Hangar

It's significant that Hangar, the place where we are having breakfast this Saturday morning, is the first place that we visit for this blog that has an actual website to link to (as opposed to Facebook or Foursquare sites set up either by the management or by customers). Indeed, this place is as posh as they can be found in Tunisia - posh not as in a certain kind of chic, but as in that there seems to be an actual idea and vision behind the design and execution of the place. Faux fifties-type furniture combined with almost Scandinavian-looking wooden furniture, together with a spacious lay out and funky decoration give the place very pleasant feel.  It's an uphill but quite pleasant walk here from where we live, in a quiter part of La Marsa, opposite the Café Blues House. After two months in the Netherlands, it's remarkable how loud Tunisia is: the cars are loud, the people are loud, the music is loud - everything is just incredibly loud compared to the Dutch suburbs we spent most of June and July in. And then, of course, there is the oppressive North-African summer heat. It's a relief to enter the airconditioned restaurant of Hangar.

As we sit down - my girlfriend has joined us today - Rihanna Gaga tells us she's tired and wants to lay on the couch instead, pulling a blanket she took from home over her.Tired can mean: 'I don't feel like doing anything right now'. It can mean she's properly tired. It can also mean she just feels like having her dummy, which she's only allowed when she goes to sleep. We order smoothies and pancakes. That is to say - I order the smoothito (expecting it to be something yoghurt-like with some mojito ingredients - and my girlfriend asks what's in it. The waitress promises to ask.

We discover there is a non-smoking compartment in the restaurant, a rarity in Tunisia, so we decide to relocate. The waitress brings what tastes like a Banana-raspberry smoothie. Although we didn't order it, we decide not to bother, and wait for the second one which takes a long time to arrive and comes with a apology: the waitress tells us that the barrista made a smoothito for us. Well, yes, that's what I ordered, but whatever. In fact, I prefer the earlier smoothie, as this smoothito has its ingredients (I think lemon, mint and something else) blended, rather than crushed, leaving it full of shredded pieces of mint and lemon. Including, it seems, the peel.

Rihanna Gaga is no longer tired and runs around, playing, hugging my girlfriend and then me and singing. At a certain moment she demands her own chair - not, you see, another chair, but the chair her mother is sitting on - but then decides she is sleepy once again and takes her blanket, lies down on the floor, pulls another blanket over her and demands her dummy and her favourite toy. Five minutes later she's jumping on the chairs again. In short, she's very much being a three year old toddler.

If the second smoothie took a long time to arrive, the pancakes we ordered seem to be lost in space. As we wait for them, several heated arguments between the waitress and the barrista and then a girl from the kitchen erupt and die down again. Whatever is put on the bar to be put on the tables takes a long time to be picked up by the waitress. After about 45 minutes, I decide to ask what's keeping the pancakes from arriving. I'm told that the place is very busy today with 'all these breakfasts'. There are about three families and one couple having breakfast, so I shudder to think what would happen if the Hangar - which has many more tables and also an entire upstairs floor - would be really busy. Time passes again. I count my blessings that Rihanna Gaga is really in an exceedingly good mood, dancing, singing, playing - and, above all, not minding the fact that the pancakes she was looking forward to so much are still nowhere to be seen.

After another long wait, the girl from the kitchen answers an impatient glare from me with a re-assuring 'one minute!' This is, actually, already after I suggested to Rihanna Gaga that the pancakes may never arrive and that we could try and see if we could get them elsewherer. Because, frankly, the only reason I am still waiting for them is that I promised her those pancakes and I know that she will not accept leaving the place without a pancake. One minute turns into many, many more minutes. Once more, I tell Rihanna Gaga - who is now starting to ask where they are - that the pancakes might not come. She nods: so it seems, indeed. So, I suggest for the second time, why don't we go somewhere else to get them? 'Good idea!' she exclaims enthusiastically. That's all I need: I walk to the counter and ask the waitress for the bill for the two smoothies, which she produces without saying anything else than 'yes, sir'. It's something that is bound to strike anyone from a Northern European country: the almost complete absence of apologies, no matter what happens. Rihanna Gaga jumps in her stroller and we leave - without a word, but with a Mona Lisa smile, the waitress holds the door as we step out. In ten minutes, we walk to Café l'Opera, where, after another five minutes, a pancake is served to us, which Rihanna Gaga devours with an appetite.