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So let us talk about the pool. In the morning the sunloungers are all
free, the annoying reservations by bath towels before breakfast is not
common hereabout and so it is not necessary. Before you enjoy the sun
you should use a good suntan and then wait for 30 minutes, so it is to
be read on the wrapping. After "Would you creme my backside?" we can
only await 5 minutes, then we leave our room and go down to look for a
proper sun shade or fan palm. If available you choose the place of the
day before: then you feel quite at home. Than we watch the balcony of
our room until the cleaning ladies have done their work. And when the
curtains are closed from inside we know: we can solve our metabolic
problems discreetly. Of course there is another toilet downstairs for
emergency operations.
Then we read for a while. Heidi chases some murderers, I am "Down
Under" or on the Appalachian Trail. Now and then we must jump in the
waters and be careful not to scratch with the knees on the flat ground
while swimming. Until the early afternoon there are only few guests
around, may be the sun is too strong? But we got no sunburn at all
because we mostly prefer the shade. "You are so brown, that looks like
artificial!" Serafina once
says to us. About Serafina let us talk later.
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After 3pm the sun is not so hot yet and this or that woodlouse
(Kellerassel) come along. It seems that they do not master the driver
license for the wheeled sunloungers because there is much noise until
they have arranged everything for the right position concerning the
position of the sun or group-dynamical aspects. Thereafter they all
fall asleep or have a conversation. My dear wife loves to listen to
neighboured discussions and so once I am obliged to ask her: "Shall I
better stake your chin?".
As some readers have critisized that we like to make fun of other
people's behaviour we now start with the following mysterium: it
sometimes happens to us or other people that at a sneeze or cough
another unwilling noise from the other bodyside comes out. And now we
introduce a gentleman of the Anglistic sphere whose nickname could be Kinkong or Buddha. In spite of his swelling
body characteristics he is deeply brown and really able to sit on a
narrow bar chair for one or more pints of beer. Or he is on the move
somewhere. Then - may be - a phone call from the universe or the
Anglistic sphere may melodically activate any mobile around his spouse
must regret: "Charly is not here, he is in the pub!".
Excuse me for a moment, I just
have to tie up the lower jaw of my wife again.
Special Evenings
At Friday and Saturday - so twice the week we have some special events
in the hotel restaurant. On Friday it is named "Cyprus Nights". They rearrange
tables and chairs to be able to welcome a full house. In the garden
there is a barbecue and since the afternoon they roast delicious meat
on a spit. As usual we are in time at 7 pm awaiting our dinner. This
time we have to wait for a while but are promised to have a better
buffet than ever before. And we are ensured that this special offer is
fully included in the half-board contract.
Let us talk about the chief cook with his white and high cooking hat
who likes to look if everything is alright. So he shuffles around and
it may happen, that you just resign to consume a so called Kalamares
Goulasz where you can admire full grown tentacles and suckers
altogether. And if you feel your stomache turning our chief cook
shuffles contentedly along peering for other observations.
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So let us now introduce Serafina. She
is extraordinary by her energetic and stamping style to walk around,
and occasionly she speaks in German language. And if you ask her what's
about it, she will harshly give the answer: "I am from Austria, but you
cannot see it from my beauty". And if you reply "But it is to be heard
by your dialect" this would not be so very chivalrous - may be. This is
Serafina, and someone told us, that she lived on this island since 20
years and meanwhile has a couple of grandchildren. If you ask her for
the
kind of fish which the fishermen bring along, she will give the answer:
"Those are all Cyprus fishes, but sometimes there is an Octopus, as
large as from the floor to the tip of the chin". So we are always
delighted when Serafina is on duty. Another employee is a woman of
Sweden to present an appropriate service for the guests from
Scandinavia.
Let us return to the buffet. If you dismantle any fish you will not
guess what kind of fish this would be, may be one of the Cypriotic, as
Serafina proposed. But it is delicious. But the Octopusses resp.
Kalamaris are more like a sort of gum. Meanwhile there are 4 persons
clothed by traditional costumes who walk to and fro or around each
other attended by a special Sirtaki music or so. At last the two
maidens with headscarf and a clay jug on their shoulders swing their
hips according to any Buzouki music or so and this looks really like
Greek folklore or whatever you may imagine.
The next performance is more special - may be a characteristic custom
of the Cypriots? One of the boys now starts to pile up filled ouzo
glasses on the top of his head. At last he accomplishes to carry more
than ten alarmingly toddling glasses up above. Meanwhile someone of the
audience is animated to do the same and they manage to carry three or
four glasses. But the show is upstaged by an older very gentle
gentleman from Russia who stands up wih his beer glass on his bare head
and at once there is a great applause and the cameras do their work.
His wife is in spirit as well and shakes "Give mi Five" with her
neighbours and sings "Ras Dwa Tri" ore more multi lingual "One Two
Three".
As the polonaise hard along the edge of the swimming pool starts we at
last have paid our beer and watch the presentation from a secure
distance at our balcony decanting our red vine out of the Tetra Pack.
So you may realize: we are real grumblers.
The second special evening is at Sunday. A good singer presents Greek
songs which are mostly unknown to us and are nice to listen. After we
and the other guests have finished their dinner we listen from our
balcony again and now we hear songs of West Virginia, Rivers of
Babylon, My Delilah, we twist again or sing Obladi Oblada with Desmond
and Molly Joe.
The Island Tour
Certainly, this tour is not quite cheap, about 66 EUR p.P. But what to
do if you are just here and don't forget, it is my birthday today. At
7.70 am the bus comes along and two other couples of our hotel come
with us. The first hour of the tour is not so enjoyable because the
other guests must be collected from the various hotels on the way to
Larnaca. But we still wait for the tour guide and at last we may be
near enough to her home at Larnaca and a kind woman comes in, so we
learn that the bus driver is Kyriakos
and her name is Eva.
At first we go north and soon will reach the last divided metropolis of
the world: Nikosia resp. Levkosia. As we pass the fertile Mesaoria Plane with red and mineral
bearing earth we learn a lot about the population of Cyprus. They seem
to be amazingly wealthy what is underlined by statistics about the
gross national product, the number of unemployed people, lodging
charges and finally the average income. Excuse me that I cannot name
the numbers, those are to be read elsewhere. They are all related to
the "free" part of the island. As well we cannot present the whole
older and younger diversified history of this island. The actual
situation is, that the Englishmen have released the nation from its
function as colony of the Common Wealth in 1960 and thereafter for
security will stay over 100 years in some military bases. These will
then end in the year 2060. "When the Englishmen then will have left the
island we should have a celebration" some greyhaired folks joke.
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Down on the ground again we head to the exasperating frontier of this divided town. This may be controlled by the military of South Cyprus, North Cyprus, the Turks, The Englishmen and the blue helmet delegations of the UNO and moreover the Greeks? May be the main work is to control each other. Any photographic activities are strictly forbidden though sandsack barriers with loopholes (Schiessscharte) in any backyard would be a proper motive. I cannot avoid to get a white-blue striped border cabin on one of the pictures (it is hard to be seen anyway - just aside the white van).
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The lanes of the city of Lefkosia (the Greek name) do not present the
usual Mediterranian flair. May be we have strolled along the wrong
regions. So the ladies (Heidi and Rosemarie) cannot resign to buy some
shoes in a shop around the corner. Meanwhile I enter a chapel around
another corner but it is not recommended to go inside with short pants.
May be there were lots of candelabra (Kronleuchter), icons and candles,
which one can buy here as elewhere for one's own salvation.
At last we find some peculiar fruits from a special tree, they name it
Bell Tree (Paulownia Tomentosa, Empress
Tree, Princess Tree or Foxglove Tree, Glockenbaum).
These hulls are very decorative for any flower arrangement and the
plastic bags from the shoe shop soon are filled with this stuff
instead. And so we return to the bus in last-minute, they are waiting
already. But we are in time corresponding to the wrist watch.
We now continue along other fertile areas where the local farmfolks
have a good living. The villages (Akaki,
Peristerona or Astromeritis) are clean and pretty but not so
romantic because the most buildings are newly built. It is a strange
thing that our kind of romantic mostly is to be found around areas
where the population is more poor and not able to arrange everything
properly. So we finally stop at the village named Kakopetria.
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At this village they have successed not to renew every building and
property but to let the old village lane in its original state. And
soon the tourist masses come along to take a view, a walk and spend
some money there in a shop, restaurant or elsewhere. Unfortunately my
wife has to examine the just bought new shoes and so fails to climb up
the little hill to the center of the village. So I hurry along the
village lane to take some photos and get some impressions. It is really
picturesque.
