Thursday, January 31/2019

Today’s trip north of the border to Famagusta is the one we intended to take two weeks ago, postponed because Jane had a minor encounter with a post, necessitating car repairs. So first stop is coffee in the old walled city, one of my favourite places in the world.  Interesting discrepancy in the menu prices here. The official rate of exchange is almost exactly 6 Turkish lira to the euro. Menu lists items in both lira and euros, but the price if you pay in euros is more than 50 percent above what the exchange rate would have dictated. Presumably the assumption is that tourists either won’t know or won’t care. The Turkish lira has fluctuated pretty wildly, varying from about 4.5 to 7.5 to the euro over the past year and making life very difficult for people, but this does seem excessive. We pay in lira. The cash machine charges 6% on a withdrawal from a foreign currency source, but with this sort of differential it would soon be made up. 

Then a visit to Fehmy, our dentist. Visits, oddly enough a pleasure. He’s a lovely person - calm, sensitive, talkative, with a wide range of interests, including photography, music, and history. And a good dentist. His dental surgery is actually in the room he was born in. Lunch in the old city and then we visit the Thursday market. Fehmy’s wife Filiz had said that the market was open until evening, and surprisingly there seem to be as many people here in mid-afternoon as there usually are at ten in the morning. Always such a sensual delight. Dark clouds almost above us, but it doesn’t rain before evening.

Wednesday, January 30/2019

Mario the tailor is Greek Cypriot but grew up in London. May in fact have been born there. Told me once that odd as it may sound his visits to Cyprus when he was young were always in the summer, so for years he didn’t realise that Cyprus could be lush green instead of brown - but in the temperate winter not the broiling summer heat. Another feature of Cyprus is that its rural origins often thread themselves through city centres as well as suburbs and outskirts. So a block away from us is a small field where wild mustard grows and an old tractor sits, seldom if ever used. And wild flowers grow like the weeds they are everywhere from the cracks in the pavement to chinks in walls, or around the base of palm trees and orange trees which are often, unaccountably planted in the middle of the sidewalk  - possibly for shade in summer but at great inconvenience to anyone trying to pass with a wheelchair or a pram. 

And returning from Prinos the greengrocer we pass a house where the fenced back garden includes grape vines, orange trees and a traditional outdoor brick and mortar oven, suitable for baking bread or roasting meat in clay pots.

Tuesday, January 29/2019

We’re to meet up with Harry and Ailsa and Jane and Bill at a Chinese restaurant off the Dhekelia Road. Usual futile calculations re probability of bus arrival corresponding to schedule predictions. Made more complicated by the fact that there are two different schedules online - and the more official one has less desirable arrival times. Reconcile ourselves to arriving early - which we do - and going for a walk while waiting for the others. Happily, it’s a nice mild evening. First time we’ve seen H and A since we got back to Cyprus. Turns out they’re celebrating an anniversary and wish to be host the meal. Some amusement as we ask which anniversary and they try to remember whether it’s fifty-one or fifty-two, eventually settling on the former. Meal is good, background music is quiet, and as there happen to be no other customers in the little restaurant it’s easy to hear and conversation is a pleasure. Lack of other customers presumably less desirable for the restaurant, but they’re very gracious. 

Excellent luck in the timing of the bus home, though the driver has to tell us that after nine o’clock the fare goes up from €1.50 to €2.50 - and I remember Hazel telling us of a confrontation she had had with a driver who told her it was after nine and the higher fare, when she pointed out that the bus had been due to leave before nine and she had been there but the driver hadn’t. Can’t remember whether her view prevailed.

Monday, January 28/2019

So report the non-working of the “new” hot plate. And Venera duly replaces it with one that looks unfortunately familiar. J twiddles the controls. Yes, it’s one of our previous rejects. Light will come on, which is probably all that’s ever checked by staff, but no relationship between free spinning knobs and actual temperatures on the burners. Or as J puts it more professionally, defective thermostats. Which has to be conveyed to Venera more or less without words. Is “kaput” international? Anyway, she gets it and reappears with what is now our fourth cooker in two days - have given up keeping track of the grand total. V presses almost her total English vocabulary into service: no good change tomorrow. We all nod and smile. 

