Tunisia Day 1: Travel

My journey to Tunisia was very straight forward. I travelled out to Roissy with my packed lunch and waited around Charles de Gaulle until it was time to depart. I'm really getting a accustomed to travelling Air France. I take the oppurtunity to take a copy of all the free papers, in French and English. I start with the FT, work my way through the Herald Tribune, breeze through the Wallstreet Journal and USA Today, then read through L'Equipe and Le Monde (or Figarro). It's the only time during the week I really get an oppurtunity to read the paper and I use the oppurtunity to catch up on world events as best I can.

A full strength Russian team (except for Pozdnyakov) were on my flight. My bag was already waiting for me when I reached the reclaim area and I strolled out to meat the waiting organisers. It was sometime again before all the Russians got there bags and came out, along with the Greeks and the Polish. I was in the same hotel as the Russian team and while the Greek and Polish team left for there hotel we waited for a delayed flight with more fencers for our hotel.

After about an hours delay at the airport and repeated apologies from the assembled Tunisian federation officials we left the airport for the hotel - the Irish team (me) and the 15 strong Russian team. We came to a fairly battered mini-bus and loaded all the fencing bags on through a window. With all of us slightly cramped but aboard, we set off... with Jennifer Lopez blaring... on tape. I chuckled to myself as we set off and laughed even harder when after the first song was over, "Get Right" I believe, there was some fumbling with the tape deck and then half a minute later it started playing it again. It was all too amusing to think that he might only have the single of this terrible song. The joke lost it's shine however as I soon realised that it was an entire album of J-Lo I was to be subjected to for the trip. 45 minutes of trundling along Tunis' motorways later we arrived at the hotel.

This was a 5-star Summer resort hotel, the Al Mouradi - Gammarth, albeit a North African five star hotel. The place was as if the shining was filmed in sunny north Africa rather than the Rockies - miles upon miles of empty corridors; the place was almost completely empty.

That evening I was pleasently surprised to see the US team arrive at the hotel. I was somewhat releaved that I wouldn't have to try and speak Russian for some company in the hotel. The Spanish team were also staying in the same hotel, so there was plenty of English speaking fencers around eventually.

That night I ate with the Americans and then went to bed reasonably early before the competition the next day.