Today we went over to Nicosia, or Lefkosia, as it is otherwise known (by the people who live there, not the language skewing Brits). This is the capital of Cyprus and the only split capital in the world. By that I mean that, like Berlin, pre 1989, it has a UN buffer zone (The Green Line) of ‘no mans land’ running through the middle to separate the Greek and Turkish Cypriots. (It was really odd. Even though I knew that the UN were there, actually stepping out of the car, right by a Buffer Zone, is incredibly weird. All around, there are people just going along there merry way, while massive fortifications and checkpoints protect the peace. Add to that all the signs prohibiting photography, reminding you that the UN are in operation, all the razor wire, and the buildings pockmarked with bullet holes, all basking in the sweltering Cypriot heat, and it makes for a very unusual contrast.)
We began by parking close to the ‘Pafos Gate’, so called because it used to be the exit of the walled city that faced the town of Pafos on the coast. This was pretty close to the boarder (good spelling, anus. I assume you mean ‘border,’ a line separating areas, rather than ‘boarder,’ someone who pays for lodgings) with the Turkish occupied half of the island. We wandered into the Greek side of the town and had a good look around. I feel the need to say at this point that is was REALLY hot (like your mum). It is away from the sea in the centre of the island and there was very little breeze to speak of, apart from the hot air coming from the area of Sean’s face.
It reminded me a little of a cross between a German shopping town like Koln or Dortmund, the streets looked similar and the shopping looked really good. The roads looked very French, with tall trees lining the carriageways that circumference the city.
After the long drive we stopped off for a much needed cup of coffee and a snack before heading on. (I had a weird sausage roll thing, called a sausage pie. It was basically just a big hot-dog sausage wrapped in pastry, and had some strange sauce in it (That would have been mustard), which wasn’t mustard (Yes it was), but was yellow (like mustard). I think it was a cheese thing.)
We went to a mosque in the centre of the town, Anna and I stayed outside to look after all the belongings whilst the others enjoyed the inside. I’ll let Sean go into all that. (I don’t recall ever having been in a mosque before, but it was lovely. It was just like an empty church, and, because of the lack of pews, seemed massive. It was strange to be in a building I’d never been in before with no shoes on, but was ever so peaceful. It was obviously quite a progressive mosque, as they welcomed everyone in, and had on the walls various pieces of scripture from the Q’uran, as well as other writings that outlined the tenets of the Moslem faith. There was quite a lot about how Jesus, David and Moses are Moslem prophets, which made it seem as if they were trying to explain that the three major world religions are not that different after all. I liked that.) They also had a digital clock (better than Jesus o’clock?) and a digital board showing all the prayer times.
On to the Archbishops Palace, originally built in the 15C, (It was Makarios that got independence for the Greeks in 1960) which is now the folk art museum. (Outside this place was a MAHOOSIVE statue of Makarios. It must have been at least 30 foot tall. Very impressive. If a little Hussein-esque.)We walked on to the Famagusta Gate, similar to the Pafos Gate, but more exciting. This one has been converted into a conference and educational centre to teach the Greeks how the Turks have desecrated all of the churches on the northern part of the island and displaying government sanctioned propaganda that stirs racial hatred towards the Turks. I can see their point though. (I can see where you’re coming from, but then again, I think propaganda is a strong word, especially as the camera doesn’t lie. Seeing pictures of churches which have been ransacked, converted into mosques, or just desecrated by being used as stables or morgues, particularly after having just visited a mosque in the Greek half of the city, is quite compelling evidence of the invading forces’ contempt for the religion and ways of the indigenous population. After having felt included by the Moslem faith in the mosque, it was a reminder of just how hard line some aspects of the Moslem community can be. Of course, it’s no different to what other invading forces have done in the past, but the right to worship freely is one that I strongly agree with, whether I agree with the religion or not, and seeing evidence of the destruction of that right is saddening.)
Next up was the Liberty Monument, erected in 1960; it depicts two EOKA freedom fighters opening the doors to a prison, freeing the people of Cyprus from the British colonial rule. You would have thought that they would be unified against the Brits, and not bickering amongst themselves…. Everybody hates the British. (Only the chav aspect though. And it is probably hard to rally too much hatred against a nation that left you (eventually) to your own identity, especially when you have one that didn’t right on your doorstep.)
