Sunday, April 30/2023

 

Istanbul Supermarket is on the other side of Finchley Road so we investigate. No, no sheep’s yoghurt. He is sadly amused. In Turkey, yes - but not here. They do, however, have ajvar, the red pepper and aubergine spread - which can be either mild or hot. Actually not very difficult to find in London but about to be added to the not readily available list when we cross the Atlantic.

In the afternoon out to  West Harrow to see Jean. Pretty convenient from here as it’s only five stops on the Metropolitan line from Finchley Road station. J counts seven enormous construction cranes at one point - his measure of whether a city is thriving. Economically that is - takes no account of the architectural merits of what is being constructed. Meanwhile at ground level the resilience of green shoots never ceases to amaze, seemingly growing out of electrical cables and grimy brick walls.

Jean now using a walker after a fall and six weeks in hospital. In good spirits though and looking well. Enjoy a glass of wine and biscuits - and a little reminiscing. Friendship goes back to university and the regular visits in London for thirty-five years.

Saturday, April 29/2023

 

Last night at a guesthouse near Heathrow. Handy, and relatively recent, discovery. Evening flight slightly late but destination only two tube stops away. Family run and friendly and includes breakfast. 

Then we take the tube to our home for the remaining time, a studio just off Finchley Road near Finchley Road tube station. Transit takes slightly longer than anticipated down to a “defective train - all exit and wait for the next one, please”. An occurrence that is, in our somewhat limited experience, much less common than signal failures or even bodies on the tracks. Entry delayed a tad longer by my having copied the mobile number one digit out, but all resolved. Lovely girl lets us in and the flat is super - small but bright and cosy.

Happy discovery when we go out for provisions. This is an area we know well. Large Waitrose has sheep’s yoghurt, though not at Mediterranean prices, so deprivation postponed briefly. Head for nearby Sainsbury’s and make a happy discovery. New Aldi has opened in the same complex - our number one choice for inexpensive drinkable wine and a number of other basics. The Germans - well, Aldi and Lidl - have done wonders for British supermarket prices, both in themselves and by their influence on others. Sainsbury and Tesco now full of signs claiming they match Aldi’s prices on particular products.

Friday, April 28/2023

Moving day again. Deliberately booked our studio so that it would be close to Monistiraki station, both very central and on a straight metro line to the airport. Didn’t anticipate that the north entrance to the station would be only half a block from our flat, with escalators straight to the airport departure platform. We’ve had less convenient arrangements that involved sleeping in an airport (though happily not recently). Also, the management very kindly let us check out at two-thirty rather than noon, putting us at the airport at four for an eight ten flight. Not bad.

Photo of planes taken through a window, obviously. Showing reflections of ceiling lights and not descending parachutes.

Thursday, April 27/2023

 As well as the murmur of people and the music from the end of the street we can hear the soft sounds of pigeons. And a brave young one has more than once ventured inside our flat to investigate and check the floor for crumbs.

Less of an honour when we discover that another bird has deposited his droppings on our balcony, managing to target drying clothes.

Still feels a little like box seats at the theatre.

Wednesday, April 26/2023

One of the things we will miss most about Greece/Cyprus/Turkiye is the yoghurt. Thick, rich sheep’s milk yoghurt with only a passing resemblance to what is labelled Greek yoghurt at home. Sigh. The yoghurt we bought at the Central Athens Market is the thickest we’ve had. Simply refuses to let go of the spoon and drop onto the strawberries. Has to be scraped and not shaken off the spoon. Also, sheep’s yoghurt has a different taste as well as more calcium than either cow’s or goat’s.

Our second last full day here. Definitely a flat we’d book again. Weather has been super as well. Mostly in the low twenties - perfect shirt sleeve weather in the daytime and light jacket in the evening.

Balcony not bad entertainment value, either. There are cafés and shoe shops opposite. Yesterday evening a bearded young man wearing trainers went into the one with the funkiest high heeled shoe display in the window. Then he - and not she - delighted everyone by trying on a number of the sexiest heels 👠 in various colours. Left carrying a large shopping bag. Trying out for a drag queen show?

