Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Limassol Beer Festival

Work…work…work. Last day of work for this week, though :)

After the work, I’ve picked up Lev, Hazard and headed home for Olga. Then, all together we went to Germania restaraunt for some real good food and real good beer. Places like this are empty these days, due to so called “Beer Festival”.

Now, let me tell you something about beer festival in Limassol, Cyprus. First of all, Cyprus has nothing to do with beer. It’s a wine place. To prove this, Limassol hosts wine festival every year for last 20 or 30 years. And it’s kind of cool – all wine makers present themselves in one place. By “all wine makers” I mean really ALL wine makers – from individuals to factories. And all of them gather in one place. You pay a pound or two for the ticket and you can enjoy all the wine you can. This is, though, very different from the beer festival. Originally, there was no beer festival in Limassol. Niether was any in Cyprus. But, there happened to be one successful bar, called “Chesters“, and you know it, if you’ve been on these pages at least once. I am a regular there. Anyway… The owner of that bar decided that it would be nice to start a good tradition for beer lovers. So, he started hosting “Chesters’ Beer Festival” every year right in front of his bar. Many beer importers were putting their tents around the place, live music was playing and hot dogs were cooking. Anyone who thought they were missing something, could pretend to be vising the bar and just going in for a good old whisky or something. So it was for three or four years aucasinosonline. Then, Limassol municipality decided that most of the city is missing it, and that it would be good to have some extra money instead of giving it some rich guy who already has a proper bar, so they started their own festival. I knew from the very beginning that it will suck, so I didn’t go. But Lev did. And his impressions were much worse then what I was expecting – no draught beer, no Carlsberg, no food, no proper sound. Rap music mixed with greek traditional music, announced by DJ for small, but expensive bottles of beer. Everyone ended up in the brewery, which is nex to the festival place.

So, since everyone was on a festival, we had a great time in empty German restaraunt. Then we went to Hazard’s place for some more beer and a movie. It took Hazard some time to reconfigure his Nvidia to spit things out to the TV, since his last upgrade, so we had a pleasent game of chess with Lev on my newly aquired Sony Ericsson P800. :)

After Hazard managed to bring the vision back, we watched “The Animatrix“, which was good, but boring enough to not stop me from falling asleep right in the middle of it. Give me a credit – I hate Japanese animation, so I was very strong to stay until the middle. Though it was exactly Japanese, but it was very close. :)

By the good old tradition, after falling asleep at Hazard’s place, I get home and continue sleeping there… :)

Trip to Akamas Peninsula

Up early to meet with Hazard and Kangin for a trip to Akamas. Two cars were filled with me, Olga, Hazard, Vladimir Kangin, his wife Oxana aka LoL, his mother, and another guys named Alexander Sklyarov who came from Moscow for a few days. Highway to Paphos, then a tour through Kato Paphos, and then to the beaties of Akamas Peninsuola. It was like visiting another country – the sea and the mountains were totally different – not even anything close to what I’ve seen in Limassol, Paphos, Larnaca and Agia Napa.

First thing we do there is a stop for food. Kangin promised an excellent lamb, but I am a pork fan, so I’ve just tried it a bit. Nice place – separated from everything, not even in a village…Up the hill, with an excellent view of montains and sea. It was also nice because it was very cool up there, considering that it was exceptionally hot that day. Tables are made of huge pieces of stone, floor is stoned too. Grapes are makeing some walls and roof. Very spectacular.

After some pork, lamb and chicken, with boiled potatos and traditional salad mixed with red home wine, we are terribly slowed down. :) Short trip down the hill to meet the sea. Apparently, there are plenty of turtle nests on the beach, which are clearly marked and surrounded by signs of the “Do not disturb the turtle nests” content. Driving on the beach is prohibited due to the very same reason, so you have to walk for like 5 meters. :)

The sea was special too. Actually, this was the first time I like the sea in Cyprus. First of all, you can hear it. You can here it from far away. But the sound changes when you walk closer to it. From within the 20 meters or so you can here the sound of stones rolling on the bottom of it with every wave coming and leaving the shore. Wow! :) Now, there was also some real sand. Well, it was the closes thing to sand that I’ve seen in this country. And, yes, I’ve been in Agia Napa. :) The sand with large particles, which falls of your legs when they get dry. Not the kind that sticks like durt, or better, dust, until the end of ages. And the waves – waves are SOMETHING! Until now, the biggest waves around I’ve seen on Kurium beach, but those are for kids – now I know it. :) Huge, high, but calm waves which make you lose control of your standing position. :) They can throw you on to the shore and won’t be able to do anything about it. That’s nice! Another nice thing about that beach was that it was not crowded. I could barely see any other people except us. It is considerably far, but the trip is worth it.

