Okay...maybe they don't really believe that they invented Jesus, but I'm fairly certain they would try and convince a gullible visitor that they did. You know the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the father tries to explain how every word comes from Greek? Well...that really happens here all the time. We were touring a mosaic museum this weekend, and found out a plethora of words that all came from there. Amazing. The movie parts about hating the Turks, and the guys constantly saying "I will kill you" are both dead on. The movie is become exponentially better since living here.
Other than learning where these words came from, I had a most excellent weekend. We went to Limassol which is the second largest city in Cyprus (and has been growing rapidly since the genocide of 1974 as brochures are quick to point out). There's not much there except for the Carnival celebration we got to experience. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the greatest, and the time we had that normally would have been spent lying around by the beach and the pool wasn't to be had. The rain held out though, so we still got to walk around.
It's also a heavily British populated area so people were friendlier...and older, and not wearing black. Saturday was spent mulling around- eating at the number one family pub which has the best children's cocktails in the world. I got to experience my first Cypriot bar fight that night. I thought the man with the bloody face, coming up right behind me on the steps to an outside club was just wearing a very convincing Carnival costume. Silly naive me. Instead he and his posse decided it would be appropriate to break bear bottles and stab people with them. Needless to say I ran away as quickly as possible to avoid the "Bottles vs Chairs" brawl.
Sunday was the highlight of Carnival which is a ten day celebration here in Cyprus. We all headed downtown to watch the parade which was filled with a lot of old Greek men singing followed by a lot of cross-dressing men. They also advertised for Playboy and proudly displayed the sign "Is Better to Heat with Whiskey then Petrol". There was lots of confetti and dancing and Greekized American music. They really really really love the song "Hands Up" as we heard both the Greek and American version several times in a two hour span. Sunday night is the big party night where everybody dresses up. I'm too poor to buy a mask on this ridiculously overpriced island, so I just went all out with the eye make-up.
Monday we left Limassol and went to Paphos with a few stops along the way. We got to see the birthplace of Aphrodite along with a few other things. I unfortunately think I have come down with a case of bronchitis and didn't completely enjoy it. So now I might be making a trek to the doctor's today...we shall see.
Love you all, and miss you!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment