"On a sunny January afternoon, I walked along the battlements of the empty fortress, peering through arrow slits into the streets where elderly Tunisian men in red caps and women in head scarves strolled. It occurred to me that I could see nearly everything in Sousse from this vantage point.%% Except for one: fellow travelers.
Since arriving in Tunisia a few days earlier, I had barely glimpsed another tourist. True, it was low season. But the real reason, I knew, was the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011, when Tunisians rose up against an authoritarian regime and forced the flight of the longtime strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Travelers, understandably, had gotten spooked. Tourism fell by more than 30 percent last year, even though, in the months after Mr. Ben Ali’s ouster, the country was generally calm. During my visit, hotel receptionists and restaurant servers repeatedly bemoaned the lack of tourists to me.
So I was pleasantly surprised when a German family of four interrupted my admittedly peaceful reverie atop the watchtower. They had been traveling by bus, admiring “the religion and the culture,” the father, Tobias Haug, told me, as he scanned the view. “Everyone has been very friendly,” he said, adding that friends in Germany had expressed concern before their departure. “They don’t know that the war’s been over for more than a year,” Mr. Haug said.
And so it is — mostly. As attention has turned from Tunisia to the far bloodier Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and beyond — many of them inspired by the Tunisian example — the North African nation is still trying to restore its image in the eyes of the world."
http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/travel/tunisia-after-the-revolution.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120407
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