algeria

Tags: middle east

• Fanon had revelations here

Travel Notes (May 3rd, 2025 - May 11th, 2025)

• Went in early May
• Excellent time
• Algiers is beautiful
• Sea breeze
• Not many tourists
• Closed off enivronment
• Smells nice
• Roman mosaics everywhere
• Huge country, need to fly around a lot
• Constantine is beautiful, but small
• Annaba is cool
• Everyone is friendly
• Algeirs
  • Massive city, more spread out than you think
  • Tons of stuff to see, incredible mosques
  • Food is excellent, lots of good street food
  • Excellent museums, very well preserved
  • Book culture is good
  • More street art and mosaic art than I expected
  • Colorful, lively city
  • Everything closes way too early, everyone is home by 10/11
• Timgad
  • Shockingly well preserved
• Annaba
  • Small
  • Saint Augustine’s bascilica, lots of Cameroon christian students
• Arabic
  • Everyone assumed I speak french
  • Maghrebi was actually not that bad
• Religion
  • Bars are weird? All locked in, shaded windows, decently pricey
  • Beaufort is pretty good
• Traveling around
  • Subway and metro great in Algiers
  • Fly around to different cities in tiny ATR 72’s

Draft

I went to Algeria in early May this year, originally intending to go with a friend but ended up going alone due to some bumbling bureaucratic circumstances. The country is the largest Arab country, something you don’t totally grasp until you’re hopping around the cities in tiny ATR 72’s.

Algeria has somewhat of a reputation for being locked away. Getting a visa in NY was fine, although it took multiple visits to the consulate in order for them to finally grant me a visa.

Landing in Algiers felt like a return to home, despite every taxi driver trying to explain to me what the Arab world is like, Algiers felt like another fun Arab city. With the shocking downside that nobody smokes shisha in Algeria.

Nevertheless, Algiers felt great. It’s the most functional Arab city I’ve been in, with many people visibily employed and a functioning (albiet small) metro system. The city is far more spread out than it appears at first glance, dotted with beautiful mosques, intriguing street art, and a surprising amount of intricate mosaic work. The air smelled sweetly Mediterranean, mingling with aromas from street food vendors serving up delicious snacks at every corner. Algerians love their books, evident from the bustling bookshops and street-side stalls filled with literature in both French and Arabic.

It’s also clear that they expect most foreigners to speak French. Every single person I talked to started the conversation with me in french, and me responding in Arabic, and them continuing to speak to me in french, despite the clear insistence that I don’t speak french. Even more amusing, when I would ask for prices, every person would name the price in French, even if the entire conversation was in Arabic, and I would have to pull the Arabic price out of them, as if they thought of numbers purely in french and finding the correct number in arabic was a chore.

The city sleeps early, by 10 or 11 pm, the lively streets clear as everyone retreats home. Bars, though present, felt oddly secretive: doors locked, windows shaded, prices higher than you’d expect. Nonetheless, I enjoyed sampling Beaufort beer, a local favorite. Resturants lack the male/family segregation common in Iraq, and it was clear that there aren’t any electrical problems.

I read Alistair Horne’s “A Savage War of Peace” in the past, and it really does become clear how Fanon had revelations here. The city is unmistakable French in tone, although with Amazeigh letters everywhere in Algiers¹. The city is beautiful, with well preseved Roman mosaics in its museums to fun moasic art in the streets.

The martyr’s memorial is heavy on the French atrocities, but for obvious reasons clearly delinates history at the end of 1962. Signs of the civil war post independence are gone from the city, but everything largely continues to function.

In Constantine, I found a compact but breathtaking city—bridges arching dramatically across cliffs and valleys. I talked to an Algerian teacher, who mentioned that he particularly likes Algeria because most aspects of life are subsidized. Constatine’s history is incredible as well, it’s clear in Algeria that the museum culture is alive and well. I’ve never seen as many well preseved Roman moasics.

Constatine is sometimes called the city of bridges or the city of scientists. It certainly lives up to the bridges, sweeping views and tons of tiny bridges everywhere allow locals to cross through. While I was there, I took a car down to Timgad, driving through roads that were reminicisnt of Iraq. Large sweeping planes nestled under mountains makes you apprechiate the wide variety of landscapes present in Algeria.

Timgad was another surprise: shockingly well-preserved Roman ruins sprawled across a landscape, mosaics glittering in the sunlight, bearing silent testament to an ancient past. Everywhere I went in Algeria, Roman mosaics seemed to emerge—beautiful fragments of history embedded casually into the everyday landscape.

Annaba had its own charm, quieter and smaller, home to the stunning Saint Augustine’s Basilica, where I unexpectedly encountered a thriving community of Christian students from Cameroon. I saw the ruins of Hippo Regius, which had some dramatic Roman carvings into the ground. The basilica is interesting, although sadly there’s a decent amount of trash on the grounds outside. It’s clear that there’s not enough upkeep, likely due to the minimum amount of christians in the city. I visited the reliaquary, on the day of Pope Leo’s announcement (a memober of the order of St augustine, oddlyt enough), as the religious aspect was my main motivation for seeing Algeria.

Algeria was a beautiful place, filled with contradictions and interest. While the nightlife was somewhat dull, I could see myself working out of there for a few weeks and relaxing.