Access in Famagusta

Freddie


Joined: 18/03/2008
Posts: 12


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 15:20

My father did his National Service in Famagusta - he is 69 now - and has good memories of that time. I understand that he was probably based somewhere in what is now the buffer zone - but he remembers what I think must be the Old Town and Salamis. We are taking him to Famagusta in April and I wonder what we can show him that he would find interesting, as I have never been there.



If anyone has experience of this or knows any companies that specialise in such visits, I would appreciate the information.

Thanks

Freddie

elko2



Joined: 24/07/2007
Posts: 220


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 17:34

I have been living in Famagusta since 1976 and don't know much before this time but the best beach is called "Klapsides" and apparently the name comes from "Club Sides". May be it was the place for some sort of club for the British Army.

ismet

rtddci


Joined: 29/12/2007
Posts: 246


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 17:59

'Klap' may just have a different meaning if associated with the British army

Freddie


Joined: 18/03/2008
Posts: 12


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 18:43

Hi



rtddci - I like your style, although my Dad might not be so keen! Or my mother come to that!!



Thanks for your response elko 2 - I'll look into that.



Dad doesn't seem to have particularly fond memories of his National Service, most conversations seem to involve the mention of "the gcs taking pot shots at me, for target practice". He liked Famagusta though, hence this wish to return.



Can you see across into the Military Zone from any point in Famagusta? Or take a boat ride out to sea that would let us view it from afar? Or is it too protected? Please excuse my ignorance.

newlad


Joined: 02/03/2008
Posts: 264


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 19:58

Freddie welcome,

You can actually get quite close to the zones by land or buy sea and it is a very eerie site to behold.Beware the greek propaganda though,



Regards,

Paul.

orangekazzie



Joined: 31/07/2007
Posts: 794


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 20:28

Hi Freddie

I understand you are allowed to actually go into the Ghost Town of Varosha to visit a restored Orthodox church. From memory you have to be escorted by the UN and I'm not sure how you would go about this. There used to be a forum site on MSN with some fantastic pictures of before and after. Found it. Follow this link

http://groups.msn.com/ReturntoVaroshaFamagustaCyprus

Karen

pilgrim



Joined: 11/05/2007
Posts: 471


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 21:40

Elko thought the beach in Famagusta is called Glapsides not klapsides,

least that what the road sign says. regards

p

newlad


Joined: 02/03/2008
Posts: 264


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 22:20

Paul,

Sory i never got back to you will do at weekend mate,

Regards,

Paul.

ukturk



Joined: 01/09/2007
Posts: 1683


Message Posted:
19/03/2008 23:02

hi guys

pilgrim you are right it is called glapsides beach its a nice beach but during the summer it is heaving with young kids and london cypriots youths, where on the other hand silver beach is a bit more chilled and not forgetting salamis beach this is where your dad freddie is probabley on about and back in the day salamis beach was the place also you can visit salamis ruins, and if you venture in to the old town you will come accross the famagusta walls, namik kemal dungeon & museum, sinan pasa mosque (st peter & st paul church) , lala mustafa pasa mosque which has the othello tower their too, famagusta is practically a outdoor muesuem and not forgetting maras (ghost town) you can drive all the way round and see inside ghost town in some places all there is barbed wire and big oil drums just seperating it and you can see deserted houses, shop very clearly also the road where the court house is on you get down to the bottom of the road and there is a mini roundabout where it doubles back on it self but you can clearly see over the boards the ghost town, as far as im aware no civilians can go in to ghost town with or without the e.u one half is patrolled by turkish army and the other gc army but in some areas like the ghost beach some of the barbed wire has worn away and you can walk on it, and most pictures you will see of ghost town have been taken without permission cos of the fact no photos can be taken in a military zone

you dont really need a tour company to show you the sights just hire a car and drive around to all these places most historic places are around the old town apart from salamis ruins which is about 5-8min car drive away from the city centre and for evening time there are quite a few resturants and bars and casinos scattered all around

hope this helps

ukturk

elko2



Joined: 24/07/2007
Posts: 220


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 06:04

Pilgrim and UK Turk,

Yes, the road sign does indeed say Glapsides but at least my family call it Klapsides. It is not Turkish anyway and my pronunciation is easier on the tongue!!!

