How to get to South Cyprus from North Cyprus? So close, yet so far!

Dear Readers,

Cyprus is an interesting place. It is the only country in the world outside of the US which seems to have a dearth of public transportation. Before coming here, it never occurred to me that getting around off campus might be an issue. But it kind of is. A lot.

After the job interview, we needed a place to go hang for a couple weeks while we waited for the results of the interview. After poking around and realizing that most accommodation on this island costs both an arm AND a leg, I found us a nice apartment for rent on AirBnB. The place was three times cheaper than all the other places I had found. Only one tiny problem: it was on the south side of the island. But being a thinker-ahead, I decided it was a good option since it was only about ten kilometers over the border, south of Famagusta, a major city on the north side. I figured we would take the bus from campus, head on over to Famagusta, spend a night there, then take a little bus or something to the border, walk across and take another bus on the other side. Wrong!

After a delightful evening lazing around town sightseeing and enjoying our overpriced hotel, we were ready to head out bright and early for our AirBnB and some sandy beach. Because we had so much luggage, we took a taxi to the boarder and walked across, only to discover that this was the border to the British-owned naval base, only open to British or EU citizens. We are neither. The very nice officer informed us that we would have to turn back, even though we could see our destination a few hundred meters in front of us. We went back. We took another taxi to the bus station. We waited. We took a bus—all the way back to Lefkosa/Nicossia where we walked across again, this time with no hassle.

We walked to the bus station where we discovered we had just missed the bus, and waited another three hours for the next one. When we finally got to Paralimni, we found that there were no taxis because the taxi office had closed two hours earlier. While standing around trying to think what to do, a taxi happened by and took us to our accommodation.

Unless you are a Brit or an EU citizen, skip the other crossings and  just take your trip from Lefkosa/Nicossia. It's a lot simpler.

Long story short, nine hours, three taxis, two border crossings and two busses to go about 10 kilometers…and to collect another travel adventure. No harm done. Plus, our stay at Marco’s lovely purple AirBnB house was fantastic!

Stay tuned to read about our flash trip to the States and back (5 days, 45 travel hours, and an amazingly packed adventure in Istanbul).

This is me, signing off…

 

 

Turkish Legalese with Karadayi

Dear Readers,

How is it that after years of hating soap operas, I have finally gotten sucked into one? It started out as a great way to practice Turkish. Then my Turkish improved. I kept telling myself I was watching it for the language practice…I suppose it is kind of true, since I do actually practice listening. But the show got me. I am ashamed to say that like most Turks around me, I have been pulled into the horribly twisted, overly dramatic, sometimes romantic and always exciting plot of the Karadayi series. I faithfully watched through all 114 episodes, and as a result have practiced listening to about twice as many hours of melodramatic Turkish. On the bright side, it might have paid off. A few weeks ago we were talking about law in class, and I was able to understand my students’ legal terminology in Turkish as they struggled to wrap their heads around the English version of the language and the American criminal justice system. Thanks, Karadayi.

This is me, signing off…

Karpaz Region, North Cyprus (Wild Donkeys!) -- and Kantara Castle

Dear Readers,

In this post, I’d like to describe a recent travel adventure shared with my girls and some friends on the north side of Cyprus.

So there we were, careening around hairpin turns on a one-lane, pot-holey road in the Karpaz Mountains in North Cyprus. We had been promised sightings of large flocks (herds?) of wild donkeys (also known as wild asses, to the great amusement of my 10-year-old) in this region of the island. The story goes that after some period in the history of this great nation, donkeys were no longer needed for the work they had previously served, and rather than being barbecued into delicious kebabs, were humanely set free to roam the hills, where they immediately set about procreating like rabbits, and have since (supposedly) taken over the land. We had been on the road for two hours, with nothing more ass-like than the black outline of one of the creatures on a road sign.

We rounded the corner and came upon a huge bus, puttering along behind another huge bus. A few kilometers later, the road widened just in time for a convoy of cars to pass us from the other direction. We swerved out, passed the mega-busses and crested the hill. Before us lay a vast expanse of sandy beach dotted with low-growing pines and a row of neat brown bungalow cottages. The sign read, ‘Big Sand Beach.’

We pulled in, then sat comfortably in the shade, sipping drinks while we waited for our rooms to be ready. After check-in, we could hardly wait to dash down the hill to the edge of the blue and green sea. We squeezed into our once-fitting wetsuits, then plunged into the chilly waters. To our disappointment, no marine life was visible, so after splashing about until our lips turned blue, we stretched out on the hot sand and waited to be toasted like lobsters under the yellow sun.

