Cyprus - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

By Culture Smart and Constantine Buhayer

Don't just see the sights—get to know the people.

For much of its history Cyprus was regarded as the Cinderella of empires--beautiful, abused, isolated. Today, the island is divided between the Greek-Cypriot south and the Turkish occupied north. However, both sides take pride in a shared "Cypriotness," and are united in their common hopes, pain, memories, music, excellent cuisine, rich history, and majestic landscape.

Culture Smart! Cyprus equips you with essential information on the history, values, and attitudes of the people you will meet, their customs and traditions, and offers tips on etiquette and socializing.

Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kuperard
• Release date: Apr 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781787022614

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

As shadows envelop your land

The winds, Cyprus, are blowing with your love.

You are the jewel of the Mediterranean, unique.

(From Cyprus, by the Turkish-Cypriot poet Emine Otan.)

Land of the lemon tree, of the olive grove.

Land of the southerly winds.

Cyprus, this golden-green leaf cast in the ocean.

(From Chrysoprasino Fyllo, by the Greek-Cypriot poet Malenis Leonidas)*

As you fly over the Eastern Mediterranean, you see glittering in the blue sea below the island of Cyprus, which lies at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Like Aphrodite, the Cypriot Goddess of Beauty and Love, it emerged out of a primordial ocean; its highest mountain, Troodos, is a fragment of that ancient seabed.

More than any other sea, the Mediterranean has been the crucible of great civilizations. Across the island of Cyprus they have left not only their imprint but their legacies down the ages, and current ownership is subject to hard negotiations.

Indeed, history never stops. In the latest sequel, the Republic of Cyprus was forcibly divided in 1974, its people dislocated. The Greek Cypriot South is controlled by the government, attuned to the world, a member of the European Union, and accommodating the international community. All this within a stone’s throw from idyllic beaches and the majestic landscapes of the hinterland. Visitors will find a generous country enjoying a take-it-easy, sigá-sigá, yavaş-yavaş lifestyle, great food, and cultural heritage.

The breakaway North Cyprus is isolated but not forgotten. It is administered by the Turkish Cypriots and occupied and recognized only by Turkey, which acts both as its lifejacket and its Achilles heel. It contrasts with the South, but all communities on the island, even those who think they stand apart, possess a shared Cypriotness and common hopes and memories.

Culture Smart! Cyprus is unique in its approach. It combines essential insights into the Cypriot people of today—their values and attitudes, and the ways geography and history play into their lives—with practical advice on how to approach unexpected social situations, especially if on occasion you have the impression of walking on eggshells. What one person might see as cultural, another sees as political, and a third as territorial.

The Cypriots have a deep-seated experience of trauma and survival. They can present a variety of faces to confront, accommodate, or welcome outsiders as and when necessary. They are instinctively welcoming and generous and enjoy good companionship, lively debates, and mellow conversations.

So let the discovery begin of this multifaceted, surprising people, for the poet is right when she says Cyprus is the jewel of the Mediterranean.

* Texts adapted from the Turkish and Greek by Constantine Buhayer.

KEY FACTS – THE REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS

KEY FACTS – NORTHERN CYPRUS

CHAPTER ONE

LAND & PEOPLE

GEOGRAPHY

If in your childhood you played Cops and Robbers and used your hand to make the shape of a pistol, with this gesture you also made a handy map of the island of Cyprus, upon which you can locate its towns, regions, mountains, and beaches. For that matter, Cyprus’ outline also looks a bit like that of the United States.

Cyprus is a European country with a global presence disproportionate to its size. Much larger than Hong Kong, Luxembourg, or Malta, and less than half the size of New Jersey or Wales, it lies on the quieter corner of one of the more earthquake-affected parts of the world and is subject to occasional shakes and tremors.

Its coastline offers no obvious natural harbors, mirroring the smooth coastlines of its Middle Eastern and Egyptian neighbors. The southern coast is interspersed with a scattering of difficult-to-access coves, a little to the chagrin of the tourist industry that pines for ever more brochure-style beaches, and which successfully imported golden Egyptian sand to cover stony strips. The duney north and east face no such challenges.

The ruins of Buffavento Castle set into the steep, rugged crags of the Kyrenia Mountains.

There are two mountain ranges. The largest is the vast complex of Mount Troodos, whose refreshing valleys and escarpments finger their way down to the dry coast in the south and to the outskirts of the wide and at times dusty Mesaoria Plain in the northeast. The second one is the narrow Kyrenia range, or Pentadaktylos, running like a wall, parallel to the northern coast.

Apart from the Pedieos River, the land is furrowed by dry riverbeds, seasonal streams, and torrents that can overflow in winter. The highest mountain is Mount Olympus, at 6,404 feet (1,952 m).

Since Cyprus is an island that was never part of a landmass, there was no movement of terrestrial animals from distant places across its terrain. The existing forms of wildlife were almost certainly imported by humans or arrived as stowaways and evolved there. This includes the long extinct and unique Cypriot pygmy hippopotamus, which shrank through a natural process. Today the island has a rich but fragile flora and fauna in need of fewer developers and more TLC. Worth pointing out in this land with a limited number of mammals are the unique Cyprus mouflon; the Cyprus mouse, with its Mickey Mouse ears, scuttling in the vineyards, which was recently recognized as a new species native to the island; and the Cyprus donkey, found in a feral state in the Karpas Peninsula and uniting Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot enthusiasts in ensuring its preservation.

The Black Whip Snake Dolichophis jugularis is the longest in Europe, reaching up to 9.8 feet (3 m). It is known as the gardener