Strange or normal?

A fortune teller told an elderly lady: "I see a handsome young man carrying you on his arms and reading all your wishes from your lips. So relax and be happy." The elderly lady replied: "Oh thank you. Can you also see whether my health insurance pays for this? "

With so many unemployed you'd think service must be excellent here, but no, if you need a tradesman to carry out some repairs in your house, forget about "the customer is king" as the saying goes in middle of Europe, you are in Africa, feel more like a beggar. "Servicewueste" you can take literally here (of course there are exemptions, but too few). The tradesman will never say: sorry, I can't make it until.... Instead he usually pretends that he'll turn up at an agreed time (there are very few exceptions) but actually you can be pretty sure he will neither meet the time nor the date.  If you try to phone him, you will hear that message on tape that he isn't available, when you eventually reach him, he will give you another time that he also won't meet (I call it rendez-vous Arab). By the way, if you don't want to see him again, give him an advanced payment. Many a true words spoken in yest.  Just imagine in central Europe, a working couple arranges an appointment and one of them takes time off work in order to be present and possibly monitor the tradesman's performance (I strongly advice the later here). Taking leave because you are waiting for the tradesman? You may need a whole month or even more. The guy who wanted to carry out our last order turned up at 22.00 hrs, intending to work until midnight or stop when he's tired and promise to return within the next few days. Noisy works late at night? Not a problem, as far as I know there aren't any restrictions, some seem to even love it loud, not only children who are experts in creating noise. 

Noise avoidance is all too often not practised, not even following a celebration until early morning. Expats returning from Europe seem to arrive with a different mentality, though some men eventually change their attitude towards women and their duties around the house, (become rather conservative), difficult for European wives and in contrast to how a modern Tunisian woman sees her part in life. There is too much self-centred attitude. - In Germany Yugoslavian restaurants flourished with the cooks,the waiters, the owners coming from different parts of the country, Serbs, Bosnians, etc all working together until Yugoslavia fell apart and they started to hate each other. Then these restaurants disappeared. Doesn't this show the advantage of working together, accept diversity? Me-first, bad feelings like hate, envy, malicious joy, aggression don't provide us with a good life. If we instead see us as part of the community and try to contribute towards a tolerate society, educate the ignorant, teach respect, empathy, not accept corruption (the basis of a lot of evil), we can all contribute towards a great Tunisia.