The simplest, and obviously standard, method of finding replacements is to liberate them from other flats. And presumably this game can continue for some time before ultimate repair or replacement is required, so long as the hotel isn’t full. The interesting question is what happens to the rejects. Do they go to a housekeeping area and get a sticker labelling them hopeless? It would seem not. Do they wind up in housekeeping unlabelled, innocently waiting reassignment by the uninformed or the uncaring? Or are they simply stuck in the flat that supplied our replacement in the hopes that the next occupant will never want to cook - or at worst will complain to a different employee? 

(Consider including accompanying photograph of hotplate in question but appearance battered enough to be mildly embarrassing, though no doubt effective in discouraging any possible envy of our Mediterranean winters.)

Sunday, January 27/2019

Cyprus Mail finally mentions the dust in the air, saying that it is “expected to subside by evening”. Along with commentary on public health implications and mention of the fact that it has blown in “from other continents”. Sounds rather like one more instance of the need to blame the foreigners! A suitably hazy photograph is included but proves on inspection to be, as one might have suspected, a file photo. In other words the current situation, though unhealthy, is not providing sufficiently dramatic visuals. 

Meet Jane and Bill at Cambanella’s for Sunday lunch. Surprisingly quiet today, while last week it was full, abuzz with families including babies. Hot plate has been replaced by the time we get back, but replacement only has one of two burners working. And so it goes. 

Bit of juggling with the read aloud books as our new Ontario Library download, Reporter, by Seymour Hersh (he who broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib stories), takes priority. We have it for two weeks, having waited since last August. Multiple use of the devices not only a minor technical miracle, but a rebuttal of sorts to those, mostly of our generation, who talk disparagingly about people (and they usually mean the young) who are always looking at their phones and tablets. Sometimes seem surprised when I say yes, but the kid on the bus with the phone could be doing her homework, reading a library book, filling out a job application, writing her granny a letter, checking her bank balance, reading a newspaper, checking tomorrow’s weather, many etceteras. Self serving justification - but we’re not always doing the same thing. 

Saturday, January 26/2019

Too noisy to read aloud on the balcony, as the occasional motorcycle cowboy enters  the weekend decibel contest, but it’s sunny. Temperature reaches 40 in the sun. That’s above, not minus! Happily, feels like less than that because there’s a breeze as well as occasional clouds. So we each take a book and a tin of lager. Mediterranean visible in the near distance. We make spaghetti carbonara for dinner, with mushrooms and caramelised onions. Just barely make it too, as the two burner stove gives up just before the spaghetti is cooked. Bacon, onions, and mushrooms already done, so we’re lucky because the water stays hot enough to finish the pasta. Fuse panel ok, as is outlet, so must be the hot plate itself, most probably the plug, as Cyprus uses UK plugs, which have built in fuses. Will see to it tomorrow.

Friday, January 25/2019

Apparently more than 60% of restaurants and pubs are closed in Paphos for the winter, a not uncommon phenomenon in Mediterranean tourist areas. Probably higher than that in Rhodes. We benefit in one way, in that monthly prices are significantly lower offseason than they would be in the summer - which is too hot and humid in any case. Larnaca, like Limassol and Nicosia, is not really a tourist city, though it does have beaches and attracts some tourists. Not a high enough percentage to affect local prices much, though, unlike Paphos where British expats and tourists combine to persuade food sellers that customers can and will pay more. (An advantage for the sellers but not really for Cypriot customers who also get to enjoy higher prices). 

The flip side of the Paphos coin is that waterfront pubs and cafés often discount beer significantly in order to lure in scarce offseason patrons, whereas in Larnaca beach area restaurant customers are likely to be well heeled locals or Russians or possibly Scandinavians - all more or less immune to high prices. Out of sight of the sea, in the poky little back streets, there is more genuine atmosphere and warmth, no playing at being the rich and famous, and lower prices. However, gentrification proceeds apace, with much muttering in the press about attracting a better class of tourist, i.e. one who spends a lot more. In Sioux Lookout suppose that might translate as someone who stays at a lodge and hires a boat and guide rather than bringing a tent and a fishing rod. 

Thursday, January 24/2019

We’re walking back from Lidl and speculating on whether the solid grey of the sky means it’s going to rain. It looked like rain yesterday and did shower briefly - one point for the local television forecast that said it would and nil for the internet forecasts that said it wouldn’t. But it occurs to us that we haven’t recently thought to check the pollution indexes (felt that should be indices, but autocorrect let it go). There are two different sites we use that record Larnaca pollution, giving live, weekly, monthly and yearly results. Slightly confusing, as they don’t list precisely the same factors, but they’re in broad agreement. Pollution high today. 