Snack break.
(The snack break led to us wandering the streets looking for a mosque which Laura had read has a minaret you can go up to see the cityscape. Unfortunately, we ended up back at the same place we’d already been, and so surmised that the information was wrong, or that the minaret just hadn’t been open. We carried on walking through the centre of the city, and Goldy found a Warcraft shop to look in. While he did that, I finally managed to get my postcards sent (hopefully they’ll arrive in the UK before we do). When I came out, Laura and Anna told me they’d just seen part of the Greek Special Olympic team (well, I assume it was only part of the team – if it was the whole team, they won’t be entering too many of the events!), which is exciting because we can now watch the Games and say that we’ve seen the athletes. It’ll be like having seen someone from Coronation Street, only with more artistic merit.)
The Salamacis building, or Tower 11 as it has been officially dubbed by me, is a bit of a disappointment really, it wasn’t overly high up and there were not that many ‘sights’ to see from that high up. It was a pretty good view but having been spoiled by the Empire State and T42 in London, it was pretty dull. I tried to blag getting in for free on my warrant card but they said that I had to be in uniform,… I knew I should have brought my hat. (I found it a bit annoying because, due to their being two viewing windows on each side, they had two pictures of the layout of the city, but only had half of the sites you could see on each, so you had to keep going back and forth to find everything. Also, the picture hadn’t been updated for a while, so there were loads of buildings on the skyline that weren’t in the picture.)
Back to the Pafos Gate and to the car for refreshments then off to….. Turkey.....
Well, only if you are Richard and talking to a Greek Police Officer at Passport control.
RB: “Is this the way to Turkey?”
(enthusiastically)
PO: “No, There is no Turkey here, for Turkey you need to drive to the Airport, get on a plane to Greece, then connect to Turkey….”
(dryly with a venom to her voice that could have killed a herd of elephants [or Sean’s mum])
RB: “Sorry, is that the way to Turkish Occupied Cyprus?”
(sheepishly)
PO: “Yes, that is the way to go”
(unimpressed)
A prime example of how to get almost get arrested, gang raped and insult a probably very upset copper who has to put up with idiot tourists banging on about going to Turkey, aka, their STOLEN land, their desecrated churches and a leech on their economy.
The moral of this tale, is not to let Rich travel to any politically unstable country for fear of an international incident. (We’re sending him to Palestine next. Or as he knows it, ‘that other bit of Northern Israel’.)
So, we were eventually allowed into the Turkish Occupied part of Nicosia through the Green Line. The Green Line is a really odd place. It is about 200m wide at the point we crossed. On the west side of the road there was a hotel that had been converted to house the many UN Peace Keepers based on the island. There were completely derelict buildings that were riddled with bullet holes and sandbags and ‘pillboxes’ that had been set up more than thirty years ago stand, decaying along the sides of the street. It seemed really sad and very eerie that these places exist, I really wanted to document these in photographs but there were none allowed on the Green Line, and there was so much CCTV I did not want to risk getting my kit confiscated or me arrested to satisfy my photo glory whoring. (The Green Line is so called because of the general who first used it to divide up the island. Not because he was Mr Green, but because he used a green pencil to draw it. This, apparently also explains why it’s different widths at various points in the city, as it is the same width as the pencil line. There’s one bit where it is literally about 5 metres wide. I think that was drawn just after he’d sharpened his pencil). (Or, you know when your pencil becomes semi blunt, you turn it 90 degrees and use the sharp edge)…. Fnar.
Crossing the UN Buffer Zone was extremely weird. It’s like there’s been some kind of explosion there, and the place is no longer fit for humans. Because, in the middle, you’re a good distance from traffic on either side, you can only hear birdsong. It’s quite eerie, and very sad. The border police on the Turkish side were nice enough though. We had to get temporary visas to enter the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC, not recognised by any international group whatsoever), as, apparently, if they stamp your passport you are not allowed to return to Greek Cyprus. We had read that people living there weren’t allowed to cross at all, but there were some kids coming through with what looked like bus passes, who must surely have been in school on the Greek side, so maybe the rules are relaxing. Or maybe there’re different rules for schooling. I don’t know, and I didn’t find out, as the last thing I want to do is get arrested in ‘Turkey’ for chatting to underage children.)