After we’ve done a bunch of sweeming and wave riding and all the other stupid fun staff, we realized it was a perfect time for beer. So, less then one hourly later we are back in Limassol (yes, I was speeding, but that’s Paphos highway I am talking about) to visit the brewery. Poor guys still don’t have any beer apart from ale, since my multiple previous visits. Yet, we discovered that they surve two kinds of ale: buster and red. If you don’t specify, by default they bring you buster ale. And that’s good. Because I didn’t much like the red one. Niether did anybody except for Vladimir Kangin. It has more breaded taste and is less beerish, if I may say so. :)

After a couple of pints we all went to back to our homes. Kangin had to go for the night shift in three hours, so his day program was mostly over. Olga, me, and Hazard on the other hand did continue. After a show and a 10 minutes nap we are went to Hazard’s place to watch once again “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” DVD and, more importantly, try the first dish Hazard ever cooked for someone – Mussles ‘La Hazard. :)

Mussles deserve a special paragraph here. I’ve tried lots of mussle – natural mussles cooked on the camping fire, mussle with cheese, mussles with garlic, mussles on the ice, fresh mussles… There is one thing about mussles – there are fifty billion ways to cook them, but the simpliest way always wins. So, Hazard goes for it with freshly squashed lime juice, olive oil and a bit of coriander. I’ll tell you, that was one magnificant dish! You could eat it with fork or could rip them off the shelves with you bare teeth – dilicious! :) Juicy, fast and simple, and ubeleivably tasty. ;)

After such a long day, lots of fun, plenty of wine and beer and yummy food there was no suprise that I was falling asleep while watching the movie. :) After Frodo and Sam separated from the rest of the guys, Olga woke me up and we went home to have some rest.

Very long and exciting day and I wish I could have more days like this. :) Of course, I made a whole lot of pictures (I think something close to a hundred) and now I waiting for Hazard to put them up. I guess it’s about time I get myself a camera! :)

WRC – Day 3

Last day of rally. We’ve planned to see only one stage today. It was very close to Limassol and they even had a bus to take people from the parking to the finish line. We’ve covered half the way by car and another half by foot. Good spot that was – medium right turn and long and fast straigt road downhill, then sharp left and straight to finish. I’ve made few nice pictures again, but Vladimir still cannot find the cable to read them off the camera.

After the stage we went to Molos area in Limassol to see the official prize-giving ceremony. We’ve got somewhat separated due to me parking the car for a long time, but finally I got the best spot of all immidiately near to podium. My favorite team of blue and yellow won, which resulted in much victorius shouting and whistling from my side. Subaru (with Solberg and Mills) are the CHAMPIONS!

WRC – Day 2

Action day! In the morning we went to the mountains (Kato Platres area) to watch the first of two planned rally stages (SS9). Nice place, but we didn’t have the best spot – crowded. Cars were coming fast straight downhill, where they had a 180 degrees turn right then a short and fast downhill again, where they turned about 120 degrees left and went through a small river. Stage description was boasting a bridge, but none could be seen. Subaru looked best of all with Solberg almost overturning the car. There was also a change from tarmac to gravel on that 180 degree turn. Anyway, we’ve watched most of the cars. There were few Finnish spectators with the flag and everything, so we joined them and had some beer together. Nice people.

After this stage we went up to Platres to have some food in Psilo Dentro, which is a nice restaraunt with the Trout Farm. I had a pork chop as usual, though.

Filled and refilled we went down to the highway and drove to Paphos fast to see the second planned stage (SS12). This was marvelous! Fast track along the almost dried river with water crossing in three places. Lots of stones on the road. After a somewhat longish walk we were standing in about 10 meters from the water, which was frequently speed crossed by rally cars. Again, Subaru was the most impressive here! Hyndai cars were looking not bad, also.

On the way back, we watched one crazy spectator driving and jumping around and killing his Renegade jeep. He managed to destroy the car effectively and quickly. Idiots are everywhere…