06 | July | 2013 | MY Doramac

Bonsoir,

I spent a good deal of the past two days speaking French. The problem is that though I studied it for years, my vocabulary is miniscule so it only worked but so well and then fell to pieces just at the important parts. Randal and I spent most of the past two days in El Jem having met the very talented wonderful French speaking Tunisian mosiacs artist Belgacem Abderrazak. We visited his shop, his atelier, and also his favorite grilled lamb joint which I won’t describe because you had to be there to see it wasn’t half as bad as reading about it would make it sound. Just remember when you pick out your lobster or other shell fish; eating fresh is definitely not for the squeamish. Better to stick to veggie burgers and cheese/tomato/basil pizza.

This email wraps up our visit to Palermo. I will get to the Licata stories eventually. Tomorrow we’re off to Tunis and Carthage. We didn’t make it to Djerba today. The one road from Sfax to Djerba was just too slow, crowded and under construction. We would have spent too much of today and tomorrow driving so just turned the car around spending a second day in El Jem. Tunis has the Grande Synagogue so hopefully we’ll see it having missed the oldest African synagogue in Dejerba. We’d like to visit the American War Cemetery near Carthage but it’s closed on weekends; but maybe Monday if it works out.

It’s 9:30 pm and I’ve been up since a little past 5 am. Time for sleep.

While we were traveling around Sicily I wrote a few thoughts into my “passage to England” journal. I wrote about the sound of Italian which is just like you hear on TV and movies. Our friend Linda says there are lots of regional accents just as in most countries, but it all sounds “Italian” to me. It’s actually lovely and musical and looks like such fun to speak that you just want to. (Until you don’t understand and they have to repeat it all again for you and then they get impatient with you which makes it sound not so pleasant.)

There were horses in the streets of Palermo…..

I took several photos which the policeman in the background noticed so he smiled which I noticed when I downloaded my photos. Lots of horses in Palermo.

Not a silk purse from a sow’s ear but a feed bucket from a straw handbag.

Got to get that’s last little bit.

There was graffiti on the streets of Palermo. I know it annoys most people and in the wrong place, like Homer’s Tomb in Ios, it annoys me too. But I’ve also come to appreciate the creativity and actual talent behind some of the images.

I found this very “somewhere traveling not in the US.” I bought some peaches and instead of a bag, the grocer tore a large piece of brown paper from a huge roll, formed a cone and put my two peaches inside. Cool!

Waiting in line to cross the road.

Barriers lined these 4 opposing corners. I wanted to cross the street so asked why the crowd of people were just standing blocking the way. Answer was, “it’s the crossing the street queue.” During heavy traffic times there’s a line with everyone waiting her/his turn to cross when the light changes.”

I’m not wild about the pink and black, but the actual image is really good.

Contrasting costumes

A wall of empty produce cartons

Bomb damage is quite the reality check.

Aslam,

Randal picked up our rental car and headed out of town vaguely knowing how to get to El Jem, our first destination. Some of the road signs made sense and some were like those old Visa commercials where the couple trades their camera for a donkey. Of course if I’d paid any attention at all during the half-dozen years of French classes we’d have been much better off. French is the second language of Tunisia. But folks are friendly and helpful and everyone tells us how safe this country is, so we picked up a man standing along the road and drove him from El Jem to his destination just before Sfax. Sfax is a fairly large town with an airport but it took us a while to find this (read as any) hotel. When we had set out for El Jem we didn’t know our final stop for the day so had no hotel plan. Tomorrow we are heading down the coast for the island of De Jerba to see el Ghriba, the oldest synagogue in Africa. As it’s will be Saturday we might not see much. But maybe Sunday morning.

Here are a few photos from our stop at one of several mosaic workshops and the coliseum in El Jem. I’m too pooped to write more.