Living the Dream - 75. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you!

Christmas

How were the holidays for you? We’ve had a cracking time.

Christmas was at the mountain hideaway, just Mags, Spice and I. The weather was boisterous, but we managed to get Spice out for a windswept walk on Christmas morning.

Travel

On the 28th, we loaded up the car and headed off for a week in Turkey. Now, Turkey is less than 300 miles from Cyprus, but it’s complicated.

Since 1974, Cyprus has been effectively partitioned. I live in the Republic of Cyprus, which is the officially recognised country. The Northern part of Cyprus is termed the “Illegally Occupied Territories.” In those territories, and in Turkey, the area is known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In recent years, relations have thawed a little – and people are permitted to cross from one side to the other through a series of border posts.

Our journey therefore to drive to one of these crossing points, park on the Republic side and be collected by a Taxi from the Turkish side. The taxi took us to the airport, and we made the short hop to Antalya, on the southern coast of Turkey. I’ll talk about the holiday in another post.

Once across the internal border, our cell phones lose signal, and will not connect to local services. Likewise, there is no roaming agreement between Cyprus and Turkey. Wifi gets us round this, but it is extraordinary that such a thing should persist in the 21st century.

World Events

While in Turkey, the USA killed General Qassim Suleimani. Iran, and to a lesser extent Iraq, where the killing took place, are, if not disgruntled, certainly less than gruntled. The region is in flames. War, of one form or another, rages across Iran, Iraq and Syria. Not to mention Yemen.

One of our party commented,

“It’s all a long way from us though…”

Another replied

“Absolutely, after all, Syria is a full 50 miles from Cyprus.”

Happy New Year, eh?