So there was this one time, on the day job, when for some reason or other the traveling circus shipped me off to Tunisia for a couple months. This small, North African country is actually a pretty interesting place to pass some time— warm Mediterranean climate, awesome Italian food and no shortage of opportunities to forget my middle school French. One of my favorite parts of that trip was exploring the ubiquitous Roman ruins, particularly around the ancient city of Carthage.
At the time of my visit, the country was still recovering from its 2011 “Jasmine Revolution”, which was the start of the whole Arab Spring uprising. As a result, there’d been a lot of changes to the tourist attractions listed in the secondhand guidebook I’d managed to swipe from somewhere. A lot of places seemed to be closed permanently, but even more places only seemed to be “closed” until you slipped the attendant a couple of dinar.
But even with all the cool attractions around the country, I’ve got to say that my favorite place in the the entire country was the Bardo Museum in the capital city of Tunis. Housed in a 19th-century palace, this museum hosts one of the largest collections of Roman mosaics in the world. When I went there it seemed like the museum was going through a transition of some kind or another— outside of the one attendant who was on duty to indifferently accept my admission fee without making change, I didn’t spot any other actual employees. Me and a handful of other tourists had the run of the place, free to wander through the exhibits at will.
But as awesome as it was to wander around unimpeded, I couldn’t help but wonder at what seemed like the complete lack of security around these priceless cultural artifacts. Evidently a few other people also caught on to that fact, and in 2015 the museum was attacked by a handful of gunmen who killed 24 employees and visitors.
Hope you’re doing better these days, Bardo— thanks for having me.