Because I was so in hurry we are not the last ones this time at the
bus. Some other persons seem to have got lost anywhere in the Troodos
mountains or in the toilets nearby. As they finally appear at the
horizon the driver of the bus got lost, because he has gone to look for
the missing guests. At last we are all together again and somewhat out
of time.
The next station is a restaurant in the Troodos Mountains (mentioned
above). Here they will present a fine dinner, and this is the
traditional Meze Meal, a
special characteristic kind of food at Cyprus. Our leader Eva specifies
the various components of the meal and I now will try to list them up
(with intensive use of the dictionary).
The Meze
meal is a tradtional Cypriotic meal and they try to combine as many as
possible typical Cypriotic foods in small portions. So there are:
salad, tomatoes with dressing, tzaziki, a soup of shrimps, olives,
baked goat cheese, spinach omelett, grilled chicken, this or that
unknown fish, millet pie, sausages, a kind of goulash, pork from the
barbecue and finally as dessert thin slices of oranges. And all the
time red vine and the decanters(!) are soon empty. At the end is a
special liquor is presented named Zivania
with 45% Alc.
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At any time I remember my birthday and with a filled glas I invite all
neighbours at the table to call me Martin and moreover we get friends
to our Hotel Limanaki companions Rosemarie
and Hans. Of course we will
not meet again the other guests with various coloured All Inclusive
amuletts from the other hotels.
As we finally get out in the open air again, generating various sounds
like "Oops" or so, we can admire a colony of nearly a hundred swallow
nests up above under the roof. I success to take a photo of some flying
swallows as well as of our new friends Rosemarie and Hans who live in
the area of Heidelberg.
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Back in the bus on the ride over the mountains (mentioned above) it is hard to follow the enumeration of the manifold of forest species around this area. Let us summarize this matter as mixed forest. At last we find our face gliding down the window pane. But then you must be awake as the name Olymp comes by. But this is not the devine mountain of Greece but hereabout the highest mountain as well with 6000 ft (2000 m). The top of it is characterized by a white spherical building with a radar station in it. This may be important to ensure any universal peace.
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The penultimate destination is a village which is said to be the most beautiful of Cyprus. It is named Omodos and naturally there is a large parking site for the tourist busses. We walk to the nice central place with souvenir shops, restaurants and a cloister. We choose different attractions, the women stroll around the shops and finally Heidi buys a little crochet umbrella for our granddaughter Pauline (13 months). Meanwhile I surround the monastery and have a glance inside the chapel with golden icons etc. again. On the backside of the building there is an adventurous toilet and we can be happy not to be forced to use it now.
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But there are some other highlights: the old wooden vine sqeezing
machine and the Sokrates house. We success to find them and take some
photos. Then the time is over and we can say, that this kind of tourism
is rather superficially. The real attractions may be found where no
tourist busses come along. May be it would be better to cycle around in
such country or so...
Back in the bus we hear a joke from Eva to prevent that erverybody
falls asleep again. The joke is:
The Grandpa sends his grandson
to the pharmacy to buy some Viagra and spends a Cypr. pound as
gratification. The grandson does his work satisfactorily. The next day
the grandson comes again to his grandfather and shows 3 pounds which
should be added to his bankbook. "From where did you get the other two
pounds?" the grandpa asks. "These are from the grandma!" is the answer.
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After we have laughed enough we are nearly at the last station for
today. This is an antique archeologic excavation named Apollon Ylatis. They tell us this
and that and gradually we learn in which of the ruins there was the
cold, the warm and the hot room of a Roman bath institution, a kind of
ancient sauna. We talk to another older couple who wearily sit on a
wall. The man suffers from his spinal discs (Bandscheibe) as he
willingly declares. They have seen so much of the world from Minos to Yucatan, so they are not so
impressed. We cannot keep up with this matter, only murmur Festos or something like that.
We then return along the promenade of Limassol
but can only see it out of the windows of the bus. We better
figure out, if we are in time for the supper and for a tetra pack red
vine from the shop. We are in time and finally sit on the balcony until
Heidi is soon tired and then produces sounds like the swoosh of the sea
out of the back of the room. My birthday is over and I sum up my
birthday gifts which are not tie and stockings but some books of Bill
Bryson, two secateurs (Gartenschere) and two shirts from Quelle of
Kingkong size and so will have to be sent back.