Getting out of bed proved a difficult task this morning; we could practically see our breath in the cold mountain air that filled our room, and padding around on the tile floor felt like walking on ice. While Fred went through his usual busy morning routine, I remained buried deep under my covers until I heard our host knocking around in the kitchen below us, hopefully preparing our coffee. Munching on our toast, we learned from the t.v. that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped over five hundred points while we slept, an event which felt impossibly remote here in the Cypriot hinterland.
I knew from the map that this morning would entail a six-hundred meter climb, but not before making a major withdrawal from the altitude bank. Still dazed after a single cup of nasty nescafe, I couldn't fully appreciate the chilly, curving descent into Saitas, over two hundred meters below Chez Nick. The ensuing climb woke me up though. Our legs still felt rubbery from yesterday's climbing so we felt every push of the pedal up the relentless 10km ascent. At the top my altimeter read 1150 meters. We paused at a traileresque snack stand for some salty snacks and a healthy dose of chilly mountain air before dressing ourselves for the long ride down.
Twisting down the slopes at the same speed as the motor traffic, I kept marveling that we'd managed to climb so high in just over an hour. While I thought we'd visit a couple of villages and their famous painted churches on the way down, we changed our mind about being tourists in the Brit-infested town of Kakopetria, where touts in front of cookie-cutter tavernas greeted us with \"hello my friend\" as we whizzed down the steep street. Poorly marked by befuddling road signs, the churches either eluded us or were atop impossibly steep hills. After convincing ourselves that they couldn't be as impressive as the many old churches we had seen in Turkey, we opted to continue down towards Nicosia, capital of this screwed-up country and supposedly the world's only remaining \"divided city.\"
Traffic picked up as we descended towards the arid, undulating plain containing Nicosia and its confusing mess of suburbs. The road was obviously new, a replacement for the useless old road now bisected numerous times by the green line. Propaganda billboards lined our route, as well as abandoned buses from now-Turkish towns, signs forbidding the taking of photographs, and a string of lookout towers both Greek and Turkish. The many UN vehicles passing us completed the impression that we had entered a zone fraught with conflict. Finally, we were in the Cyprus of my media-driven expectations. These impressions grew increasingly stronger as we approached Nicosia.
My map showed a quieter alternative to the main road, but after a blissful kilometer's pedal the route was barred by masses of barbed wire and unfriendly signage. It struck us as odd that the road had been marked as leading to \"Nicosia International Airport\" (and odder still when we learned that this airport has been abandoned due to its placement in the \"buffer zone\"). In any case, this forced us back onto the main road, which promptly turned into a freeway filled with Mario Andretti wannabes. Off in the distance an enormous Turkish Cypriot flag made of white rocks covered the better part of a mountain, an unmistakable \"fuck you\"
to South Nicosia. Later we learned that this landmark had been created by survivors of a particularly brutal massacre of a Turkish village at the hands of Greek Cypriots. Visible from miles around, it serves as a constant reminder for Turks and Greeks alike, though the two factions doubtless have widely varying interpretations of its significance. After many bewildering twists and turns in the route, we finally found our way into the heart of town. Since it was a holiday (marking the anniversary of Mussolini's declaration of war on Greece), the tourist information booth was closed, making us rely upon the lodging advice of a friendly waiter at a touristy taverna.
After settling in at Tony's cramped-but-homey Bed and Breakfast, we walked around the old part of town (delineated by an incredibly intact 11-bastioned Venetian wall, of which five bastions each have been allocated to the Turks and Greeks respectively, the eleventh under UN control). The green line beckoned us like a magnet, cutting right through avenues and streets of what used to be the town's commercial center, marked by crude sandbag bunkers and eerily dark guardposts. It's like a Lilliputian pre-unification Berlin, ridiculous --almost cutesy---in scale but deadly serious as a palpable barrier of hate. Most of Nicosia's center (at least on the Greek side) has an abandoned, ghost-town feel to it, not unlike Saint Louis or Detroit.
Fred and I kept marveling aloud how creepy it felt, and how weird and unhealthy it would be to grow up in such a place. As if to prove our point, a mad motorist appeared out of nowhere along a deserted, darkened street, gunning his motor and acting as if wanting to mow us down. When he rounded the block and turned up again, we noted his licence plate (AAE123) and after a long standoff in which he stayed parked at an intersection while we screamed that we'd call the police, he mercifully let us alone. We were shaken up enough to pick up a couple of rocks in case he came around again and made a point of staying on busier streets thereafter.
In a sick sort of way, I was thrilled to have Nicosia live up to my expectations, though it's hardly a place I'd choose for a prolonged vacation. I'd anticipated this day since our arrival in Cyprus. My imagination went into overtime. I gathered that we'd have to jump through hoops, spit nickels, be strip searched, interrogated, embarrassed and cajoled in order to pass the border. In execution it turned out to be markedly easier than getting information about ferry schedules in Athens. We simply walked to the border, registered on the Greek side, passed immigration on the Turkish side, bought our visas and walked across the green line.
There were a few remarkable sights along the way that did leave an impression. First many of the buildings just before the border on the Greek side had undergone trauma. Their blemishes and wounds ranged from gunshot induced chips in plaster to roofs ripped off from mortar fire. Many had anti-Turkish graffiti including intellectual barbs like \"suck my Greek dick you murdering Turkish pigs.\" Huge billboards decorated the Greek border with graphic color photos of bloodied bodies of innocent Greeks. One was beaten to death on the Turkish side leaving a pregnant wife. Strangely there was no detail as to why a hoard of Turks might have decided to beat him to death or the circumstance of his visit to the Turkish side, leading us to question their propaganda.
After crossing the Greek border and passing menacing tangles of razor wire we entered the UN buffer zone, strangely the first building we came to was the German Cultural Center. I wondered to myself about many visitors they receive in this location. Next, a formerly glamorous hotel, its carved limestone facade pockmarked by gun and mortar fire now house a contingent of UN peace keepers. Leaving the propaganda-free zone (the UN buffer zone) passing yet another nest of razor wire and a dozing robin's egg blue hatted UN guard we entered the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC). Immediately we were greeted by display cases with black and white photos showing atrocities committed by the Greeks.
Frankly they were better propaganda vehicles than the flashy Greek ones. Their matter of fact presentation clearly detailed the who, what, when, where and why's of the situation. After the drama of the crossing the rest of the visit seemed largely anticlimactic. The north side of the city was much sleepier than the south. Apparently few Turks live on this side of the city. Underscoring this fact is that the Turks have imported Anatolians from the mainland to inhabit the city. The first thing that struck me was the civility of the traffic compared to the south. I found myself marveling at how quiet the streets were and how calm the drivers were.
We encountered only a few cases of BCS (Big Car Syndrome -- where the owner of a fancy vehicle imagines that he bought the road and the right to maim along with his expensive car) while in the TRNC. We did encounter lots of the same friendly, easy going, honest and clean Turks like the ones we'd met in Turkey. Unfortunately our sight seeing would be limited to the outside of many buildings. We'd come to the TRNC on a very special day, the anniversary of the death of their revered deceased leader Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. We arrived at the one gate through city walls on the Turkish side to see a massive gathering of army personnel and civilians commemorating this day.
Huge banners proclaiming their relationship with the \"motherland\", Turkish flags and balloons decorated the square. We listened to the military band play \"taps\" and the crowd sob while the flag was lowered and raised again in Ataturk's honor. From the demonstration we walked down the main street to an eight story hotel in the center of town. There we went to the top to see the view of both sides of the green line from above. From this vantage point you could see the disheveled buildings in the buffer zone decaying from disuse. Among them is rumored to be a warehouse full of \"new\"
1974 Toyotas and Nissans. They were supposedly rushed to their resting place there from Famagusta as they were partitioning the country. They were thought to be safer here than in the new Turkish port there. Further wanderings revealed architectural curiosities like the massive Venetian gothic churches that were hastily converted into mosques. Their bell towers converted to minarets and their worship spaces re-oriented to face Mecca. Somehow I couldn't find a single smelly, dirty, mean and violent Turk that I had been warned about. What we did manage to find was a very tasty pide (Turkish pizza). Crescent shaped, filled with goat cheese and lamb sausage, it made a yummy picnic in front of the cloisters of one of the gothic mosques.
Strolling along the green line of the TRNC we saw no armed soldiers as we had on the other side. We speculated that they were either much more lax about the patrol of the border, or that everyone was celebrating Ataturk's holiday. In any case we were afforded many opportunities to photograph the green line from this side. Even though the day in the TRNC had gone without a hitch, I approached our crossing back to the Greek side with trepidation. I worried about the photos we'd taken of the line and confusion about our digital camera. In actuality the trip back was even easier than the trip there.
We simply walked through the border largely unquestioned by either side except to view our passports.