tourism

February – the month of family migrations

My family is not very big.Â And it’s not very mobile.Â My parents are divorced and they leave in Russia.Â My brother lives in Cyprus, where I stayed together with my wife and kid.Â And has been so for a long time.

And suddenly, here comes the movement.Â First, just before February started, Olga and Maxim went to Russia.Â My mother-in-law is very sick and my wife went to stay by her side.Â Then, my mother came over to Cyprus to visit us for a few days, as well as relax for some time in the mountains and take a short break from her work.Â She then left back to Moscow.

But she didn’t go alone.Â My brother went with her.Â The guy stayed in Cyprus for a few long years, and now urgently needed to leave the island for a few days, related somehow to his paperwork.Â I’m going to pick him up from the airport tomorrow.

My brother wanted to travel to Togliatti, Russia, where our dad lives.Â Dad celebrated his 50th birthday recently (Happy Birthday, Pa!) and it was very unfortunately that neither I, nor my brother could attend the party. Â It so happened that the planned trip to Togliatti had to be canceled – once again due to the virtues of the paperwork.Â However, dad took the initiative and the train to Moscow, so that he could meet with my brother Alex even if just for a few days.Â I hear that they had some really great time.

Maybe for some, this all looks like a routine. But not for me.Â People in our family don’t travel all that much. (Except maybe with the exception of my mom, who moves around a few times each year.)Â And during this month they all jumped up and moved somewhere.Â I managed to stay so far, but the month isn’t over yet.

Weird, very weird…

Going to Greek Blogger Camp

I’ve mentioned it to a few people already, and I wrote it here and there, but not, well, here. I’ll attend Greek Blogger Camp at the beginning of the next month. It’ll take place at Ios, one of many Greek islands, between 2nd and 3rd of June (that’s a weekend). I’ll fly from Larnaca to Athens, than take a ferry to Ios, and then will come back the same way on Monday. Expect lots of pictures, a few blogging posts, and plenty o’Twitter…

This trip covers a few items on wishlist in one go:

Attend a blogging event (conference/exhibition/whatever)
Meet more cool online people in real life. (Matt Mullenweg is one of the people I hope to have a pint with during that weekend).
Visit another European country. (Yes, I’ve heard that most Greek islands aren’t all that different from Cyprus, but it still counts as another country).

Also, considering that there are some pretty cool developments in the pipe for the Cyprus Blog Network, I thought it’d be fun to listen to smart guys before making a whole lot of mistakes (not that I will avoid making a whole lot of mistakes now, but at least I’m trying).

Next item on my (imaginary) todo list is:

Try using less brackets and parenthesis.

Trip to Troodos

Best trips are usually spontaneous. No planning, no strategy – just a will to have some fun. My friend Dmitry and his wife Lana called me up today and said that they are about to leave on a trip to mountains and asked if I would join them. I did. It’s been a while since I went up there so I was glad I had a chance to go again.

We drove up to Platres and parked near the famous Psilo Dentro restaurant with a trout farm. Dmitry and Lana convinced me to take a walk to the waterfall. It shouldn’t have been any futher than a kilometer away, and the walk was supposed to improve our appetites. I’ve been numerous times to the Psilo Dentro restaurant, but I never went to the waterfall. Today I decided that it’s finally time to see it and be done with it. So I agreed.

The road turned out to be much tougher than I expected. It was long, heavily upstream and with lots of obstacles, like huge stones and waterstreams that had to be crossed via stepping stones. It would have been much easier if I didn’t have the camera to take care of.

Anyway, about 40 minutes later we finally reached our goal – a small waterfall. There was nothing particularly spectacular about it, but I made a few snaps anyway.

Quick return to the restaurant for an outstanding pork chop and beer. Now don’t get me wrong – I am all for grilled trout. Especially when it comes as fresh as it can possibly be. But Psilo Dentro pork chops are perfect. They are of the proper size and also juicy, and delicious.

On our way back to Limassol we had lots of laughs as Lana navigated us through the brief history of terrible Russian pop music. The tour ended with one of the tapes getting stack in the player with no hope of being removed, stopped or paused. It’ll play until the age of times. Or until Dimitry will get himself a new car.

I had a great time today. I should go again some time in the near future. I want to go together with Olga and Maxim. They need a good day out with some fresh air.

Album location: /photos/2005/2005-09-11_Troodos