Cyprus: Celebrating (?) 20 years of Dialogue

In this house, we read Cyprus Mail on line fairly often, usually for chuckles over the news covering an entire country of about half a million people. Many of the stories end up being about suspicious dog lineages and today, calls for action against stores that started their January sales too early.

Today there was another article, which in all seriousness really brings mixed feelings. The Czechoslovakian and then Slovak embassies in Cyprus have been hosting Greek and Turkish Cypriot leadership in dialogue for over 20 years and they are now inviting that leadership to Bratislava to "celebrate" 20 years of dialogue. While 20 years of dialogue is better than 20 years without dialogue, it does make you wonder just how much longer they can go on talking without coming to some resolution.

All the news that's fit to print - from Cyprus

The tale of the expat and the copycat
By Marianna Pissa

AIRPORT staff in Paphos were left red faced last week after a copycat was unmasked by a British passenger.

The British resident of Cyprus was waiting for his luggage and his cat on his return from the UK, a local newspaper reported. After waiting for a long time, he finally received his suitcases, but there was no sign of his cat. Eventually, airport employees approached the man with smiles on their faces carrying his special pet carrier, with a very lively cat inside.

But as soon as the man saw the cat, he said it was not his. The airport staff insisted that the cat was in the cage and consequently had to be his, even pointing to the animal’s ID collar.

They continued to insist until the British expat said: "This is not my cat gentlemen, because the one that I brought from London was dead."

Dumbfounded, the airport employees could not believe what they heard.

The man had gone to London on holiday and took his (live) cat with him. There, however, the cat fell ill and died, and the man wanted to bring it back to Cyprus to bury it in his garden.

As it later emerged, when the cage with the dead cat reached the Paphos airport, an employee saw the dead cat and immediately alerted his colleagues, wondering what they should do in case they were blamed for the incident.

They decided to take a stray cat from outside the airport that resembled the dead cat in colour and face. After a feline chase in the grounds of the airport and after some intense washing and grooming, they put the collar of the dead cat on the copy cat, put it in the cage and sent the cage out for the owner to receive it.

It is not known whether the Briton decided to adopt the stray.

Salade Nicoise

Here is a beautiful blog entry with pictures and recipe for a Salade Nicoise. It really is the perfect meal, combining so many of my favorite things - green beans, tuna, tomatoes, potatoes, and olives. (Admittedly, sometimes I skip the hard-boiled egg.)

George made a confession a while ago, that he had thought for many years that Nicoise was a misspelling of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus where he grew up. So, he never tried it because, of course, he already knew what a salad from Nicosia would taste like.

To help with the cold....

Because I'm in the middle of an Artic freeze, I thought I'd pull out one of my favorite pictures from my trip to Cyprus last summer. This was a hot, hot day at the harbor in Kyrenia on the Turkish side.