More Sahara dust. Not the thickest we’ve ever seen but the most dense this year. Photo from our patio this afternoon is unedited.
We retired in 2000 and began travelling in December of that year. The biggest change in what is approaching a quarter century 😳 is in communication.
Initially we were pleased to have begun our travels in the days of the internet. Huge step up from our honeymoon days in 1993 when we carried a little short wave radio and hoped amidst the crackle to find news in English. Then hoped it wasn’t Voice of America - slow reading for foreign language students and pretty CIA approved slant. Often it was hard to guess the language of a broadcast let alone decipher content. But the internet! Meant we could, in urban areas, find internet cafés and catch up on anything critical. That was how we found out that grandchild number four had been born (the others were either before retirement or during non travel season). The first internet cafés were crowded, with grubby keyboards and often poor connections, but they seemed like a miracle. Sometimes the keyboards were unfamiliar, producing odd looking characters even when I abandoned touch typing and tried to focus on their alphabets.
Company varied. Our usual spot in Earl’s Court London full of Australian backpackers and foreign students, for whom it conveniently provided pay phones. Our first booking at a hotel in Cyprus was made from a pay phone at an Earl’s Court internet café. Other locations - for example North Cyprus later that same year - were full of young teenage boys playing online games and shouting encouragement at each other over my head as I crouched over the keyboard.
Larnaca offered a more sedate café. And in order to attract more girls - who would in turn attract more boys - it offered a lower half hourly rate “for girls”. Have no idea what the law was before Cyprus joined the EU, but was pretty sure that after it would have been violating some regulation to advertise different rates by gender. But rather than dispute the principle I used to primly hand them the “girl” amount, knowing that I was not their target demographic - and that they would be unwilling to say so.
Maggi was responsible for finding us a free internet service in Larnaca. It was a student facility but didn’t require student cards for access. The downside - or one of them - was unbelievably slow computers, not all of which were operational on any given occasion. Oddly, they routinely ignored the posted age requirement - something like sixteen to twenty- five - but were brutally strict about the time limit. Half an hour max even if there were no other would be users in the building. And it was quite easy to use the first fifteen minutes merely getting online. Some censorship involved as well. Newspapers were verboten because they carried sports reports, on which students ought not to be wasting their time. Or gathering info to be used in placing bets?
The Sunflower was the first place we stayed that boasted free WiFi, although at first only in the reception area. It wasn’t exactly high speed either - though better - and there was a certain low key humour to be had from listening to fellow residents loudly communicating with their relatives in other countries. The most amusing though was when Mr Andreas, the proprietor, asked me if I knew the password. Assuming he was being helpful, I said I did. Well, would I mind telling him what it was? And then in later years each flat had its own access. Though not always with ideal reception.
Meanwhile in London we had graduated from the internet cafés, which were disappearing in any case. For a while we could drop in to the Canadian consulate, conveniently located in latter years off Trafalgar Square. Long past the days when one’s embassy was a home away from home, willing to serve as a post restante address for travellers as well as dispense tea and advice. But it was prepared in the early days to allow use of a couple of computers for Canadians to check their email and ran to only slightly out of date copies of The Globe and Mail. And, somewhat surprisingly, when the Icelandic volcano of 2010 closed the skies the Canadian consulate played host to stranded - or in our case not particularly stranded - Canadians, allowing us to make phone calls as well as use the internet and actually serving coffee and quite decent biscuits. Have no idea whether they were shamed into this unprecedented hospitality by rumours of the generosity of other embassies and consulates but in subsequent years it was hard even to persuade them to allow one to come in and view their current art show - if indeed they still run to one. But by then we had graduated to the City of London Library at the Barbican. Where we took our first iPad mini (though not our first tablet) looking for a safe and quiet place to set it up. And that was followed by our Starbucks office. Internet free with the coffee and, at the Queensway location anyway, no need to hurry.
And now here we are in North Cyprus. Internet not at all bad, though trying to use it for VOIP has its limitations and there are occasional power cuts. But most of our books now digital and ones we’ve chosen rather than whatever a second hand book shop could provide in English. No more knocking the bottom out of suitcases hauling a library around. Plenty of news. Analysis from suitably non-mainstream sources. Even humour.
And communication. Before getting out of bed in the morning have WhatsApp messaged the man who delivers gas cylinders. (Everyone here has WhatsApp, including outfits like Turkish Airlines). Yes, he can deliver. Confirm price. Send small map along with address. By the time I have finished messaging to inquire about approximate delivery time, and before I have even considered combing my hair, his truck is outside.
A very different world. Though a tiny bit of regret for the days we spent wandering the globe as anonymous nomads. We wouldn’t have known if World War III had broken out. And there was something to be said for that.
Posts
