It is 11.30h in Nicosia. With the proud eternal morning task of the rooster now being performed by Benedikt, a mechanical 2 second sound of the aluminium curtains being lifted in his room signifies the Cypriot sun invading the dusty darkness of our ice-cold cave. Residing in a cave that had its borders defined by tiled floor which makes a freezer unnecessary and the anti-isolated walls, the everlasting Cypriot heat was gratefully welcomed by two highly intellectual students. The time has now come for us to slide out of our beds, and with an ease of which the stoics could only dream of, start yet another day of building and expressing our full human potential.
Having explored every corner of this peculiar island, finished the semester, and said goodbye to almost everybody we cared about, we have finally come at peace with our own minds and exited the Erasmus frenzy defined by fighting against time to see, eat, meet, drink and consume in every other way imaginable as much as is physically possible in such a short period and the consequential stress this behaviour produces.
Our last days were slow, shaped by a privileged freedom in the vacuum of a non-student, non-working life and absolute absence of the urge to rush into any activity. This fusion gave birth to an idyllic state of mind which one might, with caution, even call peace, and in this peace, one felt as if all the puzzles of life, just for a moment, were in their place. In this vacuum of time, both of us invested the highest reaches of our imagination into building a day which could honour the freedom given to us, and in the most glorious way, we succeeded.
This is a short insight into how two of the highest young intellectuals structured their glorious last days in the corners of Eastern Mediterranean, before closing this 5-months chapter and departing on their separate ways to becoming living myths and legends. It is also a brief description of a strange phenomenon of clicking and clacking which defined our sound surroundings, as well as the absurdness of this cold apartment.
As soon as the metal curtains were lifted, so too the magnificent metallic orchestra of our residence commenced its daily routine of clicking and clacking. The rolling of curtains was followed by the exact same sound, this time from my room. This was a short interlude into now more invasive and decisive sounds, induced by my hangover hands operating in the kitchen, restructuring the Babylonian tower of dirty dishes and taking the crucial task of cooking the coffee. The amount of coffee we were consuming was astounding and might have been more appropriate for an 8-member family.
However, the strenuous activities which awaited us during the day required superhuman abilities, and even though we had them, the sheer quantity of mental and physical stretching we were about to set onto required additional doping. The first words exchanged usually consisted of degenerate and onomatopoeic shouting and laughing, giving some soul to the mechanical music around us. I walked down the street to grab breakfast at a Lebanese fast-food shop Bake n’ take which fed our hungry yet busy to cook student stomachs on so many occasions during these 5 months.
My eyes barely open, tongue in a knot and all other aspects of being gracefully hangover tried to deny my basic human ability of ordering food. However, with the confidence I had in those words coming out in Greek – “2 falafels and 1 veggie pie”, stemming from the everyday practice of saying those words at the exact same spot to the exact same guy at the exact same time, I could have as easily left my brain at home and still be able to order.
Coming back home, I would be greeted as a war veteran who not only came back alive but brought with him what he went to fight for. The moistness of those falafel sandwiches from Bake n’ take was and will forever remain an enigma to us. We would open the packages, and there were already two waterfalls of hummus and tahini dripping out on both ends of the falafel sandwiches. Moreover, the moistness was such that even the middle parts which poor thin pita was trying to hold started to fall apart. Somewhere in the middle of the feeding process, one would eventually attack the sandwich in all possible directions, but it is known how approaching many battlefields at once has never turned out a good decision.
Hence, the sandwich would backfire, breaking down to the point of no return, and one would soon find himself licking the package and gathering crumbs of falafel from the table. The combination of fatty, processed food, vitamin D intake at the balcony and overdose on caffeine resulted in the deepest of the topics one could hear come out of the mouths of students, mostly generated by highly esoteric and edgy reading material. In between these discussions, just to reach the perfect balance, we would jump into recalling the last night’s events and our own degenerate behaviour. Both of our blurry memories would now merge into one brain machine and result in hysterical laughing, and identical degenerate behaviour all over again.
It was Sunday, thus both of us gave ourselves a well-deserved rest from physical activities and dedicated this hangover, windy, lazy day in Nicosia to intellectual growth. There we were, laying at the couches, listening to the whistles of the wind rearranging trash, cats, leaves, ever present road signs and all other animate and inanimate objects of the street with the occasional ambulance siren marking the intermission. All of this came together in an absurdly unrhythmic yet melodic clacking which became so natural to our ears that it was basically as peaceful as silence for us. Each of us immersed in our own reading materials, we gave little thought to the absurdity of our audio surroundings.
