Cypriot dances connecting Europe

I had the chance to enjoy the hospitality of the Cyprus EU presidency in Lefkosia (or Nicosia as we usually call the capital of Cyprus) last weekend. It was also my last EU-related business trip, which actually made me a bit nostalgic. I have to say that even after so many goodbyes I’m still not good at it; on the contrary, every goodbye seems to remind me of all the past ones. My somewhat eccentric Romanian colleague told me about a fixed flow of energy coming from us and if we don’t let go of the past, this energy isn’t liberated for new things (maybe it was the sleep deprivation, sun and local wine but this actually sounded important at the moment...). Less metaphysically, I was wondering if we can have an ever-expanding interest in the outside world and thought of which comes first: finding a new focus of interest, which replaces the past, or letting go of the past, which gives place to new darlings.

In any case, I’m not going to write about escapes in the higher spheres of our understanding and the ghosts of the past, a little side step from my original story; that is, my sunny escape to Cyprus, a country that I wouldn’t have probably visited otherwise. The food was excellent and people extremely friendly, but I don’t think the island will appear on the list of my future travel destinations (but I could recommend it to sun worshippers). I have to say that I knew very little about the country beforehand. Even for such a geography-enthusiast as I am, I couldn’t even really locate it on a map. It’s really in the armpit of Turkey and Lebanon, almost 3000 km from Finland, hardly in Europe at all. So, as I already wrote in the post after my trip in Africa, I came back with many ideas richer. And a phone number of a minister's bodyguard - just in case...

Nicosia, the capital, didn’t give me a very positive impression: the buildings are mostly ugly, similar to those we know from news images from Beirut (which is only 250 km away). Around our hotel scarcely-clad girls waiting for male company occupied the bars. We tittered when we entered these places like innocent school kids and tried to find a cool way to retreat from the trap. Even though we were in the centre, it felt like in a suburb of a medium-size city. I didn’t get any good vibes that this is the place to be, it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t interesting, it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing; I should say that it was quite a boring city.

Crossing the border to the Turkish occupied side of the city (see photo above) felt like a tourist curiosity, even though during the trip I learnt more about its sombre reality. The history of the occupation (since 1974) and the clash between the Greek and the Turkish sides of the island continues to be a sensitive issue (why did I ask for a Turkish coffee at the bar???). The locals even talked about “Berlin wall in Nicosia”. It felt like the most unnecessary conflict in the world (obviously, I never understand the existence of any conflicts): fighting for an arid piece of land just to show off your power. I don’t know what’s the Turkish way of interpreting the conflict, but this is how I got the story, Turkey is unable to rest its case in its willingness to be a some sort of a super power while the Greek Cypriotes have been expelled to the other side leaving their homes behind. There are actually still UN troops in the country; for me, a UN car was a weird sight in an EU member state. You need a passport or an ID card to cross the border. But there's not much to see on the other side. During the prayer call the streets in the occupied side were completely empty. I felt like walking in Disneyworld’s set of a fake city after closing time (except for those piles of rubbish in the streets and homeless cats everywhere). To put it bluntly, it was as boring as the Greek side of the city.

The landscape of the country is almost a sad sight. Between Nicosia and Larnaca there are burnt hillsides and otherwise it looks like everything else has also been burnt during the last 20 years or so. However, I talked with an English guy who had been cycling around the island and he told me how wonderfully green it had been in the mountains. He lived in Dubai, so I don’t know if I can trust in his perception of a green landscape. It rained heavily during our stay (causing a leakage in my hotel room, that's how prepared they are for a strong shower) and while our host apologized for this unlucky weather, she also reminded us that the island had a huge shortage of fresh water after a dry summer. It basically never rains in the summer and the temperature usually exceeds +35ºC then.

I spent an extra day in Larnaca after our conference. It's a city of around 100 000 inhabitants and with a much nicer feeling, a true beach city. My short stay was a great way to receive a necessary dose of vitamin D for the grey, dark and cold autumn in Finland. It was warm enough to swim, but cool enough to avoid excessive sweating. Therefore, it was perfect time for a person like me who simply gets bored at the beach and hates that sticky salty water/sun lotion/sweat combination. A long morning at the beach was sufficient to get my stomach burnt as I later discovered at the airport. A bit more of that sun lotion could have been a healthy idea after all! All in all, it was truly wonderful to be able to dip into the sea in the end of October when the first snow had already arrived to Helsinki. By the way, it was very solemn to sunbath as the loud speakers on the beach boulevard were playing marching music and later there was a parade to celebrate the Cypriote national day…

In short, while Cyprus is not really a potential future travel destination for me, I enjoyed my time there and, in the context of growing euro-skepticism and intolerance against the bad management of finances in the Mediterranean countries, I have to say that it is wonderful to see people from all the member states to dance together Greek/Cypriot dances, sharing and enjoying their cultural habits and then feeling that something brings us more together than just basic humanity. We are all Europeans and we should be proud of the cultural variety and richness we can share. Europe would be a much poorer place without Cypriot food and Greek dances. And I would be much paler right now.