Tuesday, April 25/2013

We would, and probably will, stay here again. In earlier stays it was the ancient city that captivated us. And it’s still here, of course. Look past the buildings in Monistiraki Square at the end of our block and there it is - the Acropolis, this time without the snow that covered it in February. 

But now we’re chiefly enjoying spending time in the cosmopolitan modern city And it looks a great deal healthier than it did ten years ago. Prices have gone up but people are spending money - tourists but also locals. A few beggars, as there are in any large city, and we spot one or two men sleeping rough, but the broken windows and crumbling structures are not in evidence.

Unemployment figures are far better than they were ten years ago as well. In 2013 unemployment reached over 27% while by February of this year it was at 11.4%. 

Unemployed citizens of Greece can get free Athens transportation cards, good on the metro and buses. Makes sense as it’s not easy to look for work if transport money has to come out of the food budget.

The Athens transport photo card also gives half price transportation to seniors - and not only Greek residents. Anyone 65 or over who presents a passport can have their photo taken and be issued a card on the spot. (While true, this does significantly understate the amount of cussed determination required. Much googling had elicited the information that these cards were available at the Athens airport bus depot. An inaccuracy that has persisted online for at least five years. No, no - in the city. Although no real cause for complaint as the nice girl at the airport metro station sold us half price tickets to get us to the city. Where in the city? “Some” metro stations. A great deal more googling elicits the information that Syntagma is the nearest of said stations. So to Syntagma, where repeat inquiries and a forty-five minute queue result, finally, in success. We are now the proud possessors of plastic Athena photo cards enabling half price travel and good for the next ten years. Assuming we ourselves are good for the next ten years).

Monday, April 24/2023

 We’re lucky. Have moved from strawberry season in Cyprus to strawberry season in Greece. Saturday’s berries from Athens central market were beautiful so back today for more. The punnets that were a euro on Saturday are now €1.50. Still well worth it, beautifully ripe and with a scent you pick up from metres away. But we remember that Monistiraki square, even closer to our flat, had them for a euro yesterday. Maybe they still do.

Well, there they are, deeply red and luscious with a sign posted €1. Until the proprietor snorts contemptuously and tells us they’re four euros. What?! Much of the square does indulge in tourist prices but this is ridiculous. We say so. He tells us to go back where we came from - and the man at the next stall cheerfully sells us a punnet of beautiful strawberries for €1.29. Takes all kinds.

My father, in strawberry season used to quote the seventeenth century writer William Butler: Doubtless God could have made a better berry but doubtless  God Never did.

Sunday, April 23/2023

 We’re about as central as it’s possible to get in Athens. Suppose you could say there are too many tourists and there are hundreds of them. Might wear thin in time. But they’re excited and happy. Disproportionately young. Food and drink and music everywhere. And we have balcony seats above the fray. Quite literally. The weather is warm and there’s a steady stream of people passing. Our short street has several cafés and bars, including one that provides us with jazz and blues at night.

The neighbourhood - Psiri -was traditionally an area of craftspeople, particularly leather workers, and some of that remains, but it has become a funky area of street art and experimental galleries. 

The throbbing hum continues late into the night but happily our flat is blessed with heavy blackout curtains and balcony doors that do a pretty good job of soundproofing so it’s possible to enjoy a quiet evening when we leave the performance.

Saturday, April 22/2023

  Market day. Well actually in Athens every day except Sunday is market day and we’re a short walk from Athens Central Market. Our chief difficulty is to not overbuy. The market will still be there on Monday. Strawberry season will not be over. Buy like European city dwellers in the days before refrigeration - enough for today - maybe tomorrow. So four red peppers, three large mushrooms, three tomatoes, a small basket of strawberries….Six onions - well, there’s no such thing as too many onions. Romany women scattered here and there selling heads of garlic. Should keep the vampires away. Make a second foray later in the day - after noting how inferior and more expensive the supermarket offerings are.