Larnaca generally has quite high pollution in world terms, it can vary considerably over a day let alone a week, and the chief culprit is fine particulate matter. In other words, dust. (Can mean other things such as smoke, pollen, ash, etc but here it’s mostly dust). Fine enough to go into the lungs and even bloodstream, hence the occasional warnings re infants, the elderly, outdoor sports, etc. Today is just grey but there have been times of reddish brown sky, occasionally for several days, as dust has blown in from the Sahara. Not the sort of pollution anything can be done about, of course. Surprising, though to find that Larnaca is usually more polluted than London. Not so in the old days of the Victorian peasouper fogs, in the days before coal fires were banned, when a sulphurous smog killed between 4 and 12 thousand (estimates vary and 4,000 probably conservative) Londoners in four days in December 1952. Chına, of course, has many of the worst cities.

Wednesday January 23/2019

Reported that flamingos have returned to nearby Oroklini salt lake. They’ve been at Larnaca salt lake on the way out to the airport for some time now. Cyprus is on the migratory route between Africa and Europe for a lot of birds, and for the greater flamingo there is a good supply in the salt lakes of the small shrimp responsible for their pink colour (although a black one has been spotted the last couple of years). They come in the thousands and are quite an attraction, so much so that there have been problems with people using drones to try to get close up photos, disturbing the birds. We have gone to see them other years, and did get a glimpse coming home from Kofinou ten days ago. The difficulty is that they don’t necessarily stay anywhere near shore, so it’s more than possible to take the bus out and find that they’re half a mile away on the other side of the lake. Not always posing for the camera, either. Fishing for shrimp means spending a lot of time with heads under water. (Photo from Cyprus Mail)

Tuesday, January 22/2019

Clementines, my favourite, nearly finished, so glad we began eating them in Portugal. Plenty of mandarins, and clementines still to be found, though at slightly higher prices. Less fond of mandarins, both of the taste and of the fact that they have more seeds. Lovely place for citrus fruit in the winter. Various kinds of oranges 🍊, lemon 🍋 trees everywhere, and plenty of grapefruit and pomelos. Citrus fruit development a complicated history. Had assumed that pomelos were an offshoot of grapefruit, but quite the opposite. The (slightly simplified) version is that all citrus varieties are descended from pomelos, citrons and mandarins. The more familiar oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit come later. 

Monday, January 21/2019

Cypriot man arrested on the motorway for driving 200 km per hour. The same paper records a man having his prison sentence raised from ten to fifteen years on appeal by the prosecution after he shot his nineteen year old son at point blank range in the abdomen following a dispute about use of the family car. It’s a pretty safe country in that unprovoked attacks on strangers or tourists are extremely rare. I wouldn’t worry much about walking home after dark. Violence within families or business partners seem to hit the papers frequently, but perhaps no more than elsewhere. Traffic injuries might be a greater risk. Driving standards are poor. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office country advisory points this out, citing as evidence a road death rate of 5.4 per 100,000 population, primly comparing it with the UK’s 2.8 per hundred thousand (2016 stats). 

Difficult to be as smug as one might like, though, as it appears Canada’s is 6 per 100,000. Unable to resist checking US out of totally unworthy motives. It’s 10.9. Egypt turns out to be 12.8. Some fairly ugly memories of the road from Cairo to Alexandria. Road itself newish and high quality - drivers less so. Saw more fatal accidents in an hour than in the whole rest of my life. Surprised it isn’t massively higher than US. Maybe a question of how much time citizens of various countries spend in cars? Dubious prize goes to Malawi at 35 deaths per 100,000, but many shockingly close contenders.

Sunday, January 20/2019

Bus to Cambanella’s for Sunday lunch, meeting Bill and Jane who are also reliant on the bus while their car is being repaired. Sunday buses to Pyla few and far between, so we order coffee after the meal mainly in order to use up the time between finishing dessert and the arrival of the next Pyla bus. Proprietor does not seem happy and makes a face. Nescafé, he suggests. Yes, we reassure him. Message basically that they are extremely busy and have no wish to make either Greek or filter coffee. But a reminder that Nescafé is available at virtually all Cypriot (and for that matter Greek) restaurants, and usually for a higher price than Cyprus (=Greek=Turkish) coffee. Some level of holdover from post war years when it had status as a foreign product? Not simply a jar to be pushed to the back of the cupboard in case of emergencies, anyway, although in this case there seems to be some acknowledgement that Anglo customers may consider it second best.

