World Cyprus Nicosia

Mick Outside The Box 2009 MickD'sRoad Trip2008

Cyprus Saturday Night 02.24.2008

So, for the moment, good bye to all that.

My time in Cyprus ends with a long day in Larnaca. My flight leaves at the slightly unbelievable time of 0350 tonight, so for now I exhaust the battery in my laptop writing you from my cheery cafe hard by the church of St. Lazarus (motto: "Always Here, Except When I'm Not"). I'll take a few hours to peer at the sea and then head off to the airport for what I'm sure will be a sleepless night. My students in 4843 will bear the fruits of that. Heh heh.

Yesterday I took a "service taxi" to the capital, Lefkosia, also referred to as Nicosia; no one seems to care which form you use. Service taxis are little German minivans that hold a maximum of eight people. They're a sensible idea for ferrying people from one regional location to another (in fact, some smart Nova Scotian would put the limousine service I use there out of business if they started one in the Annapolis Valley). The service taxis pick you up and leave when they're full, so you're never sure exactly when you're leaving or when you're arriving, which is after all somewhat Mediterranean in outlook. It doesn't take very long, in any case; Lefkosia is about 50 km from Larnaca and the island as a whole isn't very big.

Which makes it all the more amazing, in Canadian terms, how a small patch of land can be so fiercely contested. 37% of the island is held by Cypriot Turks (and a large swath of settlers from Turkish Anatolia), and in Lefkosia I was able to walk along the "Green Line" which divides the two territories. I didn't cross over (I, um, forgot my passport in Larnaca) but I managed to shoot a couple of photos of the checkpoints, which are jerry-rigged to the point where they look like the Hatfields just had a spat with the McCoys and used them cans out back to set up a fence. As photos are prohibited I tried to snap snap, grin grin, wink wink and keep moving.

The rest of Lefkosia is pretty standard issue capital city. It has no river or sea and its architecture is unimaginative, except in the old Turkish quarter. I did enjoy the Cyprus Museum, though. Room after room of clay pots and bronze age spearheads, going back as far as 12,000 years. The larger statuary were particularly interesting, as they combine influences from Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor, as you might expect. I love museums that are casually supervised. I was piggybacking one of the 3 metre-high soldiers on display, chiselling away his facial hair, when the Old Guy doing security walked in. I think he thought I was part of the design. No boy, then I'd be a totem pole.

Back in Larnaca I experienced a Cyprus Saturday night, familiar to anyone hailing from Ontario as Mississauga Saturday night. Everyone from the boonies gets into their hot sports car (i.e. truck) and heads into town to holler and play loud music while slowly negotiating the main drag in a long, unbroken line. Because inner Larnaca is made up of tight one-way streets mixed in with tight right-of-way streets, this looks after a while like a procession; every car moving stately along, music blaring, jockeying for a position that can't change. Sure looks like fun.

Nothing changes the nature of the sea, however, no matter how many times you hear Hit Me Baby One More Time, so I went for a walk through Larnaca's Turkish quarter and then along the beach. I am, as you may have intuited, a water guy (which has nothing to do with the alleged proclivities of my astrological sign). I grew up in a part of Ottawa where three rivers meet and I expect to be near water every place I come to live. When I lived in Toronto I heard a rumour there was a substantial body of water there, too. But like much of Ontario, it never seems to move, it just lies there. Lakes. Hah.

So four flights to come with (so far) no weather worries. Much planning to do. I hope to hear from all of you, but if I don't, you'll be hearing from me in about a month or six weeks. The roller-coaster descends, but does not stop.