Sousse

From Tunisia, it is easy to reach the country’s second popular city called Sousse. Minibuses regularly run here, cheerfully taking anyone willing to a crowded, shaking fuselage in just a couple of hours under 30-degree heat.

Well, let’s take a look. This is what the coastline of Sousse looks like, along which many hotels are situated.

The Tunisians themselves don’t swim much. The sea barely can impress them; women can’t even swim without a hijab.

The beach is basically just like any other beach. There’s even more trash in Bali, but near the hotels, it’s probably all clean.

Right behind the beach, there is a special white wall that everyone uses as a restroom — the stench can be smelled for about fifty meters around.

Directly behind the wall, begins itself the city.

A typical street in Sousse, one hundred meters from the beach:

Men often walk the streets with a heap of garbage bags. It seems that garbage trucks have not yet been invented in Tunisia.

There are cool little ships on the embankment.

Sousse is known for its old town, or medina. It is listed by UNESCO. The medina is very old: it was founded by the Arabs in 780 AD. A hundred years later, the medina was surrounded by a fortress wall, which has been well preserved to this day. However, it is heavily crowded with merchants and shopkeepers. Cuz of shade, you know.

Like the rest of Tunisia, the medina is quite littered. Piles of trash lie directly in the historical heritage site.

The gates are defaced with graffiti and advertisements.

Informal trading takes place right inside the fortress. In the background, one can see a wall of the very first structure of the medina.

The fort is built from sandstone. It resembles nearby Malta.

In fact, there are a couple of beautiful places inside the medina.

Although the fortress itself is sandy-yellow, many houses in the medina are painted white and blue.

As in the Tunisian medina, the one in Sousse is also full of scruffy cats eating scraps.

In general, it’s all like that. Sometimes one’ll come across some beauty with palm trees, flowers, and blue-and-white houses:

Then will start a makeshift market with Chinese rags on the stalls.

And so, on one hand, the medina in Sousse is ten times cooler than the medina in Tunis. But on the other hand, that’s only because it’s hard to find a medina worse than the one in Tunis.

Sometimes Sousse resembles the blue city of Chefchaouen in Morocco.

Here it becomes clear that Chefchaouen wasn’t painted blue as a symbol-of-something by fleeing Jews. Blue just turned out to be a popular color in Arab Africa against the pale sandstone backdrop: there are dozens of such blue cities scattered across the continent.

Cool Arabic barbershop.

Minaret of the old mosque with loudspeakers.

Charming blue door.

People are depicted on the walls. It’s a remarkable thing for the Islamic world! However, Tunisia is quite a secular country.

A key Tunisian feature is columns embedded in the walls.

Through the gap between the houses, one can see the sea.

The medina is entirely pedestrian. People get around here only by bicycles.

The old town is built on a change in elevation, so the medina is full of steps that sometimes go across the entire street.

Children and teenagers wander the streets.

Clothes hang from the windows.

Electrical wires sag between the houses.

Well, overall it’s okay. Worth having a look once.