Friday, December 30/2011

Meet Margaret at George's café. She has plans to attend a 65th birthday party, getting a ride there with a widower now sitting at the next table - but she's careful to add that she's not going with him - he can go and talk to his own friends once they're there. She and Leslie share a bacon and egg sandwich.


Stop at MTN to complain that my mobile won't send texts to Norway. They take it seriously, call me back, have me get the settings rechecked, and give me a new SIM card. A young man called Zacharias even gives me his phone number in case of problems. In Smart Store, on the way home, Maggi phones and, oddly, I can hear the Scots accent seconds before I identify the voice. She'll be here on Tuesday. Try texting her later, but no joy. When I phone, though, that does connect. Encouraging, but maddening.

Thursday, December 29/2011

Major renovations taking place in (what will be) Maggi's flat beneath us, with sounds like a giant dentist's drill.

Wednesday, December 28/2011

D-Day - d being for dentist. J comes along. Fortunately the dental surgery is next to the charity shop, because there's no reading material in English - just what appears to be religious matter in Greek. And a large fish tank. So he's able to nip next door for a book.

I've just said to J that there are really questions I should have been asked much sooner - such as whether I'm taking blood thinners, when the assistant takes me off to ask these slightly belated questions as well as others seemingly less useful. How many children do I have? And, strangest, what is my father's first name? And not deterred by the fact that he's dead. Not unusual in Cyprus according to others. But what possible use could they make of this info?

There are twenty-four religious icons on the wall, but no framed dental qualifications. Isthis significant? Then I'm moved to another room with too many icons to count. The specialist does speak English, but isn't all that forthcoming as he works. No friendly warnings before a sudden jab in the roof of themouth or general chat on how the extraction is progressing. In fact the chat, and jokes it would seem, are reserved for the assistant. At one point I hear him whispering to her and turn round to see that he has his arm around her.

But eventually over, all but the instruction sheet, the prescriptions - and the 180 euro payment, delivered in a room that does have the framed qualifications. Done.

Tuesday, December 27/2011

It's Jane and Bill's anniversary, and a lovely day. Off for home after breakfast. The drive starts along the coast, goes through the mountain chain, and continues thorugh plain that is almost prairie-like. Jane and Bill live in Pyla, near the border, so after we cross we stop at their house for coffee - and to admire their garden; flowers, herbs, and a prolific lemon tree amongst other things. Then lunch at a nice little café round the corner from the Sunflower - crowded with locals. And our Christmas weekend is over.

Monday, December 26/2011

Boxing Day., and dawns brightly over the orange grove. Flowering trees sparkling as well. Breakfast buffet fine, if interestingly arranged, e.g. queue slowed by the fact that cups and spoons are on one side of the hot water urn - tea bags and coffee powder on the other. Lovely sunny room.

After breakfast we drive out to Belapais, perched on the edge of the mountains looking down at Kyrenia. It's probably only 5 km or so from Kyrenia, but uphill most of the way. We've all walked it in the past and taking the car makes it zoom by. The centre of the village is a restaurant and shop next to the "tree of idleness" made famous by Lawrence Durrell in Bitter Lemons of Cyprus as the sleepy spot where men used to sit and play backgammon and drink coffee - not, in those days Nescafé.  Sadly, the restaurant has surrounded the tree so that it's no longer possible to sit under it.

Long before Durrell, Belapais was home to an abbey founded by the Augustinian monks who had been forced to leave Jerusalem when it was conquered by Saladdin. It's a ruin now, but a pretty impressive one, and in the days before spreading villas and suburbs it would have looked down over fruit trees and olive trees and wandering goats to the deep blue Mediterranean, the mountains of Turkey on the other side just visible as they merge with the clouds.

We set out to explore the abbey, starting with the church. There's some elaborate carving in the large Gothic space, and big chandeliers. The man in charge shows us an amazingly complex pulpit carved out of a single piece of hardwood. Interestingly, the decline of the abbey began not with the Turkish occupation, but after the Ottomans gave it to the Orthodox in 1570. Its moral decline began somewhat earlier, though. The Augustinians gave way almost immediately to the Norbertines  in the early 13th century, and by the mid sixteenth centry monks had one, or even two, wives and were accepting only their own children as novices. In its glory days, though, it was rich and influential, at times the residence, and then burial place, of kings. The refectory is the best preserved part, 30 metres by 10 metres, with a ceiling much higher than its width. A rose window is at the peak in the  eastern end, and on the north side windows overlook the Mediterranean, darkly blue in the distance beneath. A pulpit at one side would have been used by a monk reading to the others during meal times. The hall is now full of folding chairs, as the space is used on occasion for concerts.