On the other side, we split up into two groups. Rich, Godly and I went for a quiet drink whilst Anna, Laura and Sean went off and did their thing (not as good as ours).We went off into the town, what struck me was how much nicer it was than the Greek Side. They had spent a lot of money ‘welcoming’ people to their side of town. The grass was green, the roads were in fairly good order and it looked fairly sweet! The attitude of the drivers changed as well. They all stop to let pedestrians cross, and the whole place was far more relaxed and chilled out than the Greek side. We bumbled down some side streets looking for a suitable bar to kill an hour in. We eventually found one on one of the main shopping roads in the town. We sat and drank for a little while and I found a camera shop that sold me a monopod for about a tenner (result).
We bumbled back towards the boarder after about 40 mins and found a lovely looking restraint (you found a what!?! Dirty little bugger, you never mentioned to me that you like that sort of thing…). We sat and drank a little more and awaited the return of our three wandering companions.
We talked about how relaxed it felt and how welcome people had made us and we were very surprised considering the turbulent history and the total hatred from the Greeks towards the Turks.
Upon the girls (yes Sean, you are included in that group) return, they had a totally different experience to share….. (As I’ve explained before, it’s the sexy group that I’m part of. Gimp.
Anyhoo, we wandered off into the city to have a look around. About 3 metres after we’d left the others, the niceness dropped off, and the place became a bit dirtier, and a lot less salubrious. I also got very quickly protective of the ladies, as it seemed that every single guy we walked past gave them both a full checking out. They didn’t even bother to hide behind sunglasses like we do. At one point, Laura bent down to take a picture of a kitten, and some old fella actually lent around some boxes to leer. Nice.
We went off to find the city’s main Mosque, which used to be the Cathedral. On the way there, we saw a column with a globe on top. Apparently, it had originally been erected when the Venetians had ruled, and had once had the lion of St Mark sitting proudly atop it. It was torn down by the islanders, and then re-erected with the globe by the British in 1915. See, I’m learning things.
We then mooched along to the Mosque. Inside, it was so spacious. Everything had been removed from the church, and all that remained was the main pulpit. The only concessions to its new faith were a few bits of Arabic writing on some of the pillars, and the carpeting. The carpet was strange, as the lines on it went in what seemed to be an entirely arbitrary direction, until I realised that it was aligned so that the faithful knew which way to pray so that they were facing Mecca. Apparently the girls had realised this in the first Mosque, but I hadn’t noticed the carpet there.
Inside was very quiet, with just a couple of middle aged men praying. It was interesting to see this, particularly as it was such a different proposition to anytime you ever see Moslem prayers on TV – there, it will invariably be thousands of people making lots of noise, and is generally used to show us, subtly, just how different Moslem ways of worship are. Here, however, I was struck by the quiet faith of the man. He had clearly taken time out of his day, possibly on his afternoon break, or after his work day was over, to come and quietly pray. Having never had that kind of faith myself, I found it quite humbling. It’s quite strange to reconcile that image with the images in the media which portray the Islamic faith as today’s bogeyman.
There were some kids in there too, running around and being noisy. Later on, we saw them again in the street. They called the girls sexy, and said that they could ‘f*** them great.’ Nice. If only they went for 13 year-old letches, the kids would have been well away…although they might have struggled to carry them off into the sunset on their bikes.
After the Mosque, we wandered round an indoor market. It was kind of lame. Laura wanted some postcards, but refused to give money to the Turks. She’s uber-principled. We then tried to find Buruk Kham, used as a prison by the British, and now a shopping plaza type thing. Essentially, it’s like a round open air theatre, with two levels. Where it used to house prisoners, it now houses bars, coffee shops and arty craft shops. It could possibly be the nicest place ever to have been incarcerated. Unfortunately, like everywhere else on the Turkish side, it was populated by men with eyes on stalks, but that didn’t take too much away from its attractiveness. In my mind, it was probably the nicest part of either side of the city, possibly because, other than its Turkish name, it bore no signs of the war that has been fought for the land – rather, it was a remnant from colonial times, now put to a nicer use.
