Written by Someone Who Did Not Survive Gracefully
I’m back in Switzerland for a few days, sitting in my old apartment like someone who time-travelled into her previous life. Everything feels familiar, and yet I can’t quite believe I used to live like this. With functioning traffic lights. With seatbelts that buckle. With tomatoes that aren’t trying to assassinate me.
Four months in Tunisia changed me.
Not spiritually.
More in the “feral street cat who has seen too much” kind of way.
Tunisia gives you highs that make you feel invincible and lows that make you briefly consider joining a monastery. I’ve laughed like an idiot, cried in public, embarrassed myself repeatedly, and somehow still kept going.
And now that I’m here in Switzerland for a micro-visit, the contrast hits me like a poorly parked taxi:
Tunisia is chaos disguised as a country.
Nothing online prepares you for it. Nothing.
You want water, electricity, food, transportation, basic survival?
Good luck. Tunisia hands you a riddle, a challenge, and sometimes an existential crisis before breakfast.
Traffic?
A godforsaken death trap.
Seatbelts either don’t exist, are broken, or are buried under the taxi driver’s belongings from 2008.
And if the infrastructure doesn’t kill you, the driver might.
Electricity?
A single rainstorm can knock out the entire neighbourhood for ten days.
Apparently everything needs to “dry”. Including traffic lights. Including the universe.
Gas stoves?
Turn off the main valve every time.
Trust me.
Nothing in Tunisia seals the way your Swiss brain thinks it should.
Food safety?
The tomatoes stare back.
Some are fine.
Some are losing the will to live.
Some are plotting crimes.
You learn to pick the least suspicious ones, wash them aggressively, and then eat your salad like a warrior.
Tunisia whispers:
“See? You survived. Stop whining.”
And yes, Tunisia has made me stronger.
It’s forced me to speak up, to adapt, to fight malfunctioning alarm systems at 7 a.m. and yell at elderly neighbours who repeatedly trigger them.
Swiss politeness died somewhere between the tenth power cut and the third exploding tomato.
But for all the madness, Tunisia gives me something Switzerland never did:
a feeling of being outrageously alive.
Not safe. Not comfortable.
Alive.
It’s messy.
It’s chaotic.
It’s a logistical death trap.
But it grows on you, like a stubborn desert plant that refuses to die.
And despite everything—
the danger, the confusion, the tomatoes with agendas—
I already know I’m going back.