Housing / Logement

Housing sorted! Initially, I thought I'd have to go through a housing agent to find a place, which would have meant losing the amount of a month's rent for the fee, and living alone- no housemates to speak French with or pester with questions about Tunisia. Fortunately, several expat colleagues tipped me off to the following flatsharing websites first.

Tunis Colocation
Colocation Tunis
Tayara.tn
Tunisie Annonce

My main objective was to move out of my hotel as soon as possible, so I met with two potential flatmates one day, and moved in the next. This apartment was only available for two weeks, but this was the perfect amount of time to find a place for July and August. Like a true Hufflepuff, my room in both apartments has been the closest to the kitchens.

I've settled in the neighborhood of Lafayette, sometimes called Centre-Ville, unless you're talking about another part of town with another Centre-Ville. Cab drivers know it as "proche de (close to) Parc Habib Thameur" or, more successfully, "proche de Passage metro" which is confusing enough because the metro is chiefly, if not totally, a tram.

Just south of Lafayette is Avenue Habib Bourguiba. This leafy promenade is the Maidan Nezalezhnosti of Tunis, significant enough to be reduced to "the Avenue" in casual conversation; like how New York is "the city" to anyone living in a 50-mile radius, and Manhattan becomes "the city" once you breach the outer boroughs. The Avenue was one of the main protest sites of the 2011 revolution which deposed the Ben Ali government. It remains the home of the once-feared, barbed wire-encased Ministry of the Interior, as well as the comparatively innocuous, barbed wire- and tank-adjacent French Embassy.

The Avenue has been peaceful since I've gotten here, though. It's lined with glossy shops and cafes with tables spilling out into the street, and frequently hosts small concerts like this Dad-apalooza: