Day 155: Famagusta-Mersin

After a rather short night I got back to the town center one more time. Today the air was warm, the sun was shining and it really felt like spring. I had tea in a street cafe and enjoyed the weather before going to the port.
Getting the ticket, stamped out of Cyprus and going through the luggage control was very quick and the boat left as announced at two p.m. The discovery that unlike the previous ferry, which had some kind of banks that were well suited to go in a horizontal position, this one had seats like an air plaine, with arm pieces that could not be moved. But I would have 12 hours to figure out a position that allows for a bit of sleep.
I spent quite some time one deck first in the sun, later to contemplate the moon and the big waves travelling towards it while our boat was rocking over them.

Day 154: Famagusta

This island does not let me go. The ferry was canceled, this time with the promise that tomorrow the boat will leave in the afternoon, a time and day that is not one the schedule. I felt like they were playing a joke on me. Davut was so kind to let me stay another night, even though his place got more crowded in the mean time with the arrival of and Ukrainian couple.
Was a moody day, ideal to listen to 'black rebel motorcycle club'.

Day 153: Famagusta

Todays plans was to go one a little round trip heading a bit north along the coasts to the golden beaches and back. But it was early morning when I found sleep and when the alarm woke me up I automatically got up, stopped the noise and only seconds later I was sleeping deep and sound again.
And voilà an other lazy day. When I was finally crawling out of bed I just managed to stop by the ferry office, where they told , me the good news that they have a ship on Thursday before meeting Davut, my cs host.
We met at the sports center of his university, where hey is training as a wrestler. He also introduced me later to oil wrestling, that I had sorted as some kind of legend from the first olympics in my head. But in reality, so it appeared, it is still popular around here.
It turned out, that he was already hosting two other guests, Goscha and Jean-Jaques from Poland. It was a cool eavening, hanging out in the dorms of the campus, with Davut his friends and guests. There was a long enumeration of turkish surnames, that was really funny. So they came up with names like ' silder sap Kazim' (canceling alum Kazim) or 'kozalak Mehmed' (pine cone Mehmed). Of course the stories that led to their discoveries were often quite funny themselves, but half of the time I was wondering how Turkish humour works, which was kind of funny itself.

Day 152: Famagusta

What ist it with this island? The boats just don't seem to be able to leave from here. Now I'm stuck again, stuck with rumbling thoughts.
So I read a lot of news, surfed the internet and listened to that Seal song that stuck since Bulgaria, crazy.
Later I wondered through the streets of this wondrous towns center. Ruins, palm trees and news houses are intertwined here, giving it a very special atmosphere, today amplified by the sun piercing through the clouds after a hefty rain. Another particularity about the place is that the ruins are not much restored but seem to be left to the usual course of time working on their decay. And yet another fact that stirred up memories was that these ancient ruins are built with some kind of sand stones, like the one were I lived the last 5 years and from where my journey started. The sand stone here does not get black after a certain time like the one in Dresden that contains these minerals rendering the stone dark colored through their oxidation. Besides in this city center here you find mostly small businesses, no big chains.
I stood a while there on the big city walls. Listening toIi Johnossi help also this time lifting my spirits, but in my thought crowded head the following thought pushed the music in the background for a while:
The old impressive ruins and the new buildings aging rather badly squeezed in between, forming this contrast of epochs, reflect on the short-lived modern culture. It is not the first time that I made this kind of observation wandering through cities along the way, but here it forced itself on me one more time.
Contrasting again with Dresden, there is another important difference; in that German city the old buildings are restored and maintained. That makes the impression that these monuments belong in our time but paradoxically only the books still know their history. Ruins are rebuilt or at least transformed into a museeum.
But either case, Dresden and Famagusta, stands witnesse to little architectural beauty original to the past couple of generations. The cool creations of our time are things like that little information box I typed this text and sent it through the air to another machine, that will have sent it to the machine that allows you reading these lines now.
Our creations involving matter in some aspect seem to follow the principle; less and less matter matters.
All this was stating the obvious one more time about our time, but it keeps amazing me so I'll probably do it another time again.

Day 150: Girne-Larnaca

yay, I'm cycling again.
The day was sunny, no wind, just a breeze. After that unplaned longer pause, I progessed effortlessly so it seemsed. The condition, as menitioned, were perfect though and the topogrphy was not challenging. Additionally I noticed what a difference it makes if the road have smooth surfaces. Most of the roads on the mainland of Turkey I cycled were also asphalted but they put some kind of gravel on top of it, I call it gravalt. The gravalt transforms a lot of energy in friction and noise, so each car that apporaches with more than 60 km/h sound like a big truck.
But back to Cyprus, the central part of the island made the impression to me as it was inhabited by a giant mole not so long ago, many hills have a weird allure to it, not a naturale one. What was most amazing to me was that there was blossom, I saw a few trees started and in the fields there was a lot of yellow accompanied by a very familiar smell, the one of colza. I like the color of it and today I did not mind the smell.
Half way I crossed the city of Nicosia. Its center is enclosed by a circular wall. On the map this looks very intriguing. Here I also crossed the border to the south. The frontier divides the cirle pretty exactly in two. What is a line on the map manifests itsel as a wall in reality, cutting streets, where there was a passage before. This frontier bears also the beautiful name death zone. The pictures that present themselves to you in the north and in the south are quite different from each other. The north looked the similar as what I have seen in other parts of Turkey. The south has all the famous middle-europe city-center-labels all over it (macdo, kfc, esprit, zara, etc.), but beside it was more crowded and busy with people from many different countries that did not look like tourists.
But to be honest, my head was still overcrowded itself, so I observed a bit, but I was not really there.
So I got out of the city and soon into the and last one of the day, Larnaca.
Another thing that was particular of that day was, that I drove for the first time on the left side on the road. It felt all wrong and it was hard to force myself not to give free hand to the usual reflexes. When turning right, I often looked over my left shoulder (why is there no road? ah, right, let's check the other side... or should I just turn my head a bit more?). I made a couple of really weird manoeuvers, that made me laugh at myself.

Day 149: Girne

I gave my Wolter some attention today, cleaned him up a little, applied some duc tape here and there, got some elastic straps to better fix the paniers and tightened a screw here or there.
I also found time to flicker through some news. Beside the usual crazyness, the recent developments between Israel and Iran are worrying me. I hope those politicians keep a cool head.

Day 148: Girne

Sorry, used all the words discussing, no more left to write.

Day 147: Tasucu-Girne

The boat approched the island slowly but steadily. Around eleven in the morning we reached the port. I cycled a bit around the city of Girne before I found the only hostel on the northern side of the island.
Here I met Loretta, a Lady from Canada cycling the world. Christian whom I crossed last week, warned me about her. Like Emily wants to go to pakistan, Loretta, cycling west in the opposite direction, already has been there. Of course I was very curious about her experience and pretty much the rest of the day was talking with her about cycling and whatever derivable topics.