ismet

ukturk



Joined: 01/09/2007
Posts: 1683


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 11:33

hi

well me and my family and friends have always know it as glapsides!!!! lol

and if for pronounciation reasons it would be written like this glupsidez

regards

ukturk (erkan)

Freddie


Joined: 18/03/2008
Posts: 12


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 13:07

Hi All - and many thanks for such great info.



orangekazzie/Karen, I had a look at the web link you gave me and the photos there are great. I will make sure my Dad sees those before we go and see what memories come flooding back. Thanks a lot. Didn't get very far yet with escorted UN trip into Varosha, but from what's been said, that may not be possible. Would have been fantastic surprise though . . . .



Thanks to you, too, newlad, I think we will be wandering around generally and getting as close as we can on foot. You mention the sea - are there general boat trips available locally? Advertised? Or something we would have to sort out once there?



And big thanks to you, ukturk/Ercan, what need have we now for a guide book? Really appreciate all the detail and feel much better about the trip altogether.



Now just got to practise pronouncing "Glapsides/Klapsides"!!!

Thanks again

Sharon

lovingcyprus


Joined: 02/03/2007
Posts: 390


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 13:46

Freddie,



Copy and past the link below into your browser





http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/026-7811545-0844454?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=North+Cyprus&x=16&y=14

orangekazzie



Joined: 31/07/2007
Posts: 794


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 16:13

This is true story... OK, it could do with some editing but I hope you enjoy it none the less:

I flicked on the wipers to remove the sheen of water droplets from the Jeeps windscreen. Weatherwise, March was a fickle time to visit Cyprus. It had been raining on and off for the last hour but a glimmer of blue sky punctured the leaden heavens. Fingers crossed, it might clear up after all.

I drove gingerly down the potholed road, past the old walled city of Famagusta and turned right. The road onwards was even worse; I don’t think it had seen a new coat of tarmac since the war in Cyprus back in 1974; a conflict that had bitterly scoured a dividing line between the peoples of the island. A coup backed by the military junta of Greece was answered by an invasion of the island by mainland Turkish troops. The end result was the ethnic division of a people that had co-existed as neighbours for centuries. My destination was an anomaly in the United Nations patrolled neutral zone that divided them both; if I could get in that was.

Famagusta is a peculiar place, unique even. Over a hundred years ago, Charles Dickens wrote a tall of two cities. If he lived today he could visit the eastern seaboard of Cyprus and see its namesake in the flesh. The Turkish Cypriots still live in the ancient Venetian walled city and its northern and western environs; a lethargic, half forgotten kind of place that moves to a pretty slow beat even by Cypriot standards. To the South sprawls its satellite town of Varosha or New Famagusta. In its day, it was the brasher, younger but rather ugly sister to the slightly dowdy old town and was home to forty thousand Greek Cypriots. It was also the focus of the islands fast growing tourist industry that mushroomed from independence in 1960 to 1974.

Now Varosha is silent; a ghostly monument of the inevitable self-destruction and pointless folly of inter-ethnic squabbling and civil war. Most of the town is a deserted concrete desert; hundreds of acres of abandoned hotels, holiday flats, villas and houses that have been left to the mercy of the elements for a generation. When the infantry and tanks of the Turkish military advanced upon Famagusta, all its Greek inhabitants fled southwards in the space of one single day. Many had only the clothes they wore on their backs, and if they were lucky, some money, a handful of treasured valuables and photos and a bag of toys for their children.

Soon after, the United Nations brokered a ceasefire that has miraculously held ever since but the truce left the town firmly in the demilitarised zone that stretched from one side of the island to the other. Now Greek Cypriots lived in the south and the Turkish Cypriots lived in the north. Since August 1974, Varosha's former inhabitants could only view their old homes via binoculars from the across the demarcation line that still divides Cyprus.

I carefully drove past the grim and ubiquitous barracks of the Turkish army, their presence was omnipresent in Northern Cyprus but especially so near the border. For the most part, the Turkish army were courteous to tourists but were notoriously camera shy. No matter how polite they were, saluting at you when you waved at them or asking what your favourite football team was, you didn’t ask for snap-shots of smiling sentries while vacationing in Northern Cyprus. It just wasn’t conducive to a relaxing holiday.

Soon I was approaching my destination; behind an iron curtain of oil drums and barbed wire was a ragged skyline of high rise hotels, holiday apartments and a construction crane fossilised with rust. Varosha seemed to be beckoning me forth like a voyeur of all things macabre; to bear witness to a town of ghosts and sad memories.

I parked up by the Biffer Palm Beach hotel; one of the few hotels on Varosha's sea front that remained open but under Turkish Cypriot management. I thought carefully before making this pilgrimage and surmised that a working hotel was the best place to park without attracting the unwanted attentions of the military. I walked past the car park and onto the beach itself. In sunnier weather the sand would have been sublime, the sea no doubt turquoise and inviting; as long as you didn’t look towards southward towards the two kilometre long tableau of crumbling hotels that formed the rest of Varosha’s seafront.

I walked along the wet sand for a hundred yards. Each of my steps seemed leaden, not just my feet were sinking but my spirits also seemed to slump down to new depths. To my right, behind a wire fence were the ruined shells of hotels that had last seen guests the year I was born: the Salimina, the Twicka Towers and the Aphelia. The Salimina itself was half demolished to form a clear zone. Empty windowpanes glared accusingly like the eyeless sockets of a skull; glass less reminders of the direct hits the building suffered during the war.

The Aphelia was similarly derelict but was half-covered in Turkish graffiti. Perhaps they were the bored daubings of the conscripts who had been billeted there, awaiting the Greek counterattack that never came.

The wire fence veered off in front of me and now pointed into the sea; blocking people like myself from wondering onwards along the desolate shore. I took my binoculars out and took in the scale of the devastation before me. There were in excess of thirty hotels that lined the seafront, some little more than large villas, others were skyscrapers, over fifteen stories high. Some of the buildings hadn’t finished being built when the war broke out. Construction cranes stood witness to the rash of hasty development that had been frozen in time, their hooks creaking in the stiff breeze. Aside from the Turkish national colours that flew from the flagpole of one hotel, requisitioned I later found out as an officers club, there were no sign or sound of anything living; be it man, bird or animal. The only noise was the wind and the sea; this truly was the city of the dead.

Inland was a sand-swept cityscape of derelict apartment blocks, decrepit villas and half-collapsed telegraph poles that tilted at crazy angles. Perhaps most poignantly of all was a children’s play ground on the beach but still behind the wire. The slide and seesaw had rusted to the colour of dried blood, oxidised by years of sea spray. The top of a double A-frame was barely visible, having almost been buried by a dune. Two sets of corroded chains, plunging into a bank of sand, were the only certain indicator that once it had been a swing. I wondered what had become of the toddlers and children that played here so many years ago. Some of them would have been of my generation or just a little older. Did they have children of their own now?

I walked back to the car park and consulted the most recent edition of the Rough Guide for Cyprus I had bought for the trip. The map of Famagusta showed the old town and the Palm Beach hotel in some detail but the whole area of the dead zone was daubed white, except for a church some two hundred yards inside the barrier. The Rough Guide claimed the church was now an orthodox icon museum that had been opened by the Turkish Cypriot Administration a year before. I was intrigued by such an anomaly; was it possible now to visit the ghost-city of Varosha, even as a tourist? To my knowledge, only journalists escorted by the Turkish and United Nations troops that patrolled Varosha had previously been allowed access.