Saturday, January 19/2019

The move back from the first floor to the fourth has pros and cons. Pro, can actually see the Mediterranean. Con, the water, while usually hot enough, has pretty feeble pressure. [Translator’s note: Cyprus, like all European countries including the UK, considers the first floor to be the one above the ground floor, or even (as in our case) the one above the mezzanine, so our fourth floor would in Canada be considered the sixth floor.] We have a shower as part of our bathtub arrangement. Rumour (via Maggi), though, has it that only showers are in future going to be allowed in hotel accommodation. No more bathtubs, apparently for hygienic reasons. Suppose they may have a minor point, but can think of many other things they might consider first. This is a country where you can’t flush toilet paper, for heaven’s sake. And how are hotel guests expected to bathe small children?

Friday, January 18/2019

To the tailor to have a jacket altered. But “closed” sign up and door padlocked, so clearly not just in the loo. Pop in to real estate office next door where they express mild surprise and say he was around yesterday. So presumably not on holiday abroad, in hospital, or dead, although all of the above begin on some particular day, which could conceivably be today. Wiser course is to phone first, but don’t have a number, and if phone books exist here have never seen one (and would be in Greek anyway) so bus back. 

Meanwhile, high school students in Cyprus stage a two hour strike to protest the implementation next year of twice yearly examinations. They do have the brains to give a laudable rationale for their stance: “...we do not want exam centres for schools, or schools centred on competition and individualism...We want a school that offers a well-rounded education.” But the interesting thing is that most of their rhetoric is trades union inspired, asking for real and meaningful dialogue and issuing warnings - and the education ministry seems, even more oddly, to take them seriously in that rôle.

Thursday, January 17/2019

Take the bus out to Pyla. And nearly miss it, or more accurately it nearly misses us, as the driver is late leaving the station and speeding along in the centre lane hoping not to have to notice would be passengers standing at the stop, though he does pull over in response to our waving. 

J helping Bill repair damage to their car port done by termites. Jane off by taxi to sign the insurance papers before Toyota will start work on their vehicle. As the damage isn’t major, except insofar as any damage to the body of today’s cars-without-true bumpers is costly, one can only assume that the garage has had bad experience with unpaid bills and wants the guarantee from the insurance people rather than Bill and Jane. So I assemble the apple crumble to accompany the lamb in the slow cooker. Always slightly disconcerted by the main meal appearing midday, but it’s lovely. 

Stop at Lidl on the way back hoping to pick up bread. There is some rebate in living here, apart that is from the fresh fruit and vegetables, the sunshine, and (usually) the warmth. Total bill  €15.53 ($23.45 CAD, £13.67 - and no, I have absolutely no idea how the pound is holding its value against all logic). Anyway, the receipt shows that for that grand sum we got 250 grams of Irish butter, a packet of shortbread style German butter cookies, a 200 gram dark chocolate bar with whole almonds, and four bottles of South African shiraz/cabernet sauvignon. Not our idea of a balanced diet - just the things that Lidl is best for. Produce usually wildly overpriced, though one does see other people buying it. Multigrain bread very nice, but this makes twice they’ve been out of it. 

Now finished Heroic Failure as well as the reread of Down and Out in Paris and London. Poverty, and even homelessness definitely worse in the thirties, although seemingly less actual sleeping outside in all weathers. But the worst accommodation actually charged men to sit along a bench and lean forward against a rope for the night - then cut the rope at five in the morning. Orwell does definitely say cut, although untying it would seem more prudent. And, in England at least, tramps did tramp. From one shelter to another, normally in different municipalities. It prevented them from settling in and becoming a permanent burden to any given town. And, one can’t help thinking, gave them no time or energy to join a revolution. Nor would the usual meal of tea with two slices of bread and margarine have provided much strength for rebelling.

Wednesday, January 16/2019

Well, guess justified in cancelling coffee yesterday. Cyprus Mail reports “Torrential rain and strong winds wreaked havoc across Cyprus, which saw power cuts, overflowing rivers, flooded dwellings, and other damage to property”. Larnaca not the worst, but unpleasant enough. So Maggi here today for “coffee” - actually meze, catch up and much laughter. During which Jane phones to say that she has pranged the car, which will need repairs, so trip to Famagusta postponed. But damage only to vehicle, fortunately.

