Cyprus - Legends and heavy metal

Greek mythology says that Aphrodite was born of sea foam, and the Cypriots claim it happened here, at Petra tou Romiou:

As the legend goes, Cronus cut off Uranus's testicles (yikes!) and threw them into the sea. They stirred up a foam, out of which Aphrodite grew. She washed ashore riding on a seashell.

The name of the beach means "rock of the Greek," which comes from another legend. The Byzantine warrior hero Digenis Akritas defeated invaders by throwing the rock at their ships with his superhuman strength.

There may not be any truth to these legends - I could tell you that the tooth fairy was born under that rock too - but they make for good stories.

Later that day, we visited the ancient city of Kourion. 

There's been a city on the cliff where Kourion was located since probably the beginning of time. I am sure there were neanderthals walking around there at one time. And archaeologists continue to dig up more and more artifacts from past civilizations. Kourion was an ancient city of the Greeks, the Romans, then the early Christians. It survived for about 800 years until earthquakes destroyed it.

The view from Kourion

Mosaic on the floor of a Roman house - 3rd century A.D.

Brian contemplates antiquity at an early Christian church

Unlike Salamis, Kourion had roofs over some of the artifacts, railings and multiple informative signs. This is what some EU funding will do for your archeological site.

Note the railings and boardwalk

Also unlike Salamis, Kourion was recently the venue for a heavy metal concert. I found out as I was reading about Kourion that the metal band Iced Earth played a concert in the amphitheater there last year. Curious about how head banging and Roman ruins fit together? Watch the trailer (it's only 90 seconds long). Apparently Cyprus is a hotbed of heavy metal fans. Who knew?

A pretty cool concert venue

Did the music stir up ghosts of some ancient musicians from Greek times, who were trying to figure out how the music got so loud and what all the head banging was for? Perhaps. It would make a good legend anyway. I just hope there's nothing in there about anyone's body parts being cut off.

Cyprus – bike rides and other things

The main reason we ended up staying in Kalavasos is that there’s a bike shop there. We’d rented road bikes last year in Spain and had a breathtaking day-long ride. I say breathtaking not just in terms of the views but also terms of the mountain we had to ride over to get to the coast, and then over again to get back. This time were looking for something a little easier, and had more time to ride. We rented the bikes from a Swedish man named Borje who runs the shop in Kalavasos.

Our first bike ride, following Borje’s suggestion, was east along the coast toward Larnaca. To get to the coastal road, we had to go up and down some pretty huge hills. When you live in a place like Hannover, where it’s hard to find a slight incline, every hill seems huge.

The route took us past Agios Theodoros:

And through a valley of citrus trees  - oranges, lemons, even some grapefruit.

 Then along the water: 

We even saw olive trees and a few artichoke farms:

Artichokes are weird looking

At this point I was feeling happy and peppy and ready to ride all day. But after we turned to head back toward Kalavasos, it wasn’t so easy. Add being a little out of shape, hungry, thirsty, etc. - the ride got harder. Then Brian got a flat tire…. Suffice it to say that by the time we got back to town (93 km later) we were beat. We pulled into the King’s Bridge, a little bar on the edge of town. It’s run by a Cypriot-English family, a couple of dogs and a lot of cats (there are stray cats everywhere in Cyprus. I am pretty sure that one climbed in the window and hung out in our apartment all day while we were gone). We downed some cold Keo beer and burgers with fries. The bartender gave us some oranges from his garden to take home. Recovery had begun.

The second ride was us trying to find a hill route and never succeeding. We headed down a couple of dead ends and found our way to the dam:

At one time, there was a river running through Kalavasos. Today it’s all dried up, due to the dam that’s between the village and the coast. Thanks to scarce rainfalls lately, it’s low on water now, too. We never did find the road we were looking for, and decided to call it quits and try again the next day.

With some directions from Borje, we found the hill road this time. We were riding in the foothills of the Troodos mountains, where Cypriot wines come from and where resistance fighters plotted their attack against the British forces.  The first few hills were manageable, and the view continued to get better, until we got to the longest hill ever. It didn’t stop. I think the hill ended and somehow we were still inching upward. At one rest break, hearts pounding, sweat pouring down our faces, Brian and I looked at each other and he said, “why do we DO this to ourselves?”. This whole ride seemed like an awful plan. But then we started to go downhill and wind through little villages with stone houses and past orange groves and olive trees and smelled the freshly tilled earth in farms below. Then we got to an overlook like this and I said “Now I remember the reason we do this to ourselves”:

I’m not saying that Brian and I will seek out never-ending hills up which we can ride rental bikes during every vacation. But it’s a way to see the countryside, to smell it, to notice old ladies sitting in doorways and flowers growing out of rocks – things that you could never catch looking out of a car window. And there’s something strange and intriguing about wearing spandex shorts and reflective sunglasses, riding past an old man herding goats with a long stick. It's a clash of time and culture, I guess. This happened to us twice during the ride. They all looked at us, the goat herders and their goats. One of the goats was busy eating a plastic bag. I wonder what the herder thought of us...  maybe 'crazy foreigners, what are they doing going up that hill''? I am pretty sure the goat was only thinking about his plastic bag.  

Anyway, there were some more ups and downs, but we held our own for the rest of the ride. I think our next cycling vacation might be somewhere flatter like Holland, or Hannover, or North Dakota.

Cyprus - ruined cities of the North

Since the North Cyprus car insurance was only valid for three days, we went back on Tuesday. This time we crossed further to the east, after passing through the Cyprus’s only town located in the UN buffer zone. That would be a strange place to live, I think, between two countries that many consider one country.

Driving through North Cyprus is like stepping back in time. No one is wearing bell bottoms or playing disco music, but you can see that a lot of things haven’t changed since the 70’s. The most extreme example is the ghost city of Varosha. It used to be the swanky resort district of Famagusta (Gazimagusa in Turkish). In the early 1970s , it became one of the top tourist destinations in the world for the rich and famous. Now, you can’t go in. You can't even find it on a map - North Cyprus pretends it's not there. Since the Turkish invasion, it is simply fenced off and allowed to decay. The Turkish are holding it as part memorial and part bargaining chip since they won't release it to UN control. You’re not supposed to take photos, but of course we did:

Varosha

Old town Famagusta is built around a ruined city also. Bordered by medieval city walls (built by the Venetians), you can’t go anywhere in the old town without seeing a 13^th or 14^th century church or some kind of ruined building. In most other European countries, each of these places would have sign explaining their history. They would charge admission and have a souvenir shop at the gate. In North Cyprus, you can stand on the 15^th century city wall with no railing to protect you, wander among the ruins without another tourist in sight, and the only fences around these historical attractions are covered in barbed wire. 

Next we drove through the newer, brighter, more crowded parts of Famagusta, including a KFC and multiple coffee shops (as a non-coffee-drinker I feel left out of this caffeinated brotherhood somehow) and out to the ruined city of Salamis.  The city was built around 1000 B.C. In about 300 B.C., Salamis was the capital and main trading center of Cyprus. It’s hard to wrap my head around that kind of antiquity. The Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans all left their mark, though most of the buildings that you can visit today were built by the Romans in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries A.D. Some of the buildings are little more than piles of rocks, but the baths, the gymnasium, theater and roads are still intact.

Salamis

I'll bet they don't let you do this in Athens

There are two theories on why all the statues at Salamis are headless. The heads, which were always attached after the body was sculpted, may have fallen off during an earthquake. The other theory is that the early Christians knocked them off to destroy traces of pagan religion left by the Greeks and Romans.

Gymnasium at Salamis

The amphitheater at Salamis held 15,000 people. I'm on the left.

It makes me wonder what our cities will look like in 2000 years. Will any trace be left at all? Will anyone be around to see them? As the vines take over the ghost town of Varosha, I can start to imagine it.

Cyprus - into the North

The most recent history of Cyprus is that it was a British colony starting in 1878 (that is recent when your history goes back a few thousand years). After a few decades of struggle, the Cypriots gained independence in 1960.  Tensions between the Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus grew during independence, resulting in violence and the UN bringing in peace-keeping troops in the mid-sixties. Turkey invaded in 1974, and won, resulting in 37% of Cyprus becoming North Cyprus. The north-south border is called the Green Line (I know it sounds like a public transit line, but it has that name because a British guy drew on a map with green crayon), and there is a UN-regulated buffer zone along it. Turkey is the only country in the world that recognizes North Cyprus as a sovereign nation. Otherwise it’s considered an occupied territory. Since Cyprus is in the European Union, it’s a little awkward that part of it is occupied by a non-EU foreign power. 