However, the absurdity grew with each new wave of wind, making it impossible even for the most concentrated scholars to not get distracted. The wind wasn’t particularly strong; moreover, it’s strength was merely that of a wind which makes you think: “oh, today is a windy day”, nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, it wasn’t the wind, but the general shakiness of absolutely everything the Cypriots built (at least in our street of Georgiou Seferi) that was the ultimate creator of this orchestral clicking and clacking. The building was more of a shadow than a proper human-built structure, a transparent ghost of a building through which the winds blew effortlessly, as if it weren’t even there.
This resulted in the ice-cold temperatures, but to this we already got used and paid little attention to – the absurd thing which made us both lift our noses from the depths of our books and back into the reality was the periodical clicking conversation the wind and our front door were having through the channel of this hollow living room. One could first hear this not seriously dedicated to its task wind as a small dog on a leash barking on our balcony door, and then just a moment later our front door, just as everything else poorly handled and built starting to shake, answering back to the wind in a drum-like manner for a few seconds, with the depth of its voice like a big, old, uninterested dog which is barking simply because he is a dog and dogs must bark.
“What the fuck is wrong with this building?” were the first words uttered from Benedikt’s mouth, and they represented both of our questioning minds which unconsciously knew something stupid was happening around us but didn’t understand until the clacking reached heights which couldn’t be left unnoticed. This perfect one-sentence summary of the absurdity left us laughing like idiots while the clacking continued consistently. Now the more it went on, the more aware we became how stupid it sounded, and the more it made us burst into laughter. Until then we were unable to notice it, but as soon as we did it was impossible to get rid of it.
After contributing our own efforts to the clacking environment which surrounded us by cleaning the Babylonian dish tower and cooking the amount of food necessary for our 200 kilo brain masses respectively, it was now time for another round of a coffee overdose which ought to prepare us for a journey through 3+ hour long movie classics such as Casino or Scarface which we dedicated our afternoons to.
Being extremely self-aware young intellectuals, we decided to stretch our legs after such a long sedentary activity, and during the walk, as it always must be, grab a falafel. Now the falafel we grabbed was of a slightly different nature with one major distinction from the falafel of Bake n’ Take. It seemed as if Bake n’ Take owners managed to somehow get a monopolistic hold of the sauce market, as this falafel from Avo was completely devoid of any moistness whatsoever.
The moistness of Bake n’ take was in a diametrical opposition compared to Avo, as it seemed that the latter originated in a different dimension where water does not form the basis of life. One might assume that this falafel isn’t any good, however this is wrong. It’s price of 1,50eur makes it good no matter the dustiness and coldness of premade falafels inside of the sandwich. It’s a falafel, it’s cheap and it will fill your stomach partially. One simply ought to take a one litre bottle of water and 3 lemons to averse the risk of not choking on its dryness.
We grabbed our falafels and went on our way. As we walked with no particular plan and into a direction we haven’t really ventured in until now, I remember feeling a great contempt with my own life. The hangover brought my level of brain activity just down enough to not overthink, we had food and enough water with us, I had no deadlines or similar time limits which would make me just a bit less present, we have seen every corner of this island and partied more than enough and I had enough money in my pocket to survive for some time.
All this resulted in such a peace of mind which a modern human being simply can’t be feeling more often than rarely, and I was grateful for feeling that way, no matter how shortly it lasted.
On top of all these objective reasons, there was a major factor without which all the former ones wouldn’t even be of any importance – I was in a company of a person whose acceptance made me feel as comfortable as possible to be a nasty human being I am. On top of the incredible knowledge Benedikt has of other people, which can originate in nothing else but genuine interest in human nature and love towards others is his even greater ability to not judge despite the knowledge he possesses. Out of this opinion I had about him came out me being myself without the slightest act and with such an ease one wishes to have every moment of life.
Our legendary day was at its end as we found ourselves in front of a huge prison complex. Next to the road, just below the high fence, we saw a barely holding it together wooden bench which immediately became our resting place. On the opposite side of the road there was a grass field, an otherwise decent natural sight, yet now polluted by some sort of a huge, rounded block of concrete. “Only in Cyprus” we thought to ourselves yet again, as we squeezed a handful of lemons onto our falafels, with an open bottle of water in the other hand, ready to save us from the potential choke the dusty falafel might cause.
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