Stop at the meat market, which is enormous with dozens of stalls with expert butchers wielding their cleavers with deadly accuracy. Actually, the animals have already been dispatched but they’re pretty fast at giving you the portions you want. And really we can’t begin to do justice to a market that includes free-range quail, partridge, pheasant, rabbit, wild boar and deer. To say nothing of the largest fresh fish market in Europe, handling five to ten tons of fresh fish daily.

We also go back to the shops across the road for thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, cheese and smoked meat. Should see us through the weekend, and if it didn’t we live in the midst of dozens of restaurants and street cafés and have been craving spanakopita. Have already sampled the sesame studded koulouri - having remembered not to use the Turkish “simit”.

Friday, April 21/2023

 Sign outside a pharmacy on Athinas Street is a symbol of Athens as a cosmopolitan centre. We move today from our arrival hotel to the studio flat we’ve booked for a week. Leaves a three and a half hour gap between checkout time and check in time. Hotel staff probably the most cheerfully helpful we’ve encountered. Actually suggest we leave the luggage in the room behind the reception desk without our asking. 

So we’re free to explore our new neighbourhood. Probably a kilometre or a little less to our studio which is spitting distance from Monastiraki Metro station, with the central market - meat, fish and produce - and dozens, possibly hundreds, of shops and cafés along the streets in between.

And spend some time sitting on the shady edge of Kotzia Square across the street from Athens City Hall, engaging in one of our favourite occupations - people watching.

And seems like représentatives of the whole world pass by. Some tourists but mostly not. North of the central market we’re into the home of locals. Elderly people with shopping bags, a surprising number of them wearing masks here in the clear open square. Two or three women wearing such formal, full skirted dresses we wonder if there’s an audition taking place nearby. A young couple with a pushchair - and a baby boy just finding his legs and spurning it. Gaggles of teenage girls in a uniform of jackets and trainers so universal it is impossible to guess ethnic origin. A man who kneels by small grassy rectangles along the edge of the square collecting cigarette butts which provide him with tobacco that he then sits and rolls in cigarette papers. Endless theatre.

Then time to collect our luggage and transfer to the studio, our home for the coming week.

Thursday, April 20/2023

Thursday morning begins early - or Wednesday night ends late. Three-thirty AM flight out of Ercan, North Cyprus with transfer in Istanbul. Plane pretty full, possibly down to shortage of alternative flights to make desired connections but also possibly because the country is heading into a three day holiday weekend. Istanbul airport (arguably the world’s largest) also insanely crowded. And the flight to Athens in a big Boeing 777-300 also very full. (Though recognise our signature booking - after due examination of configuration seating maps - we’ve nabbed two of the very few economy seats in banks of two instead of three or four). It’s also Easter week in the Greek Orthodox world so many on holiday.

Pretty decent breakfast, leading to disparaging comparative reflections on Air Canada’s international breakfast offering, a slice of banana bread referred to by one reviewer as originally designed for use in nuclear war shelters and able to maintain that texture for a decade or two.s

Metro into Athens centre pretty crowded as well - two young gypsy girls do edge in but scarcely have room for their musical fundraising efforts. Accommodation chosen to obviate need for transfer, so hotel a short walk from Monistiraki. Off Athinas near the central market, where we once saw a man, tearing down the street with a stolen roast, chased by a butcher with a meat cleaver. 

The weather is sunny and warm, Monistiraki is humming, but it can wait until tomorrow. It’s been a long day already.

Wednesday, April 19/2023

 Last day in Cyprus and leaving a little of our hearts behind - although we know we will be back. The mountains and the sea, separated by only a couple of miles. The food, with a twelve month growing season and little interference from undesirable - and expensive - synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. Fruit trees everywhere - you could walk along village lanes eating overhanging fruit in any season. The villages themselves - the cats, dogs, chickens, goats. 

It’s tribal, but the essence of the tribe is the family, and North Cyprus is highly familial. We shall return.

Tuesday, April 18/2023

 Clay pots have existed in Cyprus since neolithic times and some of the ones to be found outside houses and restaurants and offices aren’t all that recent either. The pot J is standing beside is nineteenth century. Yes, they’re valuable - but not that easy to run off with. And happily vandalism doesn’t seem to be much of a thing here.

