Epistle from Cyprus XII - 22 April 2007
A Pilgrimage
This all started several months ago when we went to Larnaka airport to pick up D. On the way back I noticed what appeared to be a fortress or castle on a high mountain and I made a half-hearted decision to visit the place but not knowing the name of the place it would be difficult and so I put it out of my mind.
This particular day however started as a pilgrimage to Bethlehem in search of a miracle cure. At least a trip to the HP service centre on Bethlehem Street, Nicosia with a laptop with a broken LCD. If anyone asks what you do for a living tell them you collect the 20 cent coins in the public toilets. When was the last time you asked one of those people for help with a problem with your own toilet? Nobody bothers them with work related questions. Can you look at this printer? Can you check my mobile phone?
Having left the patient in the care of the HP laptop hospital (and if you ever read this HP support people I am still waiting for that email you said you would send) I turned back on the 140 kilometre trip home.
Hunger diverted me from the motorway and my stomach directed me along the smaller side roads between Nicosia and Larnaca. It complained bitterly as each small restaurant we found was closed because it was out of season. As I was driving I noticed several tourist signs for a monastery called Stavrovouni but at this point my stomach was still holding the steering wheel.
Generally Mr. Stomach has the timing of a Swiss chronograph and the direction of a GPS but it soon became apparent that there were no restaurants or coffee shops open in this area so we called it quits and tried to head back to the motorway hoping to find the next large town.
Now things started to get strange. No matter which direction I drove I could not find the road back. The tourist map that I had was as meaningful as a Jackson Pollock. The only consistent road sign were the brown tourist signs towards the monastery. Rome, it seems, had been transported to Stavrovouni.
Eventually I was on a road head up a steep mountain and being drawn like a moth to a flame. Mr. Stomach had abandoned all hope of ever being fed again and given himself to his fate of a slow and painful starvation. After 30 minutes I arrived at a car park outside the monastery at the top of the mountain. I bowed to the inevitable and decide to have a look. Just my luck it is just after 1 o’clock in the afternoon and the monastery is closed between 11am and 2pm. Even the monks out here take a siesta.
I decided to wait and have a look around which is not a problem. This car park has the best views in the whole of the south of Cyprus and possibly the entire island. The monastery sits on the very peak of the mountain and dominates the area. I can see from the oil terminal at Limassol in the west, across the salt lakes and the airport at Larnaca and to the very south east tip of the island at Cape Greco. To the north it looks over a central plain to the Pentadaktylos mountains of Nicosia. (Pente - five, daktylos - finger) Thank heavens there are five instead of one of two.
I am so high that I can look down on a light aircraft performing acrobatics in one of the valleys to the north. The plane is swooping down into a valley and trying to chase its own shadow on a mountainside. To the northwest I can see into the heart of the Troodos mountains and the dome of the tracking station on the peak of mount Olympus that looks like a giant golfball. There is snow up there in Troodos.
There I sat in the cool shade of the monastery gates and I could hear the monks chanting inside so it wasn't a siesta. From this vantage it is easy to imagine that you can see across the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Libya to the south and Lebanon to the east.
What was inside the monastery? Well half of the people reading this will never get to find out. Women are not allowed inside the monastery. This is a bit strange because the place was founded by Helena the mother of eastern Emperor Constantine. As for the other half of the readers…well you will just have to come and see it for yourselves. It is worth it just for the view.
Footnote 1
The title of this blog “The Three States…” and the monastery of Stavrovouni are linked. The Emporer Constantine’s mother Helena was forced to land on the island by a storm. Cyprus had been suffering from a 50 year drought and was overrun with snakes. As well as founding the monastery as a gesture of thanks to the island she sent a boatload of cats which were freed to exterminate the snakes. I am not sure exactly how many cats make up a ‘boatload’ but I can vouch that the cats are still here and they are still working.
Footnote 2
I did eventually hear back from HP Support Team. Well after I rang them back again they contacted me. They had sent me an email to the wrong address. Sound familiar. Anyway the patient is back with its owner and I am about £400 poorer for the experience. By the way K. what about my garden hoe? I never got that back.
Footnote 3
The very second I was outside the monastery gate that damn phone rang. Is that divine intervention or what?
This all started several months ago when we went to Larnaka airport to pick up D. On the way back I noticed what appeared to be a fortress or castle on a high mountain and I made a half-hearted decision to visit the place but not knowing the name of the place it would be difficult and so I put it out of my mind.
This particular day however started as a pilgrimage to Bethlehem in search of a miracle cure. At least a trip to the HP service centre on Bethlehem Street, Nicosia with a laptop with a broken LCD. If anyone asks what you do for a living tell them you collect the 20 cent coins in the public toilets. When was the last time you asked one of those people for help with a problem with your own toilet? Nobody bothers them with work related questions. Can you look at this printer? Can you check my mobile phone?
