:date: 2019-08-12

=======================
Monday, August 12, 2019
=======================

This week Hamza and I won't be working very much on Lino.  Hamza because he is
going to marry; I because I am going to attend their feast with my family.

We left Vigala on Saturday noon and went to Riga airport by car, passed the
night in a nap zone in Istanbul airport and landed Sunday morning at 9:20 in
Tunis.

Today we arrived safely in Tunisia and are having two days of rest in Monastir
on our way to Douz where the wedding will be.

We had hired a car from `SunWebCars <http://www.car-rental-tunisia.com/>`_, a
rather small local company located an hour away from Tunis.  They don't have
their own office in the airport, but organized an agent who waited for us at the
airport to hand over the car.  As far as I know this was the first time my name
was being shown in the arrival hall of an airport.

After getting the car, we returned back into the airport main hall in order to
buy a Tunisian phone card. We installed it into Iiris's phone because mine has
no dual SIM. Unfortunately when entering the main hall I had forgotten my own
phone at the security checkpoint. And unfortunately I didn't have the idea of
immediately testing our new SIM card by calling Hamza.  You see how important it
is to test every code change, and how easily we forget this. This might have
turned into a bigger problem, but fortunately Hamza discovered my misfortune
even before I noticed it. Unfortunately again Ly didn't hear her phone when
Hamza called her to tell me what had happened.  Thanks be to God, Hamza, and the
car agent who returned back to the airport and stopped us literally in the last
minute when we were about to leave the airport parking.

Our day of arrival in Tunisia happened to fall exactly onto `Eid al-Adha
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha>`__, the biggest Islamic holiday of
the year.

In Monastir we are living in a flat rent by Abdelkader who lives in the same
house.  Oh, this place is so cool! It is the kind of place you cannot get as a
normal tourist without any contact person.  We felt at home immediately.
Yesterday, after testing the beach, which is at 10 minutes of walk, we did our
own meal in the kitchen. I don't want to imagine us staying in one of those
tourist centres along the coast between Sousse and Monastir!