A few miles east of us in Girne is the shipwreck museum, home to a remarkably preserved shipwreck dating back to the time of Alexander the Great The cargo included over four hundred intact wine amphorae as well as storage jars containing 9000 perfectly preserved almonds in their shells.

Monday, April 17/2023

 The layers of Cyprus. Stop along the shore west of Lapta where our landlord’s family has land - a restaurant, not currently  an active concern, and also a huge garden and a vineyard. Looking up, with the sea behind us, are grape vines, cypress trees and the mountain range.

We have lunch a little farther west at a small family run outdoor restaurant. There are the inevitable cats but also a  number of free range chickens ranging very freely. A source of entertainment when we drop a little food on the paving stones. A cat loses out to a chicken every time. The chickens are quicker but also the cats are wisely wary of sharp beaks.

G

Sunday, April 16/2023

 Love the stone walls along the lanes in the villages of North Cyprus. They’re not the dry stane dykes of Scotland - fitted stone walls constructed without mortar which can last for centuries when made by masters - but they are local stone and frequently abut old stone houses as well as lining the roads. Boundary markers and retaining walls. Echoes of the mountains above them.

Saturday, April 15/2023

 

Cyprus is well known for its orchids and a number of groups organise orchid walks spotting them. Sources vary - sometimes considerably - but a typical one says that Cyprus is home to fifty-two species of orchid, thirty-three of them in the North.

Mountain walk not required to spot this one as it was in a friend’s garden - along with other delights of the subtropical Mediterranean climate including lemon, blood orange, avocado, fig, loquat, and apricot trees. Not a full list and always something in season.

*Orchid in photo recently re-identified as bearded iris 🤷‍♀️. Still beautiful though.

Friday, April 14/2023

 Continuing, though fortunately not continuous, electricity cuts in North Cyprus. Very short version is that the infrastructure needs upgrading.

Then there are two sides to the political story. The union, El-Sen, has been striking for over two weeks in protest against the government’s decision to extend a contract with private energy company AKSA without going to tender. Objections are obvious and extend to lack of green intentions. However lack of maintenance during strikes creating its own difficulties. Accusations of sabotage.

Drama last night as engineers from AKSA enter facilities with police assistance to effect repairs. Reports six generators now online [not an engineer, no assessment possible - usual union sympathies, but]. Clearly story to be continued. Happily we are cooking with gas.

Thursday, April 13/2023

 

Not that the flowers ever go away here - but it’s definitely spring!

Wednesday, April 12/2023

 First time in this part of the island that we’ve been to the weekly market. Always think of it as being a moveable feast. It is held on Wednesdays in Girne (Kyrenia) and on Thursdays in Gazimağusa (Famagusta), the market we’re most familiar with as it was our mainstay for the second half of our five month lockdown there in 2020. Friday it moves to Iskele and finishes the weekend with Saturday and Sunday in Lefkoşa. Does sell things other than food - hardware, linen, clothing, antiques - including the kind of telephones we remember using. Well, to be honest we remember using older models than the vintage ones on offer.

But the true beauty of the market is the fruit and vegetables. Strawberries now in season and perfect. You can choose your own but really there are no bad ones. Pears, melons, loquats. And artichokes, and wild asparagus, as well as more mundane veg. Would be extremely easy to be seduced into buying more than we have any hope of eating before we go.

Tuesday, April 11/2023

 TRNC an interesting combination of cosmopolitan and village. More dogs than cats seem to have permanent homes, but the climate is mild and some domestic type animals seem to survive without belonging to specific humans, often with regular benefactors. There is considerable effort to prevent street animals from reproducing and those that have been neutered or spayed have the tip of one ear clipped to signify their non-reproductive status. 

And then there are the chickens. In the farmyards, behind small homes, strutting through village lanes and streets. And in this case checking out the goods in a semi-enclosed aisle in a large urban store.