It's warm in the sun after the stone chill, and we stop to enjoy coffee at the café in the grounds against this incredible background of aabbey ruins and sea.

Drive through the hills on the side of the mountains with more wonderful views. Then down along the coast, where we stop for lunch at a restaurant across from a beach where turtles come to lay their eggs. We only really want a sandwich, with dinner in the offing, and it's fine. But for me the truly impressive thing here is the toilet seat. Jane informs me that it's not unique, but I've never seen one like it. Before use, you press a button and the seat, which appears to be covered with something like cling wrap, rotates, providing a new and presumably pristine surface. Can't imagine how it works - hygienically that is, not mechanically. Disinfectant? Heat treatment? Little pixies in the back armed with new cling wrap?

Back at the Ship Inn, dinner comes almost too soon. J and I both order the fahita makings that Jane had Christmas Eve - and it is as nice as it looks, especially as Joe asks for and is delighted to receive what we only know as beber. That's the Turkish word for pepper, but what they have - only in North Cyprus and Turkey as far as we can see - is a softly flaked red pepper, medium hot.

Sunday, December 25/2011

Rain in the night such that it almost seems the swimming pool should be overflowing, but of course it isn't. After breakfast we take a dolmus (shared taxi, or in this case minibus - name means "stuffed" and is similar to the name for stuffed vegetables) into the centre of Kyrenia. They run every few minutes along the coast road - cheap and efficient and willing to pick you up anywhere along the route.

The centre has been spiffed up a little but we spot the little restaurant we used to eat at in the two weeks we spent here eleven years ago.  The rain begins, lightly, but we've already spotted a café on the corner in the harbour, windows on two sides and transparent plastic up on both, so thereès a good windbreak and a bit of a view.

After the rain we go over to the castle. Probably built in the 7th century BC, it was captured in 1191 by Richard the Lionheart on his way to the Crusades. It was enlarged in the 13th century and again after the Venetians took Cyprus. Itès an interesting enough castle in its own right, with dungeon and gunpowder room and chapel and tower, as well as the occasional life size figure in period costume, weighing the gunpowder, manning the canon, or occupying the torture wheel.

The prize exhibit, though, is the ship - fairly comprehensive remains of an ancient ship - circa 300 BC - that was recovered just off the coast of Kyrenia. Preserved in the mud for centuries, it was found largely intact, and what we have here is about 14 metres of an original 16 metre boat. Amazingly, it appears to have been about 80 years old when it sank, and period renovations included lead sheathing. The wood was Aleppo pine (therefore Syrian) and much of the contents of the ship survived and is on display, including curious square millstones which served as ballast on the outward trip, several amphora, which would have been roped in place, and, astonishingly, a sackful of almonds (original sack long gone, but almonds quite recognizable) and even grape pips! Recovered dishes suggest a crew of four and itès all too clear how exposed they would have been on this little open craft as it made its way (map there showing reconstructed journey) from Greece. It's interesting viewing it with Bill and Jane, as they have sailed in the Mediterranean for years and are familiar with both boats and routes. Bill points out that its construction involved adding the ribs after the exterior shell - the opposite of normal modern practice.

Christmas dinner is included in our holiday package and the menu has been posted since our arrival, with choices for starters, main course and dessert. J, J, and B all opt for smoked salmon and shrimp followed by turkey and I have brandied chicken liver paté and roast lamb with gravy. All very good, especially the smoked salmon. There are Christmas crackers with hats as well. We have a table near the front, nice for the music and the belly dancer - who would probably have had more cash tucked in below her bejewelled navel if the audience weren't made up mostly of men accompanied by their wives. The waiters do a fairly creditable Turkish/Greek style (both sides would be offended by the thought that there is little difference) dance, short on technical polish but high on energy and enthusiasm. And general dancing follows, as we sip our wine and watch.

Very different, but lovely Christmas.

Saturday, December 24/2011

Christmas Eve. It's rained all night and is still raining. Not quite what we'd hoped for, but we're all cheerful as we set off with Jane and Bill for the North. Jane has the border visa stop down to about 90 seconds, with everything ready in advance. Bill attentive to the changing speed limits - the cameras are out and when you leave the North you're presented with a bill for the fines.

We're at the Ship Inn, just west of Kyrenia on the road to Lapta.  A main hotel building and little white fourplexes clustered in gardens around the pool, one of which has our room, with patio doors opening onto an orange grove. Largish dining room with Christmas decorations and everything quite festive. Carafe of wine. Mushroom soup very good, though meat a little on the tough side. Jane's fahita makings - sizzling meat with onions and peppers straight of the grill quite impressive. Gypsy music wasn't gypsy, but was fine - though nice to have coffee in the lobby where we can hear our conversation. Quite a thunderstorm at night, with lightning flashing against the dramatic ragged mountains behind us.

