Drive up to Nicosia with M&M. We've never been since the Ledra Street crossing was opened. One only has to walk up the pedestrian mall that stretches from north to south across the old city (the only divided city left in the world) and show passports on the Turkish side to get a 90 day visa, kindly supplied on separate pieces of paper so as not to render the passports useless in Cyprus and Greece. A two minute procedure and no more razor wire in evidence.
Maggi and Magne are spending the weekend (their anniversary being on Vaentine's Day not Friday the 13th). After they leave the car in a carpark building, inconveniently furnished with a machine that books 10 hours maximum and is incapable of argument - with the encouragement of a regular customer who says they dono't check on weekends - we separate, they to lunch at a restaurant that features sheep's heads and we to cross to the north.
The formalities are quick and the north is waiting for tourists. the shops are less upscale, but goods are on display outside and the proprietors as happy to take euros as Turkish lira, most using an exchange rate of one euro to two lira. North Nicosia, or the part within the old Venetian city wals, is all charm, and thanks to the EU many of the Ottoman buildings are being preserved and restored. There are empty windows without glass, but also pointed stone arches, ainted wooden shutters and traditional Turkish balconies. It's warm and it's alive. Behind the main mosque (once a church) little girls play hopscotch on the pavement. Mothers with long skirts and hijabs (though this is not a strictly observant country) carry babies. A beautifully marbled cat curls up on a fabric display in the sun just past the antique shop. A man getting into his car stops to point out the one time church turned hamman (or Turkish bath house, so old that its arched door is more than half sunk below street level.
We stop to eat lunch, doner pitas stuffed with lamb from the spit at a little tabe outside the friendly but too hot cafe where we have eaten before. It's in a pedestrian way, a good people watching spot. As we leave, the cook tells us his son is studying in Minnesota. Then J buys Turkish red pepper at a stall in the covered market.
Back in the south we wait for the bus and read the notices fixed to the bus shelter walls. One begins "Good news" - but proves to be an advertisement for young students rather than a religious message:
"This is first time in Cyprus only 4 Asian children's. Are you worried about your children's to study English and maths? Am British qualified childcare and kindergarten teacher. I will teach English and maths only for Asian children's. The tuition fee is affordable."
One would suppose that EU countries do not allow limiting teaching to one particular ethnic group, but in this case it would clearly be preferable if fewer rather than more "children's" enroll.
Signs on buildings as we leave Nicosia: "Ecclesiastical Insurance" - protecting bell towers or parishioners? "Twenty-four hour self video" - the ultimate in narcissism?
JAWORSKI TRAVELS