Monday, April 10/2023

 One of the things we like best about North Cyprus is the lamb. There is lamb in the South as well but it tends to be less common and considerably more expensive. Lamb kleftiko (baked traditionally in clay in an outdoor oven) is a Sunday special in some places but the everyday meat is more frequently pork.

Not so in the North of course where most people are Muslim. Lamb is easily available. My favourite are the minced lamb sausages known as şeftali in the North and seftalia in the South (where they are most often made of pork). In both cases the initial consonant has an sh sound. J sometimes orders lamb shank or lamb kebab. Today for the first time has lamb iskender - thin slices of kebab lamb in a spicy tomato based sauce served over pita bread which the juices have permeated. As with many Turkish meat dishes, yoghurt on the side.

Sunday, April 9/2023

 Cats rule the roost. Slightly drizzly day, although warm enough. All cats are opportunists and “ours” hope that one of the chairs will be abandoned with cushion in situ. And they like company. Yowl here happy to curl up on a chair I had previously occupied, snoozing as J reads. Trusting that they will be prepared to resume their natural routine as feral cats feeding on rodents and snakes and such when we leave.

 Local attitude to the feline contingent pretty relaxed. Enjoying a meal in a nearby restaurant when a small cat appears by the table, having taken advantage of an open door. Persistent after attempts to discourage her. Turns out she’s not actually begging, just looking for companionship. Ends up curled up on the bench seat next to me, using my handbag as a pillow. It’s a cat’s world. 🐈 

Saturday, April 8/2023

 Wake up to a pre-dawn streak of gold along  the sea, getting deeper and slightly rosy as it leads to the east (view is looking north). Though red sky in the morning is not traditionally the sign of fair weather coming. And indeed the radar map shows major rain coming in from the west. Not surprising as the clothes I hung out yesterday are not yet dry.

But as is so often the case in Cyprus the rain shown in the radar splits around the island as smoothly as water flowing downstrean around a rock and carries on toward the east leaving Cyprus untouched. 

 

Friday, April 7/2023

T

The five hundred and fifty year stone wall on our house. Sitting on the deck we can see all the patterns in the stone and cement, pictures forming in the mind’s eye. A wall that was here before the Ottomans, before the Venetian period. Back in the French Lusignan time. How many people have looked at these walls inside and out and seen the pictures and dreamt the dreams. Who were they? What did they think? They looked at the same mountain behind us and down to the same blue sea below.

They ate the fish and drank the wine - winemaking in Cyprus has been taking place for close to 6000 years. They picked lemons in the winter sun, although most oranges were planted much later. But the olives were here and the figs. And honey in Cyprus goes back to antiquity. Bread too. Wheat was cultivated here by 6500 BCE. 

Thursday, April 6/2023

 This is the Middle East. North Cyprus has a population that is primarily Muslim and we are now in the middle of Ramadan with the celebration of Bayram, meaning festival in Turkish, occurring in two weeks just as we leave the country. (This is the holiday known as Eid-al-fitr in most of the Islamic world). 

It is also a holy time in Judaism, with Passover having begun yesterday evening. And today is Holy Thursday in the Western Christian Church, with the evening marking the beginning of the Easter triduum culminating in Easter Sunday on the ninth. But this is Cyprus, and the Republic of Cyprus is mostly Greek Orthodox and calculates the date based on the Julian calendar. This year Orthodox  Easter will be April 16. (Although in Greece but not Russia or Ukraine Christmas is celebrated December 25. Not a moveable feast and not related to the moon). It’s a long story much of which I do know but if I write a book this won’t be it.

Wednesday, April 5/2023

 Early morning start to Nicosia where we need an extension to our visa, basically (short version) because the border staff give 30 or 60 days and our rental is for more than 60 days. Doğan has made the arrangements and drives us up. Lovely sunny day. Congested traffic in the Girne area but that will change once the road widening is finished. Still more developed than when we first came to this part of the island twenty-two years ago. 