Friday, December 23/2011

The day starts with rain, though it's not cold. By the time we leave to meet Margaret for coffee, it's stopped, and we end up with both umbrellas and sunglasses, ready for all eventualities. Margaret has already had, with another friend, two cups of Nescafé - her fluid maximum - but chats while we drink tea. Fortunately this week we remember M's Christmas card - her 49th she tells us.

J off to walk the beach while M and I walk down Kiteos St - she to the stationer's for puzzle books and I to the tourism office. I'm worried about her crossing busy streets, at 80 and blind in one eye. This is a country of shockigly bad driving - people backing out into traffic while talking on their mobiles and constantly running red lights. But I needn't have worried. She simply raises a hand to stop traffic so she can cross mid-block, and it works. "Yes, I was a policewoman."

Thursday, December 22/2011

Winter solstice: today is the shortest day of the year. The dentist calls, moving my appointment forward to today from tomorrow. My initial assumption that she is looking for a long Christmas weekend proves wrong - her husband is having surgery. So she begins what should have been a root canal only in order to stop with the discovery that the root is cracked, the upshot of which is that it will require extraction by a specialist. Would I like this to happen tomorrow, if possible, or after Christmas? Right then - the twenty-eighth. Well, this should allow for a couple of hearty meals for the condemned. And yes, if we were in Canada Ernie would have done the same with less sympathy and more expense.

Wednesday, December 21/2011

The lift is doing funny uneven jerky things as it goes. Fingers crossed we're not in it when it dies, but we're on the fourth floor - by North American reckoning the fifth (not counting the mezzanine). It's a long, if healthy, walk.

Walk back from downtown under thunderously black sky. It doesn't rain - but does produce a rainbow in the north.

Tuesday, December 20/2011

The handymen are back. On Thursday they put in new electrical switches, designed to turn off the heater/air conditioner if windows or sliding doors are opened. Quite a production, involving, at one point, four young men and a woman in tights, lined winter boots and a mauve sweater (who calls to mind Desmond Morris's view that the shape of the female bosom was intended by nature to mirror the shape of the buttocks) whose sole function seemed to be to hold the keys. With the regular maintenance man, his wife and child, and the two of us, the flat was more than full. Today we get the new windows - double glazing for both windows and balcony doors.

The manager has already told us that the intent is to retile the bathroom and replace bedroom and sitting room carpet with tile. Also to replace the bathtubs with shower units - in order, he says, to save water. Actually the tub which we have has had the valve that would allow the water to switch from shower to tub taps removed - a much cheaper and simpler solution to saving water. In fact the whole upgrading project seems unlikely to pay for itself in the first decade without substantial rent increases, which is our first thought. but it also seems to be a great deal of trouble to go to for management as chronically lazy as this. Thus our second thought: they're spiffing it up in order to sell.

Monday, December 19/2011

Still too warm to be Christmassy. the thermometer on the balcony at 37 this morning, though less in the shade, and a fair breeze moving the palm trees and the breakers. Our Christmas decorations now up - some Christmas ornaments and coloured tinsel and a few Christmas cards. The little stained glass Christmas tree on the balcony doors. And the "people" - a dozen brightly painted wooden figures an inch or two high. Santas and angels and snowmen and such grouped around little trees on the television set.

Sunday, December 18/2011

Out in the morning to pick up the Cyprus Sunday Mail. The "brother" is in the upper hallway, clearly working up to say something beyond good morning. "Downstairs. Two minutes. Letter." Right - so I stop by the reception desk on my way back with the newspaper. The brother is there now, eyes fixed on a book or paper in front of him. The letter is there too, a red envelope filling our letter box diagonally. I wait patiently in front of the desk two feet away from, but totally ignored by, the brother, until his left hand creeps up,the forefinger beginning a tentative exploration of the left nostril. "The letter," I say, hoping to get it uncontaminated, and am rewarded by being handed the card - with his right hand.

Down to St Helena's Anglican in the evening for the annual service of the nine lessons and carols. Only ten in the choir, but they do very well, with the rest of us joining in. the usual hazard that those singing old familiars from memory face, since the pc editors have been at the text, so that "man" becomes "all" and such. It's a difficult job given the limitations of rhythm and line length, so it's a relief to see that "born to raise the sons of earth" has perforce been left as is rather than being changed to "kids of earth."

Mulled wine and Christmas food upstairs afterward.