Having left the patient in the care of the HP laptop hospital (and if you ever read this HP support people I am still waiting for that email you said you would send) I turned back on the 140 kilometre trip home.
Hunger diverted me from the motorway and my stomach directed me along the smaller side roads between Nicosia and Larnaca. It complained bitterly as each small restaurant we found was closed because it was out of season. As I was driving I noticed several tourist signs for a monastery called Stavrovouni but at this point my stomach was still holding the steering wheel.
Generally Mr. Stomach has the timing of a Swiss chronograph and the direction of a GPS but it soon became apparent that there were no restaurants or coffee shops open in this area so we called it quits and tried to head back to the motorway hoping to find the next large town.
Now things started to get strange. No matter which direction I drove I could not find the road back. The tourist map that I had was as meaningful as a Jackson Pollock. The only consistent road sign were the brown tourist signs towards the monastery. Rome, it seems, had been transported to Stavrovouni.
Eventually I was on a road head up a steep mountain and being drawn like a moth to a flame. Mr. Stomach had abandoned all hope of ever being fed again and given himself to his fate of a slow and painful starvation. After 30 minutes I arrived at a car park outside the monastery at the top of the mountain. I bowed to the inevitable and decide to have a look. Just my luck it is just after 1 o’clock in the afternoon and the monastery is closed between 11am and 2pm. Even the monks out here take a siesta.
I decided to wait and have a look around which is not a problem. This car park has the best views in the whole of the south of Cyprus and possibly the entire island. The monastery sits on the very peak of the mountain and dominates the area. I can see from the oil terminal at Limassol in the west, across the salt lakes and the airport at Larnaca and to the very south east tip of the island at Cape Greco. To the north it looks over a central plain to the Pentadaktylos mountains of Nicosia. (Pente - five, daktylos - finger) Thank heavens there are five instead of one of two.
I am so high that I can look down on a light aircraft performing acrobatics in one of the valleys to the north. The plane is swooping down into a valley and trying to chase its own shadow on a mountainside. To the northwest I can see into the heart of the Troodos mountains and the dome of the tracking station on the peak of mount Olympus that looks like a giant golfball. There is snow up there in Troodos.
There I sat in the cool shade of the monastery gates and I could hear the monks chanting inside so it wasn't a siesta. From this vantage it is easy to imagine that you can see across the Mediterranean as far as Egypt and Libya to the south and Lebanon to the east.
Stavrovouni Monastery. There is a footpath but I advise you to take the road.
Eventually the clock crawled around to 2pm and one of the monks opened a small door to the side of the large gates. He was not my vision of a typical monk. He was about as far from the Friar Tuck image as it is to get. He was very tall and elderly with a scratchy grey beard and wore a pair of overalls and an overcoat. An overcoat in this weather! He scrutinized me and asked that I take my camera back to the car as photographs are not allowed inside the monastery. I was then free to around the monastery gardens and up to the central monastery itself. Good job he did not notice the mobile phone. I spent most of the time while looking around, worrying that the phone would ring while I was in one of the quietest and most sacred of their rooms. I did not want to get it out and turn it off lest they caught me and threw me from the precipice for being a god-forsaken heathen.
What was inside the monastery? Well half of the people reading this will never get to find out. Women are not allowed inside the monastery. This is a bit strange because the place was founded by Helena the mother of eastern Emperor Constantine. As for the other half of the readers…well you will just have to come and see it for yourselves. It is worth it just for the view.
Footnote 1
The title of this blog “The Three States…” and the monastery of Stavrovouni are linked. The Emporer Constantine’s mother Helena was forced to land on the island by a storm. Cyprus had been suffering from a 50 year drought and was overrun with snakes. As well as founding the monastery as a gesture of thanks to the island she sent a boatload of cats which were freed to exterminate the snakes. I am not sure exactly how many cats make up a ‘boatload’ but I can vouch that the cats are still here and they are still working.
Footnote 2
I did eventually hear back from HP Support Team. Well after I rang them back again they contacted me. They had sent me an email to the wrong address. Sound familiar. Anyway the patient is back with its owner and I am about £400 poorer for the experience. By the way K. what about my garden hoe? I never got that back.
Footnote 3
The very second I was outside the monastery gate that damn phone rang. Is that divine intervention or what?
posted by /s at 6:16 pm
4 Comments:
as always, fun and informative. If only you had told us what really WAS in the monastery. I might have sleepless nights now until i can afford to come over.
Of course people read this rubbish. Although i was rather hoping for a picture of the alusive "adder" or the talking spider. This would have been very entertaining indeed.
I still read it, and I still enjoy it - keep writing.
Come on, tell us what was in the monastery... or are we to guess?
You don't tell me what's inside the monastery and I don't tell you what's inside the Basilica de La Santisima Trinidad!!!
I look forward to your epistles so keep them coming.
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