Midday when we get back and the ever busy Doğan has appointments gathering at the office. S, J and I to lunch at the Blue Song in Lapta overlooking the sea. It’s a windy day and there are white caps but the sun is on the water and the sea shifting shades of blue and green. Unable to resist şeftali while J has chicken curry and S a salmon pasta. The view alone would have been worth it but the food is good. 

Tuesday, April 4/2023

 An infant whale, described as newborn or still suckling, was found dead on the Karpaz peninsula in Northern  Cyprus yesterday. It was described as a Minke whale. Cause of death was not determined as it was already beginning to decompose. There are, surprisingly, thousands of whales in the Mediterranean, including - or more accurately no longer including - a number who washed up dead on the shores of North Cyprus after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria disturbed the sea and their methods of communication and navigation.

Monday, April 3/2023

 Short power outage this morning - well, under an hour - which leads us to decide to make soup as a useful non-electric occupation as we have gas rings. So vegetables, lentils and previous pasta and potato water.

Happily, when the power comes back on S messages to say he is in the mood for fish and chips for lunch which seems like a good idea, so that’s both lunch and an evening meal arranged - in the event that an enormous lunch doesn’t leave us not requiring another meal. 

Fish and chips, as anticipated, hugely filling. And near the outdoor table where we are sitting is a loquat tree. Had just been inquiring about loquats. We had spotted trees in various gardens and were unfamiliar with the little yellow plum-like fruit. S picks a couple and they are lovely, though not yet quite as ripe as they’re going to be.

Then when we go back home S leads us uphill to the nether reaches of our garden, which extends up a long way through orange and lemon - and yes one loquat! - trees through olive and pine trees and a jungle of palms, along stone paths, through undergrowth and over carpets of yellow flowers to sea views well above our house.

Sunday, April 2/2023

 Wake up in the middle of the night, well technically very early in the morning, and go through to the loo. Note that the outside street light is not on, as it has not been for a few days. We’ve joked about it because a small part of our electricity bill goes to pay for the street lighting. Well municipalities everywhere find some method of paying for street lights and this is it here. The joking was about whether we should ask for a rebate as there hasn’t been a light outside our house lately. And actually it was handy. It functioned as a night light and we didn’t need to turn on lights to find our way to the loo at night.

However tonight the bathroom switch has nil effect and then neither does the one in the kitchen. Check the microwave and it is not displaying the (inaccurate) time. Neighbours do have a light upstairs but I see someone taking it to another room, so probably not electric. Presume that the water is moved by an electric pump but the warm water in the roof tank must be gravity fed. Does this mean that we should be using water from the hot tap - not that it will be hot at this time of night - to flush the toilet? Not a particularly good time to ask anyone.

First power outage since we’ve been here. Obviously not a planned one at this hour. Wonder how long it will be. Back to sleep and wake to morning light and electricity.

Saturday, April 1/2023

 Headline in North Cyprus newspaper leaves some expats panicked. At least ones who saw it before they realised it was April Fool’s Day. And, as the administrator of one of the expat forums said, not everyone reads beyond the opening paragraph. And for that matter there are a number of expats who have limited ability to read either Turkish or English. Though the government official referred to in the article  is called Nisanbir Şekası, which the notoriously unreliable Google Translate does manage to translate as April Fool’s Joke. But then who looks up translations of proper names?

Having noted that we have all the necessary ingredients for Welsh cakes - well, really only five - and that they’re cooked on the stove top - well ideally on a griddle - decide to give it a try. Actually do have access to a semi reliable measuring cup which is better than our winter norm. Does occur to me that one egg seems a bit inadequate for the amount of flour but it does say you may need to add a little milk. So after two eggs, a little yoghurt AND some milk have a dough. Don’t have a satisfactory surface for rolling, though wine bottles do make fairly adequate rolling pins, but had decided before embarking on the venture to make patties rather than rolling and cutting. May only work because dough slightly less dry than intended. Would not have worked without J who ground up some spices and did the “baking”, prevailing upon me to make the cakes smaller and flatter - they’re not meant to rise much if at all. Results nothing we’d serve to guests, but actually not bad. We don’t stop at one.