ghostspotting

(Week 13?)

Ciao amici, it has been a while! 

I’m sparing you all the lazy excuses that I’m able to come up with justifying my absence on this blog since - let’s be honest here, I just couldn’t manage to overcome my inner sloth during these past few weeks telling me to lay in bed and watch endless loops of Brooklyn 99 episodes instead of keeping you precious people updated. 

June marked the beginning of summer, rainy days were followed by periods of intense heat that made me fall into a deep slumber by the time I returned home from the office. We tried to compensate this lack of activity by postponing our social life into the late evening hours - we attended the TrainVol Fest at the Powerhouse Restaurant, celebrated the International Refugee Day at a Street Festival on Faneromeni Square, danced until our legs were collapsing in New Division, took a weekend trip to Limassol to shoot a video with Carmine and sang Happy Birthday to Isa at her bbb (birthday beach bash). Before Leon and I bid farewell to Stefania to head to our midterm training, we went to the first “Rooftop Thursday” at the Home for Cooperation. Listening to the sound of AVGI, while the full moon was looming over the Buffer Zone was a mythical experience! 

Our midterm training took place in a picturesque village called Kakopetria in the Troodos Mountains. It was a welcoming diversion from the tumultuous buzz of the city and a nice opportunity to spend some quality time with our beloved Limassolians! 

The whole purpose of the midterm training is to provide us an adequate space where we can reflect on our EVS experience so far and consider potential plans for the future. Although I felt like most of the seminars workshops/games didn’t reach that goal, I still enjoyed the time we spend together as a group - taking late afternoon walks through the old village (it was entrancing! could’ve easily been an inspiration for some medieval cypriot fairytale), hanging out at the waterfall or playing endless rounds of card games in the hotel lobby (cause the bars are closed during weekdays 🤷🏻‍♀️). 

All things considered, it was a wholesome, well spent timeout from our daily routines - plus, it’s always fascinating to see this rural, provincial part of the island!

(Week 8)

Since it was the weekend before the Orthodox Pentecoast Holiday, Theognosia kindly gave us a day off on Friday with the advice to use these days by leaving Nicosia for a short vacation. 

And so we did! Because we couldn’t get enough of our Limassol squad 🇮🇹🇬🇷, we once again held a small reunion in Nicosia on Friday evening, culminating in a bizarre night-out. 

To my surprise most of us quickly recovered from our lack of sleep and semi-hangovers by the time the sun began to rise again and thus we gathered our things and sleepy minds to catch the 9 o’clock bus to Ayia Napa. It was Carmines idea to go camping, since he’s a strong supporter of these “finding yourself in nature” type of excursions and I was admittedly completely on board with the whole plan. Well plan is maybe not the right term - more like a vague sense of what we’re doing. 

Once we arrived in Ayia Napa, we went straight to Makronissos Beach to go for a swim because the sun was burning us down. Although I would later discover that Aiya Napa isn’t really my cup of tea (too fake, too touristy and too obnoxious) I was able to understand why it’s so popular among the visitors of the island. The crystal clear water tinted with skyblue colour is truly an entrancing sight that could easily pass as an utopian dream if it weren’t for the plastic beach chairs and umbrellas.  

We ended up spending the whole day at the beach - sunbathing, playing beach tennis, taking underwater photos with Maria’s GoPro. It was one of the most peaceful days since the beginning of my EVS and I felt like a satisfied newborn at the end of the day. 

Our group decided to split up since the girls (myself included) wanted to eat some sushi before we headed to the camping site, while the boys we’re going ahead to set up the tents. Even though the sushi plan didn’t work out, we got ourselves some delicious burgers and fries, just the right amount to fill our hungry stomachs for a night that would turn out to be one of the longest in my life. 

It was already dawn as we arrived at the camping site - getting a first look at our tent and asking ourselves how we’re supposed to fit 6 people in this tiny space. We eventually managed to squeeze all of us inside, but it was still very uncomfortable - consequently most of us didn’t get a lot of sleep. 

However, our difficult night was compensated by the astonishing view to which we woke up. After we dragged our worn out bodies out of the tent we were greeted by the sun rising behind a set of cliffs and the silent sea whilst some fishermen were setting up their fishing rods. Mosquitos we’re attacking my body, I barely got one hour of sleep and looked like a ghost contemplating life and death, but the landscape made all of it worthwhile. 

On Monday Stefania and I went to the Kataklysmos Festival in Larnaca. We walked along the promenade, visited the Medieval Castle and saw a beautiful cat chilling on a bench at Mackenzie Beach. It was a nice diversion from the exhausting camping trip and a pleasant end to our extended weekend. 

