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…