Our dance moves were maybe not as elaborated as in this video but this was certainly not because of lack of enthusiasm. I guess the locals took it as a compliment when the Austrian guy went to the dance floor to lead the dance. Oh dear, it was truly hilarious (until the moment I felt like throwing up the baklavas with any more dancing), but also quite emotional when the Greek and the Cypriotes did some real folk dancing together.

Hotel: Les Palmiers Hotel in central Larnaca is recommendable hotel with good views of the sea. Through booking.com my single room cost only 35 EUR (incl. breakfast). Otherwise the country wasn’t as cheap as I had imagined. Cappucino at the beach was 3 EUR, but sun bed only 2 EUR!

Reading: Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher.

Pektopan; on food and drinks in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg, a city of 5 million inhabitants, has had a reputation as a place where all the Finnish tourists get robbed in the metro - at least this was what we had heard. Therefore, we were very cautious in the beginning of our trip, my sisters being almost hysterical about the security. However, it didn't last for long. After taking a taxi from the train station to our nice hotel, A Boutique Hotel, close to Nevsky Prospekt, we already started our discovery of the Russian (drinking) culture. We headed to Datscha, a recommended bar at Ulitsa Dumskaya. As the bar didn't seem to serve any cocktails, we were obliged to start our trip with some vodka (around 3 Euros a glass). After the first little grins, we were into it. Chatting with Igor ("hey, these Russians are not so ugly after all" - the first myth busted) and dancing old school hits with Pjotr and Andrei (PhDs working for the Russian Academy of Sciences) a little later leaving our bags unwatched somewhere next to the Swedish Erasmus students and local semi-hipsters. After one last vodka, feeling very safe, we headed back to the hotel; after all, we had a Hermitage scheduled for the next morning.

St. Petersburg seems to have a good nightlife and there are plenty of nice bars to choose from. Another cool place where we ended up was the Terminal (on the trendy Ulitsa Rubinshteina). A small place inspired by New York style. I'm not sure if it was the vodka or the local people, but it was easy to start a chat with the Russians and some of them spoke excellent English (some none). I guess the friendly Russian people that I met during our weekend trip were a major reason why I really liked the atmosphere in the city. Thank you Andrei, Pjotr, Igor and you guys at the Terminal!

The second myth busted: For some reason, the Russian kitchen has never really inspired me. At school in the 90s, we ate stroganoff and borsch soup that left a bad taste - for years. As a vegetarian, I was also afraid that the culinary scene in St. Petersburg wouldn't offer me much choices. Fortunately, I was wrong and I completely fell in love with the blinis and pelmenis that we had. A surprise for a Finn is that blinis are not those puffy and small pancakes that we are used to call Russian blinis in Finland, but more like the usual thin crêpes. In any case, they were great. A cheap and typical local option is to buy some from a Teremok kiosk (see below) that you can find everywhere (except when you're looking for one after an exhausting tour at the Hermitage). A recommendable mushroom blini from Teremok was only 41 rubles, equivalent to 1,30 Euros.

A more comfortable place to try some blinis is Bliny Domik (at Kolokolnaja 8) not far from the Terminal bar. The menu is abundant so there is no trouble finding something that satisfies everyone in the group. My sisters shared a tasty borsch soup and blinis with fish and caviar. I had a pumpkin blini with boiled cabbage (100 rubles, or around 3 Euros). My sister was courageous enough to try Russian wine, but I had the traditional tea served in a samovar (photo). Our waiter was a guy happy to practice his English and the other waiter was also entertaining the clients with his singing talent. He was practicing for his concert in Finland... In the next street, there was a superbe Georgian restaurant, Ket, where we had dinner on a Saturday night. The food was excellent and I'm waiting for the moment I can buy some khachapuri in Helsinki as well.

For Sunday lunch, we had pelmenis in a very cosy restaurant, the Idiot, close to St. Isaac's Cathedral, by the Moyka canal. It used to be one of the only vegetarian restaurants in the city, but now the menu offers meat dishes as well. The mushroom filled pelmenis, or dumplings, were delicious (see below). There was also a free shot of vodka on the arrival, though on our last day in St. Petersburg we could have also survived without any vodka drop. I think I finally need to buy that pasta machine so I could start doing some pelmenis myself. 

My brother-in-law had jokingly, but I guess believing in it to some extent, said that we should only take our worst clothes with us as they would be burnt after our trip due to bedbugs. Many people in Finland still like to think that Russia is a backward and poor country. Of course it is that as well, you can see it immediately when you cross the border or check some statistics; there is absolute poverty and the inequalities are huge in Russia. But at the same time, there are people in St. Petersburg that are richer than the richest of Helsinki all together. The amount of luxury shops and fancy restaurants is overwhelming, the main street Nevsky Prospekt is lined with boutiques that we didn't even dare to look at. 