(Week 7)

Since the heat (31°C right now & it’s 11am) is turning my brain into vegetable stock, I don’t feel like writing a lot right now. Just see it as a compensation for the lengthy rants of the last posts. 

Next up, a very short summary of the last 7 days:

I have a roomate now! Her name is Stefania, she is from Greece and so far we’ve been getting a long quite well | The 3 weirdos from Limassol moved into our house for a night and joined us on our excursion to Kyrenia, a seaport on the northern side of the island. | Theognosia took us all to the AgRose Festival in the mountains - which was (the name already gives it away) rose-themed 🌹. 

That’s it for today (I promise that I will actually make an effort next week). 

(Week 6)

I didn’t have a concrete image of what I will be doing for these 6 months ahead of me before coming here, since there’s no specific formula for an EVS. It’s based on non-formal learning, aiming to improve the participants development of different skills (e.g. social, professional). The tasks of each volunteer are desgined after the type of organization they’re working for and their own abilities and experiences. In addition to working in the KOKEN office, we’re also encouraged to think of our own personal project - it can be anything ranging from creating a workshop, teaching your native language or organizing jam sessions. 

Seeing that we’re both interested in filmmaking/working with media, Theognosia proposed the idea of making a documentary dealing with something related to our EVS, Youth Work and Cyprus in general. In the course of this week our personal film project started to take shape - we had some ideas that were quickly dismissed until we finally agreed on two projects, on which we’re currently working on (more on that in a later post, since we’re still in a very early phase of the whole process). 

Following the tradition of our end-of-the-week trips to the beach, we took the bus to Limassol, a bustling harbour town by the sea. It was our first reunion with our friends from the on-arrival-training as well as our first time meeting their new flatmate Miriam (from Italy!). After a night-out celebrating Leon’s birthday (🕺🏻🎉), we cured our hangovers by heading to the archaeological site of Kourion. And believe me, it was one of the most impressive sights I’ve witnessed in my time here - strolling through remnants of ancient roman structures that survived on top of a hill above the pristine sea while listening to the sound of waves crashing on the shore was a heavenly experience. To my sorrow our visit to Kourion eventually had to come to an end as we catched the last bus driving back to Limassol. 

(Week 5)

Last Tuesday it suddenly dawned on me that a month has already passed by without me really taking notice of it - because truth be told: it still feels like yesterday that I stepped out of the plane onto cypriot ground. It’s in my nature to be quite forgetful about things like that; I sometimes look at old pictures that survived in half-forgotten folders on my computer and ask myself if all these captured memories actually happened to me and if yes - why don’t I remember them more vividly? I would really like to know how other peoples memories work: Do they only have a vague sense of what has happened (like me) or are they able to recall every single detail? 

Since I belong to the former type, I’m quite grateful for all the encouragement that we receive to work on our social media presence. It seemed silly at first, because who really cares about some 18-something half-adults spending easter in the troodos mountains, going to the beach or attending the on-arrival training, but ultimately I came to understand that it’s mainly for ourselves - to have something to look back on after this whole experience; not only through photographs but also with the help of texts (on this blog or on our website) & short videos (e.g. our instagram stories). 

This blog entry has turned into a rather sentimental rant of someone who just turned 19 (and still hasn’t figured out her life, oh my) but enough with the sweet talk - what did we do last week?

Nicosia is slowly transforming into a vessel of heat (and dust), so as soon as the weekend came we did what literally everyone else was doing: we escaped to the beach. Famagusta was admittedly a rather odd choice, but we followed the kind suggestion of the lady at the tourist information centre, who advised us against going to Kyrenia. I’ve only heard of Famagusta as the Ghost Town (abandoned since the conflict in 1974 and inacessible up to now), so it seemed kind of strange to go there for the beach. Who knew that my suspicion would turn out to be true? 

The bus drive starting at the northern side of Nicosia lasted about 1 hour and 30 Minutes.

Weird thing number 1: There were no tourists apart from us. As the journey progressed, it felt like we were driving through no-man’s land (passengers kept getting off at stops in the middle of nowhere). 

Weird thing number 2: We reached the final stop and wanted to ask for directions to the beach, but the man at the so called tourist-information-centre didn’t speak English. Apparently Famagusta has only greek-speaking tourists. 

Weird thing number 3: the beach. Eventually we finally made our way to the beach (a half an hour walk), relieved to see some tourists - sunbathing, swimming, paddling ... in front of giant, run-down buildings that used to be hotels, but haven’t been inhabited since 40 years. It was such a strange sight, that evoked a very uneasy feeling in me. I kept asking myself how these people could be so at ease considering the gloomy scenery. The lady at the tourist information was right - the beach was indeed quite nice, but we still agreed that Famagusta is probably not worth a second visit. 

