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| Chateau Lambousa Hotel |
Lovely sunny day for market. There’s a larger market on Wednesdays in Girne, and we could go, but the Lambousa market is in the grounds of the colonial style Chateau Lambousa Hotel, a little over a kilometre away so it’s a nice walk. Have a chat with the woman who sells honey and fresh eggs and buy another jar of her beautiful honey.
Local paper reports that four teenagers have appeared in court charged with stealing 1.4 million Turkish lira worth of car parts. The million bit is eye catching, although Turkish lira numbers do tend to be large, though not as large as they were before 2005 when, after many years of hyperinflation, the Old Turkish Lira (TRL) was replaced by the New Turkish Lira (YTL) at a rate of 1 Million old Lira to 1 new Lira. And the boys’ theft translates to €41,176 (£35,000, $59,705 CAD). Not trivial but not high finance.
In other news, it is reported that North Cyprus authorities declared 14 people banned immigrants, including ten Nigerians for cult activities. Am curious about what the cult activities might be. Voodoo dolls? Strange rituals of witchcraft? The article supplies no gory details at all and am forced to conclude that “cult” is simply a poor translation for something relatively innocuous.
And, south of the border we read yesterday that a young woman arrived at the Larnaca airport carrying €420,000 in cash. She declared it at customs as is required with amounts over €10,000 and then took a taxi to Limassol. But when she got out of the taxi she was robbed by youths who ran away with the money. The whole thing did sound rather unlikely, despite her explanation that she had brought the money to buy an apartment.
And apparently it sounded unlikely to the police as well. Hence a follow up story today saying that the woman, a Ukrainian, has in fact brought over €6 million into Cyprus in the last few months and has now been arrested for money laundering.