Impressions from the travel so far

The experience for me here has been a lot of fun (interesting would be more appropriate, but its part of the fun) so far, there are a couple experiences that make this trip feel unique so far.

1. How I started hitchhiking, accidentally, and doing tourism.

It was 12:30 and yes the sun was shining and besides melting I was walking to the King’s tombs. Suddenly Chiaki Kamikawa (a Japanese artist whom we had met just a couple minutes before) drives past me. She waves at me and suddenly I’m in her car. She was going to pick up her daughter from the kindergarten outside of Paphos and recommended me to see the oldest ruins of Cyprus (also called Pithos House). Of course, I think that’s a fantastic idea.

During the trip she explains about the beauty and the annoying parts of the slowness of life here, a pattern across many conversations so far. She drops me off at Kisonerga Mosfilia, and from there I go searching for further signifiers of the place.

There’s nothing apparent besides banana plantations, awesome this must mean it’s an authentic place (yet), but besides the exotic idea of being around banana plantations it’s not really fascinating.

I was glad to have the camera with me, I was feeling that if this story was not going to be shared it would lose a lot of its (humorous) value.

Once there, I could only give meaning to the Pithos House with the aid of the signifiers, explaining me that indeed they are the oldest ruins in town and other insights from this place.

After having explored this and the banana plantations I head back to the city. On the car back a man gives me a small tour while on his way to the King’s Mall where his wife is waiting for him.

He explains about the interest of Paphians developers in keeping Famagusta (an inhabited beach town in the UN buffer zone) empty, since the beaches there would probably redirect the tourist bonanza that Paphos is experiencing. In fact, he said that the developers from Paphos stemmed mostly from Famagusta before being repositioned here during the 1974 war. This is the first time that a local in Paphos explains something about the conflict and provides a view on it. According to him, the Greek Cypriots still consider themselves in war with the Turkish Cypriots, which is part of the reason this topic is a tabu here. Since this moment, the conflict has not been a topic in casual conversations, only in talks with artists and officials.

2.  Meeting locals, community organizers, hospitality of heart.

During the artist workshop at Euphoria Revised I met a young Cypriot and we had a very nice conversation about identity, Cyprus and the change of mentality which is also something that is being pushed from the side of the organizers from Pafos2017.

There seemed to be certain contradictions between his way of thinking, which were tending towards openness and global connection and his actions: it never occurred to him to visit the Turkish Cypriot side of the island. Him, as 51% of other youngsters in some countries around the world,  reported feeling a global citizen above Cypriot (Europe was not even mentioned by him). We talked about returning home after studying or working abroad, about our friends that leave the country in search of opportunities and why coming home sometimes feels right. Although he decided to come back home, the family conflict between closeness and openness towards new ideas seemed to be a problematic in his life: Whereas his parents wanted him to play soccer and he wanted to play violin, he never asked his parents why they criticize his new ideas while at the same time not even caring once he did something out of the norm.

After having introduced new questions to him I felt for the first time here like a useful tourist: bringing new ideas to the local person in the hope of helping him with his life here, helping him think his new mentality. We met at an event of Pafos2017, which has exactly this aim of bringing new ways of thinking, so I guess we were in the right framework for this to happen.

From other encounters with community organizers, I was surprised by their generosity with their time. While they were clearly busy, they stopped as much time as needed to talk over some of the questions I had. They were careful in trying to understand my questions and elaborate in their response, making me feel welcomed in their place.

 3.  Mediterranean city in construction

The last impression I wanted to share was the experience of being a tourist in a Mediterranean landscape that feels very much like home. Seeing the city in construction, the use of the new cement squares, the new restaurants opening and being fashionable amongst the locals reminded me a lot of pre-crisis Barcelona. Observing the public spaces I wondered who would first claim it as their place: skaters, youngsters, the retired population or tourists. For now, the local hipsters (and some tourists like us) are having dinner at the adjacent restaurants. As the city grows and builds new shopping streets in the old center of town, separating it from the tourist areas the new commercial streets are creating (in theory) an area for Paphians to meet with each other and share a common space. In this case I ask myself: does building public spaces build connections between citizens or does it need to rely on a culture where walking around the streets for leisure is normal? From the initial paphians on the squares, it seems that the investment in infrastructure will get people to meet, but what role will culture (such as street-art or events) play in this?

*I just really like this last picture