3:26am Tunis local time
Location: gate 54, Tunis-Carthage Int'l Airport
I'm here at the gate, after an hour in a very short line for LUfthansa.
The inefficiencies of international checkin are really nothing short of
stunning. The counter clerks spend an average of around four minutes
per person to do nothing more than tag the bag, print the pass, and
verify the identity of the passenger. This is something that should
take no more than a minute and could take about twenty seconds with a
passenger-assisted checkin.
There are big signs advertising WiFi here, but as with most airports,
it ain't free. (Oh well, I had hopes they'd be trying to cater to the
WSIS crowd.) It's 15TD (~$12) for two hours and they've self-signed
their SSL certificate. Well, that's not entirely correct. There's
actually a Tunisian Certification Agency (certification.tn) that has
signed the certificate and isn't a trusted root CA. I guess it must be
mandated installed on all Tunisian OSes or something. They've also
mismatched thier domain with their cert, prompting another warning.
The payment form mangles everything I've put in so far and their OK
button is a broken GIF. Oh, and did I mention that the interface is
all in French, with no English option? claps weakly I decide not to
fork over my credit card to the Tunisian government.
J and W have done a great job hosting me, really going amazingly out
of their ways to make sure I was looked after and entertained. It's
pretty impressive. I've left with a positive impression of Tunisian
architecture, food, and hospitality, if not so much of a rosy view
towards the other parts of Tunisian culture. While the tour and
conference were atimes a bit whirlwind, I feel like I got a solid
taste for the country, much more so than a brief stay at a hotel
would have offered. All the same, I'm ready to return home. I think
than ten days hit my tolerance point for having *anyone* with whom I
could speak American English and be well understood. It's a fun and
challenging experience to make yourself understood in a foreign
country, but the fun wears off in a hurry. This makes me wonder
about my hopes to travel the world and how I should time it to not
drive myself crazy.
Richard Stallman has just stumbled into the gate, looking grizzled
(as always) and a little bit dazed. Heh. I won't let him see that I
am using Notepad on Windows, God forbid. The guy might go apopleptic
on me.
There is so much to write. More on the plane, or sleep. We'll see.
Back to Frankfurt for a three hour layover - I'll probably have a
bit of time to sit down there.
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