In North Lefkosa (Nicosia)

To cross into North Nicosia, we drove through at a checkpoint where we had to purchase temporary car insurance (ours was only valid on the Greek side) and show our passports.

We headed to St. Hilarion’s castle on the north coast of Cyprus. St. Hilarion was supposedly the inspiration for both Schloss Neuschwanstein in  Germany and Disney’s Cinderella castle. It was originally built as a monastery, then converted to a castle by the Byzantines in the 8^th century. They figured it would be the best place to spot any Arabs invading by sea. The Lusignans, the next conquerors, used it also until it was abandoned in the 15^th century.

St. Hilarion's Castle

After visiting the castle we headed back across the border and to Kalavasos. The old guys were still sitting at their cafes, drinking cans of Carlsberg and playing dice.

Cyprus - places

Cyprus is sort of two places. 

Cyprus was ruled by everyone but Cypriots for a couple thousand years. The Romans, the Greeks, the Venetians, Ottomans, the British and a few other empires ruled Cyprus. 

In 1960 Cyprus won independence, but it’s been divided for the last 40 years (more on that later). The Greek part of the country is in the south, and the Turkish part is in the north. In the north, they speak Turkish and use Turkish lira and are shut off from the south by a closed border that can only be crossed at 7 checkpoints. Even the capital city of Nicosia is divided in two. Places here have multiple names - the Greek one, the Turkish one, and sometimes the English ones too. And don’t forget that Greek names are also spelled in the Greek alphabet. So when we picked up our rental car and were told to follow the signs to Limassol, we really needed to follow signs to Lemesos. When we went to Nicosia, we were actually heading to Lefkosia in Greek, or Lefkosa in Turkish. I can’t tell you how to write that in Greek. I went to a college with no fraternities, so I never learned anything besides alpha and omega.

Kalavasos

Kalavasos

We are staying in the village of Kalavasos. It’s a sleepy little town on a hillside, in between the sea and some old copper mines. There are three cafes around the town square, which has been sort of under construction for two or three years. When I there are cafés, what I mean is that there are brightly lit rooms with plastic furniture where the old men of Kalavasos sit for hours sipping coffee, or beer, or both, and play dice or watch soccer on TV.  Where are all the old women? Probably at home, sipping coffee and complaining about their husbands. 

We are staying in an apartment in an old house with stone walls, and when people fire up their stoves at night, the whole town smells a little like wood smoke.

Our apartment

We decided to stay in Kalavasos because of the bike shop here, which is run by Borje from Sweden. We’ll rent bikes from him tomorrow but for today we headed north. First we went to Nicosia (aka Lefkosia). There wasn’t much happening there on a Sunday other than a lot of coffee drinking. The old city has winding pedestrian streets with cafes on all sides, packed by well dressed Cyrpiots (both men and women this time) sipping lattes. They wore puffy winter coats and sunglasses while strolling through narrow streets. 

You can only wander for while - then those streets just stop. The city literally runs into a wall. This is the border to North Nicosia, the Turkish side. The border is made of cinder blocks and sand bags. Read on to know why…

Berlin - tale of two banhofs

I was in Berlin two weeks ago. I know, you are saying to yourself, “Again? I have heard about Berlin already. Go somewhere else in Germany, will you?” Ok, maybe you aren’t saying that but there was a reason for my trip. One of my oldest friends, Giulia, was there from Hollywood, trying to sell movies during the Berlin film festival. I went to visit during her first couple of days in town. Kaska came along.

I have written about Berlin before, and the movie business is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. The only Hollywood news I really appreciated was learning about of the films Giulia is selling. It’s called “Zombeavers”. As you may have guessed from the title, it’s about beavers who turn into zombies and attack teenagers staying at a cabin in the woods. If that’s not an Oscar contender I don’t know what is. So, Zombeavers aside, I will write about two banhofs we got to know a little while in Berlin (a banhof is a train station).

 

The first is the Hamburger Banhof. No, it’s not a new concept in fast food. In fact, there are no burgers there at all (I can just imagine a caboose rolling by, full of quarter pounders). It’s an old train station that is now converted into a modern art museum. I don’t always like modern art or understand it as well as I think I should, but I enjoyed this place. There was a lot of imaginative stuff that made me think a little and also made me smile. My favorite was a video showing a woman who is training ducks to pull a spaceship to the moon. They were hiking around on mountains in space suits.  The museum is housed in a huge old train station. Most of the exhibits are on former platforms where passengers would board trains headed for Hamburg in the 1800s. There’s a huge main hall that would be the perfect place for a masquerade ball. And in the garages, where trains would be repaired or stored or dismantled for parts, are massive works of modern art. Things like spray-painted trees lying on the floor and entire creepy black rooms are housed here. They wouldn’t fit anywhere else.

