Art, Sand and Sun

I went to an art show last weekend in La Marsa. It was at a place called Palais al Abdalliya, but I do not know its address, nor could I find it again. My friend and I were led there by our in-the-know host and it took him fifteen minutes of wrong turns and three sets of directions to find the place. I doubt the rest of the guests had the same problems, but perhaps there were another hundred people wandering the streets of La Marsa, never to find their way out again. It's too bad for them, really. The palace was lovely, with a vast inner courtyard encircled by interconnected rooms and intricate tilework in the entryway.



The exhibition was co-sponsored by the French Ambassador and as a result was packed with Francophone and actual French guests who seemed to greatly enjoy the provided wine and chicken nuggets. The art was only of peripheral interest to most although much of it was quite nice. The French artist, Jean-Yves Pennec, makes multi-dimensional pictures out of old Spanish fruit crates. He was a jolly sort in a bright turquoise shirt - I met him when my companion tried to determine the price of such artworks. The answer: very high.


The next morning I hopped on a bus to Hammamet, a beach resort that's an hour's drive from Tunis. The day was clear and lovely, which inspired me to spend about an hour staring into the Mediterranean sea before I explored the sea-side bazaar.


The bazaar is built within fortress-like walls and is comprised of seemingly endless twists and turns on tiny, shop-lined alleyways. Somewhere in there is a mosque and a museum. I found both but entered neither, the first because it was closed and the second because it was too expensive.


I took a shared taxi home, which meant I had to wait half an hour for the car to fill up. This lead to an interesting experience in which, for the first time, I was addressed completely in Arabic rather than in the customary foreigner-friendly French. As a result, I understood marginally more than usual and was even able to inform an elderly gentleman of the time, all thanks to my excellent dialect class. He then asked me whether he could use my cell phone and our conversation ended when I declined, but I felt triumphant nonetheless - time telling is very complicated in Tunisian dialect. Rather than give the minutes by reporting the actual number of minutes, people here use something called "degrees" (but in Arabic, of course) with which they refer to five-minute groups, i.e. the numbers on the watch. Thus is 4.20"the fourth hour and four degrees." And that is only the beginning.

I was lucky that it was 2 pm precisely when I was asked the time.



The transportation for the entire trip to and from Hammamet was 14 Dinar. By contast, the taxi rides to and from La Marsa came to about 18 Dinar (I could have taken a train for a fraction of the price, but that trip is three times as long). Aren't price structures strange?