The church was situated some ten minutes walk away. I decided to leave the jeep parked at the Palm Beach and walk the short distance. I skirted the edge of the dead zone, following the fence of barbed wire and oil drums that stretched around the town cutting it off from the rest of the world. I was transfixed by what my eyes saw through the barrier; away from the shoreline; Mother Nature had taken back control of the town. Forests of prickly pears had sprouted up along the sides of streets and whenever there had been a private garden there was now a veritable jungle of long grass and wild shrubs. Villas, once grand edifices of pink, sandstone and ochre were visible, silently crumbling away in the stillness. Many were missing roof slates and windowsills; their doors had been boarded up to prevent further looting.

I paused to check the rough guide to get my bearings, I realised that I had been walking longer than I intended and I wasn’t quite sure where I was.

I heard the car pull up behind me, an old Renault 12 that had seen better days. The drivers window was wound down and the face of a young man emerged

"Are you lost perhaps? Can I help you…?" he asked earnestly.

With his faded Adidas top and fuzzy down on his cheeks, he certainly didn’t look like a undercover member of the Turkish security forces. Beyond him, I could see textbooks piled up on the passenger seat.

"Yeah sure" – I replied still, a little cautious "You see this place on the map, I want to go there. Can I, an Englishman, go into the Maras to see the icon museum; the Klis muzee?"

Maras was the Turkish word for suburb and was the local name for Varosha; perhaps I could impress my new best friend with a few words in his mother tongue?

The guy nodded at me sagely "Yes, I know of this place but it is far I think to walk. I can take you there. Jump in," he offered, throwing the books onto the back seat.

Looking towards the heavens, I could see storm clouds preparing so trusting in the kindness of strangers, I stepped into the car and we headed off. The man asked me if this was the first time I had been to Cyprus and I established he was studying hotel management at University. After graduation, he was hoping to work in the resort of Antalya in Southern Turkey.

We pulled into a side street and ahead of us was an army checkpoint. The driver spoke rapidly in Turkish to the NCO in charge explaining where I wanted to go; the solider seemed to roll his eyes in exclamation and spoke back. It was translated for my benefit:

"Yes, you can go. But from here you must walk and you must follow this man. Also you must not take pictures". I noted the stress in his voice and I understood what he meant. I knew that a photo shot was not on the cards; the whole of the barbed wire fence around Varosha was regularly emblazoned with signs forbidding any photography.

I shook with the driver and wished him well and with some trepidation walked beyond the checkpoint. I followed in the footsteps of the officer and he walked down the middle of a deserted thoroughfare; a battered road sign indicated this was Rodos street; the Greek name for Rhodes. Around me where empty shops and boutiques, with names printed in faded Hellenic script with their shutters pulled down or windows boarded up. It was clear this particular area had been maintained at least in part and a fresh coat of white wash had been applied liberally in order to spruce the place up for visitors. Yet I could see the narrow side streets of Limmos and Skinthos spouting off of Rodos street and these were as forlorn and ruined as any other part of Varosha I had witnessed. The illusion was shattered.

After two hundred yards we approached Ayios Ioannis Square. The church, recently restored and set on a well-tended lawn, was impressive but appeared incongruous in its surroundings. The whole scene felt surreal, it was as if I walked into a deserted film set while the entire cast and camera crews were absent having lunch. Around the square, the Turkish army had taken residence, converting offices into billets and an Audi NSU car showroom was now a command post from which two conscripts eyed me warily.

The officer pointed to the front door of the church and I pushed the portal open. The building inside was painted in a shade of battleship grey that befitted a state institution as opposed to a place of worship. It was spotlessly clean, almost clinical even and the wizened keeper who took my admission fee clearly took a pride in the appearance of the place; busily sweeping and polishing the tiled floor as I walked around. The church was devoid of any signs of supplication or devotion, the altar had long been removed together with pews and there were no painted frescos on the wall.

