Tunisia - Camel Market and Night Cake Party

First things first: the camel market, which is famous beyond the country's borders, has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with camels. When looking for the Sunday market, the first thing you get is tips on how to escape the pickpockets.

We are driven to the market - the taxi driver misunderstands us and drops us off at the fresh market. Also good, great atmosphere and we have the feeling of really being in the middle of local business.

The traders shout over each other, smile for photos and offer their delicacies here and there. The cats are waiting in front of the fish stalls and Gerd? Handing out cat food.

We walk on, half an hour later we are at another market. Which turns out to be a clothes and household market. Are we in the wrong market again? We will never know, because we just don't ask any further.

Before we enter the market, we are warned several times by women to hold the camera and especially the handbag tightly to the stomach, because people would steal like crazy here. While we had felt safer than ever before in Tunisia, I now have a strange feeling and a carefree stroll is somehow no longer possible.

Here we stroll across the square, handbags clutched tightly, tables full of old clothes. Young men loudly advertise their wares, women rummage through the mountains like they used to at Karstadt on Hermannplatz during the summer sales. We are just amazed. Here a table with bras, there a table with children's boots. Another table with nylon stockings. We assume that the clothes come from old clothes collections. We don't know exactly, there is a lot of buying, once again the discarded is given a second or third life.

After a while, it's noon, the market is starting to disperse and we are exhausted, we drive back to the hotel. Go to the spa, treat ourselves to a hammam and heavenly massages. Because: we have a little to celebrate: my birthday. Not round, but almost, as our daughter was kind enough to mention!

We enjoy the quiet hours, have dinner and fall into bed dead tired. After all, the last few days have been full of excitement, experiences and impressions. All we want to do is sleep. Because if we want to take a holiday from travelling and are in a rather nice hotel, we have to take advantage of it. (While others take advantage of the buffets, we take advantage of oversized beds, bathtubs with endless hot water and lots of space in the room!)

Until there is a knock. It is late, very late indeed. Someone from the hotel is at the door and presents Gerd (who has kindly pulled himself together once more) with a birthday cake. Pure sugar and fat. The gesture counts. We briefly think about what to do now, in the middle of the night.

We all look at each other briefly, understand each other without words, sit down on our beds for the nightly pyjama party and spoon the chocolate-fat-sugar bomb without plates and without even cutting the cake into pieces. We manage half a cake before we plop down in our beds not only completely sugar-shocked but also completely exhilarated. With our big bellies, we can't get any more exercise anyway.

It's kind of nice to end the birthday with a calorie or two in the company of loved ones. I'll keep that in mind for next year!

PS.: As always, we post time-delayed and my birthday and also the consumption of the other half of the cake are already a few days ago!

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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