Snow-covered mountains resting above a grey mist, below-freezing temperatures while the sun sleeps, endless blades of grass glazed by frost; winter has arrived in Grenoble. While it is not a white Christmas yet here, with snow failing to fall down here in the valley, it was nice this weekend to escape on my last adventure of the semester: Tunis, Tunisia. My friend Catherine and I decided about a month ago that as IR majors, that we would be fools to not make our way across the Mediterranean Sea. So on Friday we woke up early to catch a 4 a.m. bus to the airport and finally landed in Tunis at around 11 a.m. And that’s where all the learning began.
After we made our way through customs, we exchanged our Euros for the Tunisian Dinar. Seventy-five Euros got me about 180 Dinar, so I began budgeting for the weekend. We stepped outside to flag down a taxi and hop in. Beforehand, we had done our research on how much taxis to the airport to the downtown should cost, around 10 Dinar, but maybe 20 since some cab drives hike up the fare for airport pick-ups. Our cab driver was wonderful and charming, speaking to us in French and giving us advice on what to see in the city. As we approached downtown after a 10-minute cab ride, we saw the fare getting up there. We recognized that the decimal point was missing, but even then we started to worry: 2000 … 3000 … 4000. Catherine and I give each other a look and discussed quietly amongst ourselves. “Maybe the article was outdated,” or “Maybe there was inflation,” or even, “Damn, we are getting ripped off.”
The final price listed on the meter was 4150 so we paid the driver 41.50 Dinar and he gave us a huge smile and drove away. We walked into our hotel, spoke to the front desk staff and inquired about how much a taxi ride from the airport should cost. The answer was between 5 and 10 Dinar. Catherine and I sighed, knowing that nothing could be done, and we walked outside to start exploring. As we walked down the street toward the Medina, the old part of the city, we looked at the signs to see what sort of things we could get for lunch later on in the day. We then started to realize that the prices were all very odd: 9.000, 10.500, 8.800.
A lightbulb went off in our brains and we realized that the 4150 was not an expensive 41.50 Dinar for a taxi ride, but rather a deal price of 4.150 Dinar. We gave ourselves a metaphorical slap on the back of the head for having tipped the cab driver by about 10 times the cab ride and just hoped that he would benefit greatly from our mistake.
We took a few more taxis to visit various places around Tunis the next day, ranging from the amazing Bardo National Museum to some ruins of Carthage to the beautiful city of Sidi Bou Said, and while we learned a lot visiting the sites, we also learn a lot over the course of the cab rides. Since the March 18, 2015 terrorist attack at the Bardo Museum, the tourism industry in Tunisia has plummeted. For many Tunisians employed in businesses such as hotels and taxis, this was disastrous, as they started struggling to make ends meet in an already difficult economy. We could immediately start speaking French in every cab, as most Tunisians know both Arabic and French. Our light hair and eyes automatically led to a series of questions about which northern European country we hailed from. In times when they did not ask us if we were French, they always asked us if we were British when we started talking in English in the back of the cab to each other. Either way, when we revealed that we were Americans, the cab drivers were always stunned because they rarely encountered Americans in Tunis, especially after the terrorist attacks.
Once the colonial controllers of Tunisia, the French had turned into Tunisia’s main tourists and source of income after Tunisian independence. Now, after the terrorist attacks, the French had stopped coming, like the Americans had. After having taken all of this in, we became really thankful for having the opportunity to explore the world. We learned that accidentally overpaying for a cab is a very, very small loss compared to the loss of income a taxicab driver loses after a terrorist attack scares away most of the tourists. I hope to someday return to Tunis to see a prosperous city where the fear of terrorism has been taken over by the love of exploring a new culture. Even in a short weekend, I learned to appreciate so much about North African culture and history, so I can only imagine what more could be learned by tourists who land in Tunisia.