Tuesday, January 15/2018

Wake to strong winds and rain. We’re supposed to meet Maggi for coffee, but unkeen on walking to the café, which is over a mile away, in this weather. And, in fact doesn’t actually have inside seating. Fortunately she’s not enthusiastic either, so rain cheque - our place tomorrow. 

The drama of the day is the British vote on Theresa May’s Brexit plan, which comes shortly after nine pm our time. No serious suggestion it would not be defeated, but anticlimax avoided by the unprecedented size of the defeat - 432-202. Not only unprecedented, but nothing even close, and many news watchers are left googling Ramsay McDonald, the 95 intervening years putting his shaky government’s 1924 defeats well out of memory for most. As the no votes represent both those who wish a much harder Brexit as well as those who would prefer to remain in the EU - as well as various other positions - the future isn’t much clearer. 

And this is not technically a no confidence vote, despite the overwhelming lack of confidence displayed. That is tabled by Jeremy Corbyn within minutes and will take place tomorrow. And, oddly enough, the government will probably survive, its minority propped up by the rather unpleasant Northern Irish DUP. The DUP MPs voted against May’s plan but don’t intend to vote against the government’s and their own survival, their position in a «supply and confidence » alliance having involved significant bribery.

Monday, January 14/2018

First time to the town centre since we got back to Larnaca and some significant changes. No actual count, but it seems that there are fewer vacant buildings and empty shops, which is obviously a good thing. There are also a number of high rise buildings under construction or promised on prominent billboards. Have much less sanguine feelings about this. 

The square which has for years been home to the Saturday farmers’markets is now the site of a massive excavation, preparatory to building a new market complex incorporating shops, bars, a gallery, green space and multi-storey parking as well as outdoor market area. It does sound attractive, though one can see the gentrification and tourist appeal proceeding apace as the old balance scales (admittedly not always fairly employed) and the woman with the little stool from whom J learned how to prepare artichokes for sautéing, disappear. 

The high rises present a different problem. They will certainly choke out small traditional houses and period buildings, changing the unique character of the city centre. And no doubt some of what appears charming is poorly insulated, hard to keep clean, or even unsafe. It’s easy to want to preserve quaintness on behalf of others - like admiring donkey carts without caring to be relegated to using one for transport. 

But there appears to be another problem with high rises near the seafront, as recorded in the Cyprus paper. Given the frequency of earthquakes - 146 recorded in Larnaca over the past 20 years, 32 with magnitude of over 3, and four measuring over 4 - and unstable soil, it is doubtful if high rises should be built near the sea at all. A geological survey report has recommended against, so another, apparently independent, study has been commissioned. The newspaper report concludes somewhat ominously: « Despite the warnings of the geological survey department, the Larnaca municipality, which currently has eight pending applications on behalf of high-rise seafront development projects for construction permits, has remained adamant in its attempt to find ways to secure licensing ».

Sunday, January 13/2018

Saturday, January 12/2018

One of the pleasures, well dubious pleasures, of travelling as much as we do is to take breaks from the more frustrating political situations as we trade them in for new, and equally enraging fiascos in other venues. Not that anything is truly ever left behind in the days of the internet. Some political dilemmas are simply overwhelming, and it’s impossible not to be drawn in to the self-inflicted injuries of the current American impasse or the slow motion inevitability of the Brexit disaster. And the Middle East is a constant running sore. 

Then there was the Canadian election of 2006 when we had our ballots couriered to Cyprus and back to Canada. But indignation over Sioux Lookout council decisions does fade as we observe, with gratitude falling a little short of schadenfreude at our political detachment, the scene in Cyprus. And this quite apart from the endless and futile negotiations over the reunification of North and South. So in the Cyprus Mail, the Cypriot Attorney General’s brother makes accusations in some astonishing detail of the incestuous relationship between the Supreme Court and the banks, saying “There is not a single supreme court judge who does not have a child at the law office that promotes the banks’ interests,” and following up with a very long list of names and relationships, adding that this was “the reason Cyprus was convicted by the European Court of Human Rights in January last year for lack of impartiality of the Supreme Court”. Truly shocking even in the tribal system that Cyprus enjoys.