew next to nothing about Tunisia before arriving, but I have to say the sophistication of the capital city surprised me. Some of the suburbs looked like Mediterranean versions of Newton, only with wider streets (and probably a lot less Jews), and the downtown area was a good deal easier to navigate than most Italian cities (although that’s not saying much).
Another thing that I knew little about before I got to Tunisia was Ramadan. I knew it was an Islamic holiday, that it lasted for a few days, and that it involved not eating during the day…or something. Where my 17 years of liberal, private education failed me was on the details. Ramadan lasts a full month, is observed by over 90% of Tunisia’s population (though a small percentage cheat, apparently), and involves not allowing anything (food, water, even cigarettes) to pass over your lips between the hours of four in the morning and seven at night (these hours change depending on when the holiday falls in the solar calendar, but that’s what they were this year). That’s fifteen hours a day, and it’s not like Tunisia is an easy place to forgo hydration, especially during August and September (this year’s Ramadan dates). What this means to the average non-Muslim traveler is that food and drink, although you can find them, are hard to come by during the day; and if you eat or drink in front of the locals while the sun is shining, get ready for some nasty looks. Also, don’t hold your breath if you’re trying to catch a cab around sundown, since every driver in town is hauling ass back to his wife or mother to break the fast. In addition, people generally become more and more irritable as the day goes on…not that I blame them. In the end, I’m really glad I got a chance to see an entire country put itself through such an incredible test of faith, although I have to say that the day-to-day reality of being there...well, it kind of sucked.
From Tunis I headed south to Douz, which sits at the very Northern edge of the Tunisian Sahara. In one of her e-mails to me, Sarah had mentioned that I should (and I quote) “get my white ass on a camel” and see the desert. The Lonely Planet that she lent me said that Douz was the place from which the desert was the most accessible, but also said that the real Sahara (complete with massive dunes as far as the eye can see) lay a few hundred kilometers further south, around an oasis called Ksar Ghilane. The guidebook also says that the only way to get down to Ksar Ghilane without your own private four-wheel-drive vehicle was by hitchhiking, but added oh so helpfully that hitchhiking was a common practice in the desert, and not at all an unreasonable mode of transportation. More on that later.
Because I didn’t have the money for my own private car, I decided to hedge my bets in Douz by taking a less “authentic,” but very easily arranged trip into the desert. For about thirty five US dollars, I got a two-hour camel ride out into the desert, a full Berber-style dinner, a nice campfire, and a good night’s sleep under the stars (interrupted, just my luck, by a twenty minute thunder shower). Although we saw about two hundred people leaving Douz to do the same thing (probably just out of earshot from our campsite) and the dunes weren’t exactly massive, the trip was fun, the scenery beautiful, and I feel like I did get a good (if brief) taste of life in the desert.
After spending a few hours of the next day shopping around Douz for the cheapest way to get down to Ksar Ghilane, I decided that my best bet was to head east to a tiny town called Matmata. By my reckoning, it looked to me like Matmata laid directly on the tourist trail between the beaches of Jerba (formerly Odysseus’s “land of the lotus eaters,” currently a major tourist area) and my ultimate goal of the perfect desert view. Matmata is a speck of a town in the middle of one of the most alien landscapes I have ever seen. It is surrounded by red mountains that jut out of the ground, completely bare except for a smattering of boulders and tiny shrubs. The town is famous for its cave dwellings, which were used as Luke Skywalker’s desert home in Star Wars (the actual cave used for the set is now a cheap hotel, see my pictures). I figured even if I failed at hitchhiking, at least I could tell my friends I spent the night near Tatooine. When I arrived, I checked out a few cave dwellings, met up with a group of Brits and Aussies who turned out to be amazing detectives when it came to finding cold beer in a hot desert during Ramadan, shared a few drinks and dirty jokes with them and went to bed in my cave.
The next morning I woke up early, had the hotel’s complimentary breakfast of a bland baguette, two packets of fig jam and caffe au lait (which was exactly the same as every other Tunisian hotel’s complimentary breakfast), walked about a half-mile to a tree by the side of the road that lead to Ksar Ghilane, held up my shoddily-made sign, and stuck my thumb out. I was optimistic. This was an adventure!
After seven full hours of standing under that tree, about two hundred bemused looks by passers-by and approximately three conversations with the few gentlemen who were nice enough to stop but were not headed in my direction, I had a few ideas about what to do with my Lonely Planet’s cute little boxed text about the joys of hitchhiking in Tunisia…mostly involving saving Matmata’s bathrooms some already-hard-to-find toilet paper.
I had some dinner in town (at the only open restaurant, where I was the only customer) and skulked back to my cave in defeat. I had missed out on the ideal desert view, but I still had a few days left before my flight to Spain, and I figured I shouldn’t waste them. The next morning I headed north to Kairoan, the fourth holiest city in Islam after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem (who knew it would be in Tunisia?). I enjoyed two nights and a full day of wandering around the town’s central market (which was much more enjoyable than Tunis’s medina, to be honest), touring the Great Mosque (which was impressive to say the least) and checking out some enormous basins that had been built around 700AD as water catchments for the city. My last night in Kairoan was a Friday, and Ramadan was set to end the next day, so even though the daytime mood was a little bleak, there was a palpable sense of excitement around the cafes that night.
