What the Hell……!!!??? Winter in North Cyprus

by Ralph Kratzer

As some of you may know I come from Bavaria, the very southern part of Germany and I grew up in a boarding school close to the wonderful mountains the “Alps“.

Last Wednesday when I woke up I felt that it was pretty cold in the house, which is not unusual for this time of the year even in Cyprus.

But when I opened one of my shutters to my balcony the sight I saw made my eyes open wide and I thought “what the hell is this“!!!??? I felt as if I was back to my home country in the German Alps! The North Cypriot mountains covered in white snow!

It is the 9th winter season for me on this island and I have seen snow several times on the very top of the mountains. But snow down to the village and even on my roof and in my garden, this was a new experience for me.

I went back to the bedroom and woke up my girlfriend telling her “hey, you have to get up and look! There is snow in our garden!“ But she only mumbled something like “es ist scheißkalt hier drinnen!“ what I would translate as “it is damned cold in here!“ and she disappeared completely under her quilt.

So I took my dog “Laika“ for a walk up the the mountains as I have been doing every morning for the past 8 years.

The temperatures when we left were not higher than 4° Celsius this day and maybe even colder the higher we climbed but we were rewarded with stunning views over the mountains which looked like being covered with powdered sugar.

For Laika it was the first time in her 8 years life that she stood in the snow and she was looking at me as thinking “hey, Daddy, what is this white stuff which makes my paws freezing?“ But in the end she became familiar with the rare cover on the ground and she was romping around like in her youthful days.

Later in the day my girlfriend and I went to Kyrenia and we discovered a nice Cypriot custom : building snowmen on the bonnets of their cars and driving around with them. It seems they love snow because it is so rare in our Mediterranean climate.

As an expat I prefer the higher temperatures over here because this was one of the reasons I came to the island! But in contrast to Middle Europe we in Cyprus know that spring is coming soon and with it the warmer days!

First published on www.tfrnorthcyprus.wordpress.com