We trekked back to meet the guys in their bar, stopping on the way to take some uber-camp photos, of me underneath a stop sign (stop in Turkish is ‘Dur.’ Good for lame ass English tourist gags) and selling Anna a book under a shop sign proclaiming the premises to be the home of Gaye Trading. Because we’re that mature. When we arrived at the bar, I took a quick ‘comfort break,’ which I mention only because the toilet had a cool thing that made the plastic on the seat turn around before you used it, which was immense. I didn’t even need to use the actual toilet, but played with that anyway, as I’m a child.)
Thought I put my twopenny’th in here, but Sean has already touched on the feelings I got whilst in NotTurkey. Having dressed relatively conservatively as I knew we would be going into mosques and churches, I found the attitudes of the Turkish men immensely disturbing. One thing that struck me quite early on was the larger proportion of males to females on the Turkish side across all the age ranges. Outside every café, sitting on every street corner was a group of men. Almost without fail, Laura and I attracted outright stares and, in a thankful minority of cases, wholly inappropriately explicit comments. Considering that the few local ladies we saw were far more “exposed” than we were, I can only guess that their first thought when seeing a blonde, light skinned girl is that she is openly available for sex and would gladly appreciate any one of them (be they 13 or well over 60) telling her she’s sexy and that they could “f*** you great”. I don’t. I do not like NotTurkey.
We managed to return into Greek Cyprus without creating an international hostage situation and got to the cars and travelled the long journey back home.
Well worth the trip, we really needed to go to the “Museum of Cyprus” but we just didn’t have time. It would have been great to see all of the ‘Treasure’ that had been recovered from all the dig sites that we have been to over this holiday. Maybe another time though. (Next time, we also need to go to the Museum of Brutality’ in the Turkish half. I just need to go to any museum with such a contentious name.)
[Extension of above rant] It is such a shame that the two countries can’t just get along. The city has beautiful city walls that are being used on one side for the exact purpose they were designed for. They should have tourists walking along them, enjoying the view and circling the city. The buildings are decaying near to the boarder and some have been totally consumed, with windows sandbagged or concreted up. There are bullet holes in walls and through signs from a conflict more that 30 years ago. It is such a shame that a disagreement all that time ago has become local history when people should be concentrating on the whole towns role within Cyprus and its historical value that stretches back to the great earthquake of 4c.[/rant]
We got home without certain death (I am a terrible passenger), which delighted me greatly. (We almost got sideswiped by a bigger car when Richard was playing ‘road rally.’ That wasn’t fun. Our car would have been creamed.) We had some ice cream and then, later in the evening, the tribe went out to watch (lame) football. Anna and I went to a drive over to Agios Georgios. On the way back we found a great little restaurant called ‘Anesi’, which means ‘relax’. The food was ace, the owner and his wife were brilliant and it is a definite suggestion for tomorrow nights food.
(Football is not lame. I wrote earlier that she was a cruel mistress. Well last night she was like a wife who surprised you with your favourite meal, a night in front of all the Die Hard movies, followed by fellatio. I can’t remember the last time I felt such a wave of euphoria. I can remember the last time I shed a tear at a game though – the 4-1 defeat at Bolton that sent us into the second tier. It’s only right, really, that our possible return there should be greeted the same way. Little Johnny Howson, a local lad playing for his childhood team, wrote his name into United folklore with the two goals that saw off Carlisle in another pulsating match. I couldn’t have been happier with the way the boys played, and there were mercifully few times that I feared for the game. The fans did us proud, the boys made up for the showing on Monday night, and there can be no greater sight than Gary McAllister’s happy little face after the match. John Ward, the Carlisle boss, was magnanimous in defeat, and the whole thing was a positive advertisement for English football in general and the lower leagues in particular. I will now spend the next week trying, probably in vain, but you never know, to get tickets for Wembley. Now to wait and see who we’ll be playing… (Edit on Friday. It’s Doncaster. They blitzed Southend 5-1. Yorkshire derby at Wembley? Could be tasty…)
Sadly, I ended up being made to get drunk by the endless succession of drinks that were placed in front of me. Against my better judgement, I drank them all. Well, except the one that got knocked all over me. I don’t like being drunk. We got back about 2:30ish, had one game of shithead, and then I went to bed. Laura came up a little while after, thinking she’d lost her passport, although it turned out this morning that Anna had actually put it in the safe. Seriously, alcohol does not make anyone be at their best. Andy and Anna were already in bed when we got back.)
Righto, it’s been a long day today so I’m off to bed.
(See?)
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