The Hamburger Banhof

Giulia and Warhol

I only found the other station because it was around the corner from our hotel. It’s the Anhalter Banhof, or it was once. Now there’s just a façade remaining, just a grand doorway that leads to nowhere. This banhof was a hub for trains heading to places like Vienna, Prague and Rome. But it’s more memorable as the place where the Germans elderly Jews were deported during the early years of WWII. They left in small numbers, 50 to 100 per day, a few days every week. They traveled in passenger cars attached to regular trains and arrived at regular stations, only to be sent on to concentration camps.

There’s a new museum being built across the street – Berlin probably has as many museums as Washington DC, or more. It’s a museum about deportees, refugees and displaced people.

Anhalter Banhof - the facade still stands

It’s funny to think of what happens to a train station that no longer serves a purpose. These two went in opposite directions – one is reincarnated and more contemporary than ever, and one is just a shell, a monument to all the people who left. 

So far, neither is selling burgers and fries.

My personal geography

There's a story by Garrison Keillor in this month's National Geographic magazine. He's the creator and host of the old-style radio show Prairie Home Companion on public radio, an author, an essayist and a proud yet quirky Minnesotan. The magazine article is entitled There's No Place Like Home, and it's a personal geography. Read it if you have the time. Those of you who have lived in the Twin Cities will identify with it, those who haven't will at the very least enjoy the writing and the photos.

"The Mississippi, whose rhythmic spelling I liked to whisper to myself—m-i-SS-i-SS-i-PP-i—like a secret password, flowing over the St. Anthony dam and under the 1883 Stone Arch bridge of James J. Hill’s railroad near a 1908 General Mills grain elevator with the Gold Medal Flour sign lit up." Words by Keillor, photo by Larsen

Reading about the significance of Twin City places in Keillor's life makes me wonder about my own personal geography.  I suppose each of us has one and none are quite the same. How my like would look like drawn as a map? There would be three and a half parts.

The first in Lisle, Illinois, an unremarkable comfortable suburb with summer afternoons at the swimming pool, acorns falling on the roof, walks to school, bike rides, strip malls and sled hills. We kept guinea pigs in the basement, played with the little boys next door, did a lot of homework, answered the phone ringing with girls who called for my brother.

Then there was a year interruption, a move to Belgium with a one-foot-in and one-foot-out mentality, teenage upheaval, the sensation of being new, drinking wine, being without my siblings, living in a big house owned by someone else, seeing new places with foreign names and then coming back.

The next part of the map would be Saint Paul (though I did spend a year in Minneapolis, don't tell). It would start on Grand Avenue with college classes and strange roommates, meeting Brian and the cold walks we took together. There would be the track and the dorms and the deli where I worked. Then come the apartments, Brian's, mine, then ours together. I'd draw out the Russian restaurant, the Irish bar, the Chinese buffet. Then the jobs that taught me how to get around the city and brought me into Mexican neighborhoods. My map would show the Basilica where we got married, and the other churches we tried out later on. It would trace our bike routes. And, like Keillor's, my map would show the Mississippi river and Como Lake behind our house.  We almost didn't get out of the realtor's car to see the house at first - we'd looked at so many dumps already. Then we found its big yard and clawfoot tub and orange dining room and made it home.

Now I am here in Hannover. We have a different lake, a man-made one from between the wars, and a different zoo (one I still refuse to visit because admission is not free). What our apartment lacks in character and green space it makes up for in fifth floor views and the ease of getting everywhere on a bike. I would add the Indian restaurant and the Turkish döner shop to my map, the international school, my German classrooms, our friends' garden plot and the hockey stadium. My Hannover map isn't finished yet. Many parts of the city are still just places, waiting for some kind of meaning to make them stand out.

What's your personal geography? Think about it. Places don't mean much until you are in them.

