Here's my next blog entry. I realize its a bit long, so if you are not going to read it all, I recommend going to read about the soccer game which was pretty fun.


So somehow the class portion of the program is almost over. I have my Arabic final this thursday, which is pretty disappointing since we are still here for 2 more months.

In other news a couple of exciting things have happened in the past week:

First off, we had a lecture about Tunisians in France, which was pretty interesting, but even better was that the lecturer knew about a few good restaurants for us to try out.
I went with a couple of friends to an amazing fish restaurant in the tractor parts district of Tunis.
We got there at 1:45pm and the place was still packed. The owner's name was Kamel, and every seemed to know him and were constantly calling him to bring them more bread or other stuff. At first it was unclear how to get a seat, since there was no waiting list but at the same time there seemed to be a way of getting acknowledged by the waiters. After standing around for around 20 minutes I heard someone say in Arabic something like "give the tourists a seat," and we were put at a table with a Tunisian who hadn't yet finished eating. The food was pretty good, but unfortunately I forgot I had my camera until after the meal, so here is a picture of the skeleton of Laura's Loup de Mer.

After lunch we walked around the uniform district in order to find bright orange jumpsuits for our Arabic class. I learned the word for jumpsuit in French, which is Combinazon. I will post a picture once they are decorated.





On Sunday I went to the soccer match between Esperance Tunis, and Etoile Sousse, which I guess is a pretty big rivalry, but not as intense as the game in two weeks between the two Tunis based teams. We were not able to get tickets at the box office, and had to buy them at 4x the usual price (and by buy I mean I gave my money to my Tunisian friend and walked away so that they would not see me and charge us extra). Thankfully, even at 4x price, the tickets were only 17dinar.

The majority of the stadium is not reserved seating, and since we had the virage seats, which are the cheapest, we had to arrive 3 hours before the game started. Luckily we found three people who preferred the virage to their slightly nicer seats since its more rowdy, and were able to upgrade for free.

The fans here put American fans to shame. Everyone is wearing their teams uniform, or if not the shirt of another football team which happens to have similar colors. People started singing and chanting around an hour and a half before the game starts. Most of the chants have pretty similar message and are directed at the fans for the other team. Here were some of them (translated)
"Go fuck your mother"
"your mother is a bitch"
"Sousse's mother needs (or has, it was unclear) a penis"

and my favorite
"we are going to beat you up, we're ready to go to Guantanamo"

The fans for each team are seated in separate areas, which are separated by a large metal fence. For this game this was not enough, and there was a section of seats left empty which had around 30 riot police with shields and batons. There were also little clumps of police around the field for the protection of the players and other officials.

Here's a movie of some chanting and big banners before the match began.



The game itself was not so exciting because Esperance, the team I was supposed to be supporting, played pretty horribly. Most of the action was happening in the stands. The Virage section, where I was originally supposed to be sitting, did not sit down for the entire game. They were continuously jumping and chanting, no matter how badly Esperance was doing. I think I saw at least 10 or 15 people carried out on stretchers, or being pulled out by the police. This was partially because they were throwing water bottles and pieces of cardboard, as well as the actual seats at the field.





If you look at this video you will see a line of police wearing helmets and carrying shields of to the left. This is because the virage section decided it would be a good idea to light up flares and throw them at the police.


On an unrelated note, I thought it was funny that instead of selling beer, there are people walking around with kettles selling tea and coffee for 50cents a cup.

Also, I saw a total of 4 girls in the entire stadium.

After the game we had to get away from the stadium as soon as possible, because I was warned that otherwise we might get beaten or kicked by the police.