Sunday was way more easy-going: We attended another futsal match and headed to Larnaca for the EU day and the flower festival in the afternoon. More on that on our offical website. (Sorry for this lazy excuse, but otherwise this post will turn into a looong rant 💁🏻) 

Ferris Bueller’s Week Off (pt. 1)

Hello again, 👩🏻‍💻 I’m finally back from the dead after a two week-long hiatus to provide you with the newest stories on what we’ve been up to in the last 363 hours! 

For the sake of clarity (and comprehensebility) this post will be divided in two parts: pt. 1 covers our days in the office & pt. 2 is a report on our on-arrival training. Now that’s clear - let’s get to the interesting part!

While Theognosia was attending a business event in London, she assigned us the task of creating several social media accounts in order to promote our EVS project (”Create your future”) to the public. Although we had to face some technical difficulties (unfortunately Leon and I are both new to the world of social media influencers 🕶), I’m quite content with the results. If you want to have a look at what we’ve fabricated: We’re active on instagram, facebook & wordpress.

In the last few weeks we kept on walking past this cute little record store in the northern part of the old town called “Magos Record Shop”, but we always missed its opening hours - until Saturday. It was entirely coincidental that we happened to visit the shop on the International Record Store Day, but we got quite lucky that time: I acquired two LPs for 8 Euros, which is an absolute bargain!

After our record store saunter, we used the time that we had left to head over to the turkish part of the old-town. It was actually my first time crossing the border between the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish part. Admittedly - I did feel a little bit uneasy to enter a country without a german embassy or an insurance policy. Nonetheless I’m also aware that the political situation has calmed down and there’s no real danger on the other side. As a matter of fact: After a while I even forgot that we’re not in the Southern Republic anymore, because the look and feel of the places were pretty similar to the ones in the South (including the abundance of cats! 🐈). One building that I found particularly interesting was the Selimiye Mosque, a former Roman Catholic Cathedral that was converted into a mosque in the 16th Century. 

Skipping forward to the following monday - we finally had the chance of meeting our fellow KOKEN volunteers located in Limassol: the lovely Maria & Carmine! It was their first time visting Nicosia, so we took on the role of their travel guides and showed them around. I really enjoyed the time we spend together (i.e. we went to a very hipster coffee shop with loads of books and a pool table) and I hope that we will see them again very soon!

(Week 2)

After an unexpected chilly weekend in the mountains, we returned to our EVS house in Nicosia where we were greeted by summerlike weather! 🌞

Since we still had two days left until our work in the KOKEN office formally began, we decided on exploring the marvelous old town of Nicosia a little bit more. Even though I can’t consider myself a cypriot local (yet), I still feel like Nicosia is a place one can easily call home. I instantly fell in love with its desert-like landscape (all hail the cactus 🌵), heavenly sunshine and simplistic architecture (no skyscrapers far and wide!). 

Life seems to be moving in a slower, more relaxed pace on this island which has a kind of calming effect on my mind that is used to the hectic lifestyle in Germany. This surely doesn’t mean that I won’t try my best to use these 6 months ahead of me in a productive manner, but it takes the pressure of constantly giving performance away. 

And speaking of productivity - on wednesday we finally spent our first day in the office! Theognosia, our project coordinator (who has been amazing so far!), gave us the task to do some research on the most important associations related to the EVS and KOKEN. To round off our first working day we met up with Theo, our mentor Symeon and two of the previous volunteers: Alexia & Alessio at the Babylon Pub. 

Week two of the EVS ended with a sunday trip to Larnaca, a lovely town by the sea. The weather was on our side - 30 degrees are almost ideal for a laid-back day at the beach. But the seaside isn’t the only thing Larnaca has to offer - in the heart of its town stands an impressive church built in the 9th century. Legend says Lazarus, the biblical figure, is buried in a tomb beneath this church. 

(Week 1)

My first week in Cyprus has left me with loads of wonderful impressions - after some days of wandering around in Nicosia (my home for the next few months!), another fellow volunteer and I were invited to spend the easter weekend in a delightful village in the troodos mountains. And what an experience it was! 

We could witness the infamous cypriot hospitality first hand by staying at the house of the Georgiou family (they were loud, they were funny and most importantly very caring). 

Since the cypriot people consider easter a very important holiday, they naturally celebrate it in an extensive fashion: from church service, easter bonfire to traditional games played by the young and the old. 

Easter Sunday served more as a leisure day - taking walks through the idyllic village, hanging out at the house of the Georgiou’s grandmother (it’s rare to see someone with so much life energy at such an advanced age!) while she was baking Flaounes, a traditional cypriot pastry. 

Spending easter with the Georgiou family certainly was a blast & an amazing beginning to our stay in Cyprus. 

(Day Zero)