9/2/06
Greetings Friends, Romans and Other Furry Jedi
Well, we are currently in London visiting Avril’s COOL cousin Felicity and hubbie Paul and they’ve put us up in Richmond Hill, the swankiest neighbourhood in London just a few doors down from Mick Jagger’s house which is TOTALLY WIERD since last week we were sleeping on stinky mattresses in mud huts on the edge of a mountain in Tunisia… Man… we definitely roll more than a Rolling Stone!!!
Anyhows, after our last freaky travel blog about our Star Wars adventure, we thought we’d better write and balance it out with some good stuff about Tunisia since we were completely blown away by how interesting Tunisia is for such an unassuming country.
Tunisia is squisharoonied between Libya and Algiers in northern Africa and it is such an AMAZING place since it has a crossroad of cultures from the French, Mediterraneans, Africans, Muslims and Arabs…
Not only that, but it also has cool-as-school ancient Roman ruins, Star Wars movie sets and Islamic architecture scattered amongst its beautiful landscapes that vary from turquoise Mediterranean waters in the east, to arid desolate Saharan sands in the south.
In fact, travelling through the south of Tunisia and checking out all the sites used in the Star Wars movies was totally my GEEKBOY wet dream… especially since all the locals run around dressed in their desert cloaks like little Jawas…
Although, it would have been MUCH COOLER if Luke Skywalker was called Luke Moonwalker, because then I could have completely dazzled the local desert folks in Tataouine with my CHAKA KHAN Jedi moonwalking powers since we were using charades a lot because we don’t speak French or Arabic.
The desert-scapes and the Sahara in the south of Tunisia were also cool, and so surreal and desolate that it’s no wonder that Tunisia has been used for a heap of movies like Star Wars, The English Patient, and Monty Python: Life Of Brian.
We totally loved the local architecture too since the Berber desert people who are semi nomadic, often lived underground as Troglodytes, or in houses built into cliffs to escape the heat, and we were lucky that we also got to live in some of these Yabba Dabba Do Flintstone type house…
…um… which in retrospect was actually dirty and muddy and only cool since we liked the word “Troglodyte”
However, our MOST COOLEST and most memorable experience was on a camel trek when our camel driver just bent over in the middle of nowhere and picked up an arrowhead and a knife made of stone which we later found out was neolithic and about 30,000 years old.
Dudes… finding a Captain Caveman weapon was almost as cool as having a pet dinosaur, so we were blown away since we really felt like we were in the cradle of civilisation here…
Anyways, even though the Sahara and Star Wars stuff was totally awesome, we also were blown away by how much ancient world Roman history has been preserved in Tunisia…
For the last week we’ve been on a Hanna Barbara Roman holiday hanging out in COOL places like El Jem, a massive Roman Colloseum which is better preserved than the one in Italy, and also Kairoain the 4th holiest city in Islam.
And it was fortunate that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Ancient World gleened from many years of reading Asterix comics, because we also hung out in the ruined Roman city of Dougga, and also Carthage one of the greatest cities of the ancient world where the Phoenecians did Phoenecian stuff, Julius Caesar ate salads and Hannibal hung out before conquering Europe with elephants in 200BC…
We even had a cool Mediterranean break on the island of Jerba where Ulysses almost got shipwrecked after his crew was seduced by Sirens… although our real reason for going there was because that is where Obiwan Kenobi’s house was filmed.
And of course we’ve Rocked the Kasbahs and wandered through the souks (market places) and labyrinths of the famous walled MEDINA cities…um… which were kind of COLD since it is winter and also smelt kind of FUNKY…
(interlude for Ced breaking into some Funky Cold Medina mouth beat popping and doing the worm with index fingers whilst Avril looks over and says What the fuck are you doing?)
We were also impressed with how liberal Tunisia is for an Islamic country especially since women have been liberated and fundamentalism was outlawed decades ago and even alcohol is tolerated…
Tunisia is often compared to Morocco, or Egypt but with none of the hassles or obnoxious north African men that you get in those places… which is great since we had read that women can get hassled a lot in these countries…
…although I really wasn’t too worried about Avril as last time we were in Egypt I found out that the men here don’t find her anaemic look attractive since I was only offered 5,000 camels for her when our dark haired friend Kendall was worth about 10,000 camels…
We actually found that the men were actually all well behaved and respectful towards women especially since Tunisian women in Tunis are actually STUNNINGLY beautiful with exotic Mediterranean features and a sophisticated European flair… Damn… if only I had a few more camels, then I could have traded Avril in.
Anyhows, just like Luke Moonwalker who went from the deserts of Tatooine to the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back… tomorrow we are off to Quebec to trade the deserts for some snow to hone our Jedi snowboarding powers for 2 weeks…
Don’t get slack and keep in touch so we can get some luvin’ on the road…
Lots of love and fuzziness
Darth Cedrus
A-vril B-owie-wan Kenobi
PS We’ve now put our Tunisia photos up at this link including the Star Wars photos and our Saharan Adventure which are on the first and last page
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