Bosseln 2014 - the houseguests

Since a lot of Kaska and Thorsten's friends came from out of town for Bosseln, we offered to host a couple of overnight guests at our place. We were assigned Angelo and Ksenia, in the hopes that they would make a love connection (this phrase should be followed a fit of girly giggling, tee hee hee).

Ksenia is a Russian woman working on her Masters at the university in Heidelberg, Germany. She comes from the farthest east part of Russia, along the Pacific coast. She speaks fluent Korean and worked in Seoul for seven years doing statistical market research. She travels often and you can tell - her luggage was a backpack, she took five minute showers and used only a hand towel.

Angelo is a half German, half Italian guy who lives somewhere near Dortmund, Germany. I don't know what he does with his time. I'm pretty sure it's not working. He uses a lot of hair products and left his tweezers and his electric toothbrush in our bathroom. Once Ksenia had dragged Angelo out of the aero-bed on Saturday, his German and Italian sides had an inner conflict.

The rest of us were showered and dressed, ready to play Bosseln. Angelo sat with us, lazily enjoying breakfast, and said "you know, I think we are going to be late." It was 11:30 and the game was supposed to start at 12. "I hate to say it," he continued, "because we are enjoying such a nice breakfast, but we are going to be really late to this thing." Did he move faster? Did he jump up and get ready? No. He sipped his coffee and at 11:58 decided to take a shower. The German in him wanted to be punctual, but the Italian in him was moving at his own pace.

Since we were already late we planned to take a taxi. I called the taxi. It came. It waited. Finally it left because Angelo had been in the bathroom for half an hour. Meanwhile, 30 people were waiting for us in the woods, ready to roll some balls.

While Angelo showed some interest in Ksenia at first, it was clear early on that she's way out of his league. There would be no love connection, despite their friends' efforts at playing Cupid (tee hee hee). While Ksenia and Brian talked in depth about linguistic geography, Angelo played games on his smart phone.

The next day, when there was nowhere we had to go and no one waiting for us, he was actually pretty cool. And his hair smelled great. Ksenia may have thought so too, but she is a woman who knows where she is heading. Angelo is a boy lost in the woods. Somewhere in those woods are 30 people throwing balls down the path, but they left 45 minutes ago.

Bosseln 2014 - The Final Rollover

There was a major sporting event this weekend. Teams faced off, athletes gave their all, crowds cheered, victors celebrated and the defeated hung their heads. No, it was not Superbowl 48. It was Bosseln 2014.

If you've been reading this blog for a while you might remember that Bosseln is a game played by old men on frozen paths in the north of Germany during the winter. It's the kind of thing you do in a cold place so you don't go crazy during the winter. You might also recall that our friends Kaska and Thorsten have a tradition of hosting a Bosseln game every year. It has moved around Germany with them - it started when they were in University in Osnabruck, then moved on to Kiel, then followed them to Hannover. This year's tournament was the third in the series of Hannover Bosseln games. Don't let the title fool you - it surely won't be the last.

Rather than me explaining the game, I'd like you to watch this film that Thorsten made from last year's event. You will notice that Brian, playing Captain America, features prominently. It's only 2 minutes long. Just click on the link above.

First time players are understandably concerned about knowing the rules of Bosseln. So are about four of the 35 other people playing. For the rest of us, we just throw the ball as far as possible, and obediently take a shot of some awful grain alcohol (ambitiously called 'schnapps') when we are told. This happens when your team's throw is too short, or when you pass a statue in the woods, or when you come across an intersecting path. There is a way to score points, but don't ask me how. I am not one of the people who care.

Here are a couple of photos:

Me and the Polish girls - Kaska and Charlotta

Patrick (Germany/UK), Kaska, Thorsten (Germany), Ed (USA), Taras (Ukraine) in front

Brian starred this year as Captain Polska, in honor of Kaska and the other players representing Poland:

After the game ended we walked our cold, wet selves to a restaurant called Schweinehaus. Only in Germany do you go out to a place called 'pig house'.  At the house of pigs we ate Grünkohl, which consists of sausage, smoked pork, ham, kale and potatoes (which I am pretty sure are cooked in bacon fat). This is a traditional north German meal. I am all for trying the regional dish, but have decided is ok to eat only Grünkohl once a year. Your arteries would agree.

In a spirit of unity and sportsmanship, the winners, the losers, the fans, the referees and those who didn't care which category they fell in ate large amounts of pork and potatoes together. And that was it. With Captain Polska around, who needs a halftime show anyway?