Saturday, December 17/2011

Market morning. The street where the craftsmen work has huge distilling vessels standing outside in the road, one copper and one silver coloured. Is home distilling a less surreptitious activity here than in Canada? The temperature is in the low twenties but much hotter in the direct sun. The proprietor of our favourite outside café waves to us nd we pick seats in the shade and order Cypriot coffee - dark and dense and served in small cups, always accompanied by a glass of water. The building opposite houses craft and souvenir shops, including one where a Ukrainian girl makes her own jewellery. At the other end of our café a boy - the owner's son? - plays Christmas carols on his clarinet, not quite fluently but with a fair repertoire.

J does an excellent job of making frozen spanakopita in the frying pan we have rather than the over we don't, as the instructions would have had it. Very nice, and he pops the cork on a bottle of dry Belgian "champagne" to go with it.

Friday, December 16/2011

Back to the dentist. There's nothing wrong with last week's filling except the same "stone in the shoe" sensation that went with pressure on the tooth before the filling. Xenia does an x-ray which appears on the screen in front of us. I need a root canal, she says. We can try antibiotics first, but....The only good thing about it is that a root canal costs less here than at home - 140 euros. All prices transparent and listed on a chart (in Greek) in the outer office.

We meet up with Margaret at George's Café, where she's already ensconced with a Nescafé. Suspect her of substituting her piece of toast (along with the marmalade George brings in a help-yourself jar) for either breakfast or lunch so that she gets to eat with company. A good plan, but hopefully her other meals have more nutritional substance.

Thursday, December 15/2011

So to the bank around the corner. Surely the address can't really be  the same as ours? J finds the Greek word for bank particularly appropriate, given the finances - trapeza. Though Cypriot finance is in somewhat better condition than Greek.

Wednesday, December 13/2011

Haircut, and a fairly good one. There are no appointments at the shop, so I take a book with me, prepared to wait, which results in my being taken after only five pages. I've never  had a bad haircut here, but it's always a little unnerving when the whole pre-cut conversation consists of my holding up thumb and forefinger to indicate the length to be removed and then saying "layered" and "fringe".

Looking for a Marfin Laiki bank as this was the only bank (on this occasion in Paphos) to allow us to withdraw more than 600 euros - thus avoiding extra withdrawal charges for frequent small amounts. The internet obliges with several addresses in Larnaca - one of which proves to be the precise address of our hotel. Bizarre.

Tuesday, December 13/2011

Stop on our way home at the Tourism office. J chats a little with the man on duty re the general state of the economy and, seemingly on impulse, he offers to phone Inter-cit and ask if the buses, which, he says, have run on public holidays so far, will in fact be running this Epiphany. Yes, his informant says, they will - on the Sunday schedule. So that - presumably - is that.

Monday, December 12/2011

Checking out the inter-city buses, as we've been invited to Erimi, near Limassol, to visit Jenny's father and his wife on wht turns out to be the Feast of the Epiphany, a major public holiday in Cyprus. we do have a leaflet explaining bus times, amazingly clearly, but it fails to mention holidays. The real problem is that it is quite possible to pursue this and get an answer, but equally possible that the answer will prove to be inaccurate. So I enlist Kikki's help, thinking that language, at least, will not be a barrier to communication. She's dubious, having had difficulty getting similar info in the past, but gives it a try.

The third number she tries (by now using my mobile as the hotel's phone in reception "can't call that number"), which is only one digit different from the number printed on the leaflet, seems to be the right one. Brief conversation in Greek. And? "She said to call back in two days." It would be nice to think that the schedule for 2012 is now being drawn up and will be ready on Wednesday, but it's equally probable that Wednesday is the speaker's day off and someone else will have to deal with problematic questions.

Sunday, December 11/2011

J has inherited my cold - now gone - so we decide not to share the sneezes at church. So morning in with brunch and the Cypriot Sunday Mail. It's a weekly treat for the puzzles and avoids the mindless chauvinism of the Cyprus Weekly - in fact a couple of the regular opinion pieces are quite good - but otherwise a bit lame. It does have the week's radio and tv listings, though this, of course, does nothing to improve the quality of the television offerings. But it's thin to begin with, and padded - not only with the usual advertising, but with articles that are very thinly disguised advertising and repeated news events, appearing in various parts of the paper in more or less detail.

One such repeat this week (appearing in three places) concerns the disruption of university elections by an invasion of about fifteen people in black, wearing helmets and brandishing bats and crowbars. They threatened student voters, threw chairs, used pepper spray, and stole four ballot boxes. Some have since been arrested (in one case because the helmets were still lying in the back seat of his car). Nor were these adolescent pranksters: one of those arrested was 27, and another a serving officer in the National Guard. Only in Cyprus.