Well, I guess you must have known it would someday”
-Bob Dylan Lily, RoseMary and the Jack of Hearts
- we ate lentil soup for prosperity because the lentils are shaped like coins,
- ate tiny mushrooms (edible, non hallucinogenic variety, unfortunately) for luck – mushrooms are lucky in Germany,
- we had a pig’s face shaped bread from the bakery also for luck (pigs are also good luck in Germany).
- we bought napkins decorated with chimney sweeps and four-leaf clovers again for good luck
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| All together for Christmas in Saarbrucken |
New Year’s Eve in Germany is also called Silvester, because St. Silvester’s feast day is December 31. We were all in for Silvester 2019. The morning of New’s Year’s eve we spent in the supermarket buying all our lucky foods. Everyone else seemed to have a similar but slightly different idea, as the line to check out reached the back wall of the market and took us 45 minutes to check out. But while we were buying German lucky foods that no one in Germany knew about, they were buying Sekt and fireworks (yes, there were fireworks at the market).
And at midnight we saw and heard their investments; a constant barrage of fireworks. Colorful explosions were visible from every window. This went on for at least an hour. On our New Year’s Day morning walk we saw neighborhood streets littered with firework remains and one burned out apartment, they should have had the lentils (or they had the other kind of mushrooms).
Despite all of our New Yea\’s efforts, we have been losing and our luck seems to have run out. In particular, we have lost most of our Schengen time https://thechosenfugue.blogspot.com/search/label/Schengen and we were unable to get a visa extension to allow us more Schengen time.
We chose non-Schengen Cyprus as our first stop for the new year but thus far it has come up short. Why Cyprus? It is about 30 degrees warmer than our initial other non schengen choices of Bulgaria and Romania and a little drier than Ireland (we thought.)
We have been unlucky as Cyprus thus far has been disappointing. Part of what brought us to Cyprus was some “luck” last year. Last June at a Minnesota Twins / Seattle Mariner’s baseball game in Seattle, Nick played a promotional game in the concourse, 60 seconds grabbing twirling, fake money while enclosed in a booth. He got the lucky bill to “win” a free week at a resort any where in the world . Actually what was won was the opportunity to endure a grueling high pressured 5 hour sales pitch for timeshares worldwide. After turning down every onslaught from the increasingly angry and annoyed sales people we walked out with our free week almost anywhere in the world that the company offered. Unfortunately, the “free” week was a bit hard to find as most places required a financial upgrade, even in Lebanon and Bulgaria, but….. a week in late January finally came up in Cyprus, so later this month we will cash in, if we can make it that long in the rest of Cyprus
Cyprus has been surprisingly green (it has rained quite a bit), but not very attractive so far, and it compensates with a lack of charm. It most closely resembles tacky America especially tourist resorts like Panama City, Fort Lauderdale, or even Niagra Falls with familiar chains (TGIF, KFC, Pizza Hut), seedy shopping strips and strip clubs. In the off season, parts look ghostly.
We have been in Cyprus 9 days and have had to change lodging 7 times. This was not planned. It was supposed to be twice. Our first stop in Larnaca, check in for our Airbnb was at a minimarket, where Nick almost knocked over a row of gin bottles with his backpack in the narrow aisles. We arrived at 1:45 to be told to wait 15 minutes until 2 pm before we could check in. But within 15 minutes of checking in, we were ready to check out. The room was missing flooring, the internet did not work, and as a metaphor for our feeling of being trapped; the door had swelled from recent rains with no inner door knob so we couldn’t get out. It just was creepy. Back to the minimarket. New room. It had a stove that didn’t work, internet that worked only when standing in one particular spot, a lot of twin beds and was equally creepy. But we did learn something, boiling eggs in the hot water kettle worked great, they were perfect. (that is not a puzzle, it is the floor)
Standing on the balcony, the Mediterranean to the right with passing oil tankers. Across the way a forlorn looking young man smoking a cigarette and staring at the same tankers, it felt like the middle of a bad short story, and it was Epiphany (January 6th) . Back to the minimarket and our four night stay lasted one.
We quickly found another place around the corner, across from the beach with a luxurious balcony! It would be closing the next morning for 2 months of renovations. We asked, but there was no going away party on this last open night.
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| Perfect view at our second place, only one day since it was being torn down! |
Four nights in Larnaca quickly became two. Larnaca did have migrating wild flamingos, which were pretty fantastic but otherwise our Epiphany was to get out of town.
Onto Nicosia, the last divided capital in the world due to the weird politics of Cyprus (more on that later). Our airbnb was on the Turkish (north) side of town (technically Lefkosia not Nicosia), in a lovely garden with fruit trees. It also had a non- working stove although this was remedied the next day with a new propane tank.
It also had non functional internet for 3 days so we basically spent those 3 days waiting for the daily promised technician to come, and trying to connect to the (empty) main house internet from the porch and stay warm. (the out-of-country owner of this ancestral home-his grandmother’s-was lovely in our conversations over text)
But this quaint little guest house also had no heat, a back breaking bed and little to no hot water. . On a positive note, we were able to master the Turkish washing machine. Sounds trivial, but accomplishing these foreign washing machines can feel like graduating college.
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| Kitchen with now working gas stove |
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| Omnipresent zombie cats |
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| Orange, tangerine, lemon and grapefruit! |
Lack of cooking facilities allowed us to explore local food- even a restaurant!
Cyprus is the setting of many Greek myths-Mt. Olympus is here (well one of them), Cyclops cave, Aphrodite was born here, but the biggest myth here is the existence of hot water in the winter. Cyprus has a lot of solar heated water tanks, but in the overcast rainy winter they haven’t done well.
Tired of waiting for the internet repairman, we again, shortened our planned stay, and moved over to the south (Greek) side of Nicosia, to a new back breaking bed and limited hot water, but better internet.
But, it is all good, we are still traveling, still on vacation.
This week’s photo of topless old man looking out window contemplating his life…
“this year will be better”
Chosen Fugue 
Still traveling. With each other.
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