The next day, we drove a few kilometers down the road to the National Park in hopes of visiting the old monastery and maybe seeing some herds of donkeys.

Adriana was the first to spot the scruffy animals lounging between the parking lot and the sea, looking like they owned the place…which they kind of do. There were seven of them. Not quite the massive herd we had imagined, but nothing could dampen our spirits now and we raced down the path toward the docile-looking donkeys. I guess these guys are used to visitors, because they didn’t flinch as we walked around them snapping picture after selfie and trying to scratch their long ears. I even lifted Maria and held her over one, so she could claim she had ridden a wild ass.

When we had had enough of the donkeys, we wandered around, peering through wire mesh at the half-finished reconstruction of the old monastery. On the other side of the parking lot, the long row of tourist-trap shops attracted our attention, and we spent the next hour perusing the stalls, the girls ‘Ooh-ing’ and ‘Aah-ing’ over a myriad of plastic articles clearly made in China.

Back to the bungalows for dinner, a bit of star-gazing and a good night’s sleep. The next two days were spent in much the same way, then it was time to return. On the way back, we stopped to see one of the best castles on the island, Kantara Castle. This castle, built on the very tip of the peninsula, strattles the Karpaz Mountains. When we arrived, a thick cloud was just settling over the castle. We explored every room and looked through the slit-windows down the sheer cliff to the car parked far below.

The whole structure is falling in, with twisted pines growing up between rock foundations and walls and wild poppies adorning smaller cracks in the building. We arrived at the top just as the cloud began dispersing, revealing a stunning view across the plane out to the sea on both sides of the peninsula. Then the clouds settled on the castle again, and we made our way back to the car and on to Girne (Kyrenia), where we had planned to eat a delicious meal of meze, the local, lavish service of mixed appetizers.

Unfortunately, the restaurant we had chosen had decidedly poor service, extremely small portions sizes and tasteless, undercooked food. We escaped after paying twice what we should have for less than half of what we wanted, and then went to a place where the locals eat. We filled up on pide (cheese-filled flat bread), lahmajun (thin-crust pizza eaten with shredded vegetables and lemon) and complementary cups of authentic Turkish tea.

Tummies full, we made our way home to fall into bed for a good nights’ sleep before going back to work the following day. Thank goodness for three-day weekends!

Thanks for tuning in! Come back again soon to read more about Cyprus.

This is me, signing off...

Let's try...German!

Dear Readers,

A brief account of my newly re-started German language-learning experience…

This spring (2015) has been the first time since then that I have had a chance to do anything language-related again. I thought long and hard about which language to study next. I looked at all the sites, most of which I have read many times before, describing the benefits of studying this or that language. I finally settled on German, since this is one that I keep coming back to. After Spanish, German was the next second language I studied as a child. I suppose I could say it was the third language, but my brain seems to clump all languages learned after childhood into one. Any language I have tried to study since Spanish has been a ‘second language’ for me…which is I guess why they seem to mix together and I spit out words from random languages when trying to produce speech in a new language of study…I digress.

So, German. I studied it as a 10-year-old from this interesting pocket-sized book with hilarious cartoon doodle-drawings and an audio tape for authentic listening practice. At the time, it seemed like quite the modern language course. My sister and I spent many hours giggling over the doodles of boxers with bloody noses, women with fancy haircuts drinking tea, and extremely thin people standing next to body-builders while trying to imitate the accents of the speakers on the audio tapes. Sadly, the only things I remember after 20 years are two completely useless phrases- “My tea is good, but my teacup is too small,” and “I am big and strong.”

I picked the language up again briefly during an intensive semester back in 2013, but due to one thing and another, ended up dropping it again. So now I’m back at it.

I started with a nifty little app called ‘Duolingo,’ originally recommended to me by a brilliant student about a year ago. I downloaded it onto my barely-smart phone while on a road trip across Cyprus and immediately set my goal for the maximum of 30 minutes a day…a bit ambitious, considering I was going to a place with nearly no reception on a sand dune at the end of the island. Anyway…

The app is great, because it has vocabulary in pictures and phrases, and offers practice with spelling, listening and pronunciation as well. It is fairly intuitive, which helps, and it rewards the learner with points which can be used to purchase additional lesson packs. It also charts your progress and sends you reminders if you forget to study for a day.