But there were of course the icons; Greek orthodox religious artwork abounded. They had been taken from the dozens of church’s now deserted and unused in Northern Cyprus; they found a new home here in this cold, silent place. It struck me as pitiful that the faithful who had lavished such reverence on the icons a generation ago, could no longer come and see them with their own eyes.

My request to climb the belfry tower to take in the view was politely declined by the museum keeper, so I stood and peered out from a downstairs window. Turkish troops were marching outside and it was now spitting with rain. I thought again of the people that had once worshipped at this church and indeed the thousands of men and women that had lived in Varosha and who could only return and relive their old lives in their dreams.

I’m neither a religious man nor a strong believer of the super natural but before coming to Varosha I had heard stories about the place that erred on the ethereal. Some people say it is haunted by the souls of its inhabitants who have since died in exile; their spirits returning to their old homes to vent their wraith on the soldiers who, overnight, made them refugees in their own country. I had heard of Turkish conscripts going mad while on duty there and running towards their erstwhile enemies in the south, never to be heard from again. For me, I could think of no place as deathly or haunting as Varosha; a town frozen in time.

I become uneasy in the church and I left, escorted towards the checkpoint once again. I glanced again at the gutted stores along Rodos Street and I wondered if walls could talk what stories they would tell. Times long gone when happy tourists with lamb chop sideburns and bouffant hairdos came to shop or the pain and anger of their owners who fled in fear of their lives one hot day many years ago? I paused before the checkpoint barrier was raised turning towards the church for the final time. Maybe it was the wind or my furtive imagination but I could swear I could hear words being spoken, the language was neither my own or Turkish:

"Fige tora -.Afto ine to meros Mou…"

I left and hurriedly walked back to the Palm Beach Hotel, keen not to catch a cold in the rain that was now beginning to pour down.

Freddie


Joined: 18/03/2008
Posts: 12


Message Posted:
20/03/2008 20:42

Hi again, Karen



That is a fantastic true story and i am so glad you posted it to me. Don't think it needs editing either, the tone really adds to the story. Where did you find it?



Thanks, lovingcyprus, for the amazon links, I have placed my order and it will be waiting for me when I get back to England (in Spain at the mo~), ready to put in the suitcase!

orangekazzie



Joined: 31/07/2007
Posts: 794


Message Posted:
21/03/2008 08:18

Hi Freddie

It was on the MSN site I pointed you to earlier. I knew I'd read somewhere about someone entering the fenced off area so I went back to the beginning and started from there. Didn't take too long because I knew I hadn't been on the site for about 18 months.

Karen

Rooinek


Joined: 24/03/2008
Posts: 1


Message Posted:
24/03/2008 20:40

To the last two posters, I'm glad you enjoyed the story from the return to varosha site... I'm the guy who wrote it by the way...! I was studying in a creative writers class in Basingstoke a few years ago and I had to write a story about a ghostly experience and my visit to Varosha just fitted the bill... Reading back, I think it's a tad cliche ridden and could do with editing in places, but non the less it's pretty much how I felt at the time when I visited the forbidden zone back in 2003....



Have fun....



Michael

orangekazzie



Joined: 31/07/2007
Posts: 794


Message Posted:
24/03/2008 20:51

Hi Michael

Thank you. I always enjoyed reading articles on the site. I stopped visiting it when it got very one sided with the comments.

I would love to visit Varosha and I know lots of others would, maybe one day.

Karen

Freddie


Joined: 18/03/2008
Posts: 12


Message Posted:
26/03/2008 09:43

Hi Michael



Well, as you already know, I enjoyed the story! Do you think I would have a similar experience if I attempted the same?



If you don't mind me asking, what were you doing in Basingstoke? Not that I have anything against Basingstoke, but I used to live in Lightwater, just up the M3 . . . And now you are in Cape Town and I am in Spain! Are you still writing?

Freddie