I caught a bus back to Tunis’s Southern bus terminal on Saturday afternoon, and got thoroughly lost on my way into the center (it should have been a quick walk). By the time I realized I had wandered to the wrong side of town, the sun wasn’t far from the horizon, and the streets were absolutely insane. Traffic was deadlocked, cars were constantly honking, the streets were full of people frantically selling as much food as they could, women hurriedly buying last-minute necessities for the most important meal of the year, and men pushily making their way home as quickly as possible. I managed to understand some of the French directions given to me by a shopkeeper, and finally found my way to the hostel I had chosen, which was right off of a large plaza at the southern edge of the medina. By the time I had dropped my bag in my room, showered, and sat down at a café overlooking the plaza and the Port de France, the constant roar had diminished to a few muffled noises. After another half-hour, as the sun fully disappeared, the most centrally located plaza in downtown Tunis was dead quiet.
I drank a pot of mint tea and a bottle of water and waited for the city to come back to life, which happened slowly but beautifully. By about nine o’clock (when I started to wander around and look for food) the center was buzzing again. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood and all of the kids were dressed in their new pho-designer clothes (the last night of Ramadan is sort of a Muslim Christmas morning, Sarah had explained to me). The change in mood from an average night was definitely noticeable. People seemed not just satisfied after a long-awaited meal, but proud of themselves, and each other, for making it through the last month. It was a very cool scene to witness.
After a few more days in the (now much friendlier) capital city and a last meal with Sarah at a delicious French restaurant, I took a cheap but inconvenient flight from Tunis to Barcelona that put me in Spain around one in the morning on September 23rd. I crashed in what turned out to be a great hostel not far from La Rambla, spent the next day wandering around the park up on Mont Juic (a part of Barcelona I had yet to check out), and the following night remembering how to party (and how to speak decent Spanish) with a really cool Argentinian dude.
After my big night out in Barcelona, I dragged my hung-over self onto a bus to the small Catalonian town of Balaguer, which was about two hours southwest of the city. I had arranged to do another week of “help exchange” with a guy named Jordi, who lives in an apartment in Balaguer, but has a beautiful, enormous garden/orchard just outside town, as well as a few hundred olive and almond trees a little further down the road. I spent about four hours of each day working for Jordi (anything from collecting walnuts to clearing out brush to harvesting olives and almonds), and in return he gave me three square meals a day (every meal included a delicious, fresh salad from his garden) and a room to myself. I had lots of free time, some of which I wasted by watching endless episodes of The Wire (Sarah gave me all five seasons on my computer before I left Tunisia…worst idea ever) and some of which I spent wandering around the small town. It was a nice, relaxing week, and I feel like I learned a lot from Jordi about sustainability. He had an organic answer for everything.
From Balaguer I headed to Zaragoza, where I only spent one night and most of the next day, but was thoroughly impressed. It’s hard to describe what I liked so much about the city, but the combination of a not-too-crowded historical center, impressive modern architecture and some really nice public parks and plazas made it seem like a place where I could easily live. I had a good night out with some Americans and one German girl who were all about to start as English teaching assistants there, and spent the rest of my time just wandering around the different parts of the city. Then I took a scenic, four-hour train ride to Madrid, where I finally settled into my hostel at around eleven o’clock at night…just in time for dinner and drinks. After three days of checking out the major sites in Madrid, and three nights of way too many tapas, I took a miserable Ryanair flight up to London Gatwick airport and the last night bus to Oxford, where Hope met me at around one in the morning.
If you look up “British stereotypes” in an encyclopedia, I’m pretty sure you’d just find a bunch of pictures of Oxford. The place is ridiculously British. Every pub is That British Pub, always called the Something & Something (The Eagle & Child, Lam & Flag, Angel & Greyhound just to name a few), the houses are all made of elegantly crumbling, moss-covered bricks, and the colleges (Oxford University has over twenty separate colleges) are right out of Harry Potter (as in they literally filmed the Harry Potter movies here). The weather on my first day was, appropriately, cold and rainy, although after that it did clear up.
My week in England was a lot of fun. I had a good time out at the pubs and restaurants (there are some really tasty ones in Oxford, I have to say) with Hope and her friends, and when they were occupied with school activities, I bummed around Hope’s apartment and wandered the city on my own. I also took a day trip up to Manchester to see Matt and Emily, a couple that I met in Cambodia and again in Laos. I had told them that I wanted to see what English beer was all about, and that I had never had meat pie before, but was keen to try it. They met me at the Manchester train station with two meat pies from their favorite place in hand, showed me around town for a few hours and then took me to their favorite pub to try their favorite beer, followed by a delicious meal at their favorite local Greek restaurant. It was an awesome afternoon, and proved once again how much more enjoyable a place can be if the locals show you around.
After Oxford, I had one last week in Spain before my trip through Europe was complete. I flew from Gatwick airport to Malaga, where I wound up relaxing for three days with some really cool people that I met in my hostel. I spent my last weekend in Spain back in Granada (I visited Mike there a year ago when he was on his semester abroad), which was great. I got to soak in the atmosphere of Granada’s Arabic neighborhood, the albaicín, which I have decided is my favorite neighborhood in Spain. I also got to reconnect with Daniel, Mike’s host from his time there. He’s the guy that originally gave me the idea of a round-the-world trip when he told me about the one he did a few years ago. Granada has definitely secured its place as one of my absolute favorite cities in the world, so while it was sad to spend such a short time there, I know I’ll be back before too long.
One quick night back in Madrid and one twelve-hour flight (which actually didn’t seem that long, thank God) later, and here I am in Buenos Aires. I arrived last night, and so far highlights have been eating three delicious pieces of steak in one sitting (I left the hostel looking for a quick snack before bed, and that’s what I found) and about five hours of wandering around this ridiculously huge city earlier today. I still feel like I haven’t quite left Europe for some reason, but I think that finishing this entry will help me close that chapter. Today is the seven-month anniversary of my departure from Boston, and I have exactly two more months before I leave South America. I hope they’re good ones.