On top of that, I found some other FREE!! apps for vocabulary learning and a few about grammar. After a couple weeks of work on my own, I started taking a weekly lesson with a native speaker who is very patient, and insists on speaking in German as much as possible. So far, despite actually being a busy person (like everyone else), I have managed to put in at least a few minutes every day. I study in two-to-ten-minute blocks between my classes, while waiting for my daughters, while waiting to fall asleep, and any other little times when I would otherwise be doing nothing. It is amazing how much time is actually available in the day when you go looking for it. I admit, it’s not as good as taking a regular class and doing an hour of homework a day, but it’s better than nothing, and about all I can manage at this stage.

Happily, although I’m still in the first month of study, I have been able to understand a lot of what my native speaker says, and can produce a few grammatically horrible sentences as well. I’m enjoying the language, which I believe is a key to maintaining interest and motivation to study.

I’ll periodically post some things about and in German on here…which reminds me, I need to install the German keyboard onto my laptop.

Thanks for reading! More coming soon.

This is me, signing off…

Russian-Epic Fail (for now)

Dear Readers,

What has this traveler and language learner been up to since 2013, you might ask? Here and in the following posts, I will give some highlights from the past two years.

For now, the mood strikes to write about language…

More than a decade after the worst language-learning experience of my life (my college Russian class), in the summer of 2014 I finally decided to pick up Russian again. Although I tried to be excited about it and spent several hours a week playing with language apps, learning vocabulary and speaking with native speakers, the experience was short-lived. After about three months of faithful (and completely uninteresting) study, I arrived at the conclusion that the best way I could possibly achieve any kind of mastery over this incredibly challenging language is to just GO to someplace that speaks it as a native language and get the full immersion experience. Since that was impractical at this stage of my life, I reluctantly gave up and focused my attentions elsewhere. I hate to give up on anything or leave anything half done. So, with plans to carry on with the language at some future point, I’ll contented myself with working on my book instead. In any case, from my experience, no learning is ever lost. Therefore, I predict that at some point in the future, even this abandoned language will somehow come in handy.

Stay tuned for more language (German!) and travel updates with some pictures, including Peru (Machu Picchu!), Turkey, Cyprus, San Diego and Colorado Springs.

Thanks for reading!

This is me, signing off…

 

 

Back in the Land of the Living!

Hello Faithful Readers,

It has been a REALLY long time since my last post, and a lot has happened in the past two years. I've traveled to four different continents, started writing a book, started learning two different languages, expanded an online business, and taught many, many, many hours of English lessons to students all over the world.

In the next few weeks I'll be posting accounts of many of my travel and linguistic adventures from the past two years.

I hope to continue posting regularly a couple times a week from now on.

Thank you all for your patience. Stay tuned for more adventures!

This is me, signing off (for now)!

Chicago Turkish Festival

Hello Faithful Readers!

This week I spent three days volunteering for the Chicago Turkish Festival, which was held at Pioneer Court on North Michigan Avenue this year. Lots of wonderful people showed up from all over the country and from Turkey to set up, manage and take down the event. We saw a huge turnout despite the occasional downpour. On Saturday my family and I attended the event as participants, and I finally got to watch the show, including lots of traditional dances and also whirling dervishes, something I didn't get to see while we were in Turkey. I really enjoyed the whole event, both as a volunteer and as a participant. It was so wonderful to be around the Turkish culture again for a few days.

Here is the link to the festival page. http://www.chicagoturkishfestival.com/
I may eventually add some pictures, but I forgot to take my camera to most of the event, so f I do, it will be sparse.

While we were at the festival, it came to my attention that there are some major protests happening in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and probably in other parts of Turkey right now. They started when the city of Istanbul tried to tear out a park in the middle of the city to build a shopping mall, but they have spread. Citizens are protesting the ruling party's recent restrictions on their freedoms and demanding better democracy and more rights. A few people have died from excessive police force, which includes tanks and tear gas. Local businesses and hotels are opening their establishments to the injured and providing food and shelter for the protesters. The Turkish (state-run) media is downplaying the events. There is not much we can do from here except try to make people aware that there is a problem and encourage others to stay informed and aware. I encourage you all to dig for information on these events and do what you can to help.

This week I will be finishing my next book, "Ten Little Beavers," which I plan to publish toward the end of the year, after "Ten Little Geckos" and "Ten Little Hippos." I'm also working on artwork for another series, "Pomphrey Pig..." about a little pink pig that loves sunflowers. You can stay up to date on my writing by following my Amazon.com author page here:
http://www.amazon.com/Rose-Breuer/e/B00D0QSI7S/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1370271097&sr=8-1

Thank you for visiting!

This is me, signing off...