First night in Tunisia

I’m only writing this now so it’s funny to talk about my first impressions of the country. I remember arriving at the airport on a pretty nice evening, the air was stuffy and it was hot. My flight went pretty OK and I was picked up by 2 AIESEC EB members at the airport. After that I went to my new house. My flat mates were already there, just back from another weekend trip. I dropped off my stuff and we went out almost immediately. We went to the old part of Tunis, called the Medina, which is an area composed of small streets with lots of shops selling tons of touristic stuff, small coffee houses, etc. We went to have some drinks in a coffee house. Now that I think about it I don’t remember who I talked to that night, what I talked about…I remember asking lots of questions, getting lots of answers… but that’s pretty much it. Maybe it was simply too much at the time and now I can’t recall in details how that very first evening went…

I came here during Ramadan, the Muslim holiday, which lasts 1 month. I was only able to experience 1 week of it but I got an idea of how things go and how different life is during this time. First of all, during Ramadan, religious Muslims do not eat or drink during the day. So the days were pretty quiet with not too many people on the streets, not too much action. However, after sundown the real celebrations started. Usually families and friends gather together to have typical Ramadan dinners, with special food being served during this time. I got to try the “menu” of a Ramadan dinner once in a restaurant and it was great! We barely got seated though because Ramadan dinners are popular so in the evenings everyone is eating, either out or at home.

This meant that during this time people were muuuch more active in the night. The city barely sleeps and as I’m living in downtown Tunis it was very loud in the night. When I went to sleep it felt pretty strange because we could hear that there is plenty of action still going on outside. After eating people seemed to mostly gather for coffee and for smoking shisha….more about the food and drinks later!

So my first night here was loud, warm, exciting…I expected I might be quite sad because I was far from home and not in a place that I can call home yet but I wasn’t. I felt, hmm…I remember I just felt strange, not in a good or bad way, but in a different way…in a transitional kind of way…as if waiting to figure out how I really feel about being in this new place, with these new people…