There was also a wonderful delicacy store Kupetz Eliseevs close to our hotel on the Nevsky Prospekt (see a good panorama of the pretty Art Nouveau style shop on their website) selling exquisite European products, Russian vodka in beautifully decorated bottles, caviar, and all sorts of delicious-looking pastries and cakes (by the way, there was also the one and only black person we saw in the whole city). Despite the huge variety of food and wine, there was unfortunately no Russian champagne, or shampanskoje. A drink that is definitely worth tasting!

Glimpses of St. Petersburg

It's almost embarrassing to tell that I only now had my first trip to Russia and to St. Petersburg, the wonderful city only 3,5 hours by train from Helsinki. Well, me and my sisters, with whom I visited the city, are more than happy that we finally managed to do the trip. Here are some photos to illustrate why. 

It seems that the renovations made in the city for its 300th birthday have changed the city dramatically from the Leningrad years when my father visited the city and wrote in a post card: "Leningrad is awful and the food is bad." St. Petersburg surprised us only positively (even though my expectations were high) and in so many levels: architecture, people, security, food. I think it could become my second biennial travel destination. It's funny, I should say so because hitherto my other biennial destination has beenVenice and it is not seldom that one thinks of the Venetian canals when in St. Petersburg (but otherwise the resemblances end there).

                         

The city is full of history, stories we were reading about when at school. Suddenly I saw all those names of different tsars and wars in my guide book (sadly, those stories already a bit blurred since my school years). Above is for example the church of Our Saviour on the Blood built on the very spot where revolutionaries murdered Emperor Alexander II in 1881. That also affected the history of Finland, then part of Russia, as Alexander II had been a kind ruler towards the Finns unlike his follower.

I have always thought that there is something magic about the tsars of Russia. But only in St. Petersburg I understood how powerful and rich they had been, how exaggerated in gold was their style,  how separated from the real world they must have been in their numerous palaces, and how they probably set their own sad destiny because of all this. The bolshevik revolution didn't bring up a democratic republic like in France and maybe that's why the killed Romanov family has preserved some of the fascination and even empathy.

The Bronze Horseman: Peter the Great founded the city in 1703. The granite underneath the statue weighs 1500 tons and was carried from 20km away to this place. It is one of the biggest blocks ever moved by humans without machines, it took 400 men and 9 months.

Here is the huge Hermitage Museum, or Winter Palace, seen from the palace square (above) and from the top of the St. Isaac's Cathedral (below). I had some ambitions when we went inside to the museum but after 2 hours I gave up; the never-ending corridors and rooms after rooms exhausted me and my sisters. It was the hopelessness of never getting even around the entire building that made me more desperate than a hurting back. We decided to focus on the 19th-20th century art only. Even this collection was huge but I made some good discoveries, like Kees van Dongen (see above the lovely green lady that I also bought as a poster). After this, we didn't even bother to walk all across the huge building to see some da Vinci and Rembrandt etc., they were simply too far away. Indeed, the museum is one of the biggest in the world, its collection has more than 3 million art works and the best of them are exhibited in the 350 rooms of the Winter Palace. The palace in itself is also worth seeing.

Here's another view from the St. Isaac's Cathedral, the massive cathedral that can accomodate more than 14000 people and took 40 years to build. The views from the golden cupola (see also below) all around the city were amazing, but the inside of the church is not of great interest. The same goes, by the way, for the interior of the Blood church that is much more spectacular from the outside. 

Some places in St. Petersburg reminded me of Paris, like this pretty square below.

Some others could have been in Helsinki. I think this one below has many similarities with Kruununhaka, Helsinki.

Obviously, we mostly walked around in the most touristic areas of the city, so I cannot say anything about how the common Russians live - or any Russians, after all, I only saw palaces... The centre is not in impeccable state in many places but it is surprisingly clean. However, I don't believe it would continue like this in the suburbs. Unfortunately, three days was hardly enough to see even the main sights of the city, so the more sociological tour for inspecting living conditions and the crazy inequalities of Russia will be on the to do list of my next trip.

In St. Petersburg you cannot but wonder what would have happened to the city without socialism.  What kind of a country Russia would be now? After all, the city has only re-emerged as a major cultural city since the beginning of the 2000s when it went through a monumental face-lift.

After the revolution, the architecture also changed remarkably; below is an example of the Soviet constructivism. It stands out as the whole centre is quite harmonious and mostly consists of classical architecture from the 18th and 19th century. At the same time, the main street Nevsky Prospekt was largely preserved in its historical form as communism didn't offer commercial reasons to dismantle old and to replace it by some new architectural catastrophes.

Reading: David Benioff, City of Thieves.