In Cyprus, door knobs mean nothing. I have yet to use a door knob for the entry of a domicile that had a mechanical function. It is just something to pull or push the door with. All doors with the purpose of securing a room are operated with a key, and the key is what works the latch to unsecure the door. I once broke a key off accidently in a lock tumbler inside a door knob, so I get anxiety every time I have to use the torque of a key to get inside the various apartments I’ve stayed at in Larnaca. This also makes it really easy to lock yourself out if you don’t have a routine in place when you enter and exit an apartment. I’ll tell you a secret: we have one key for four people in this apartment, so the door mat outside the front door is the communal hiding spot so no one will ever be trapped outside. But I have a hard time imagining Cypriots being the kind of people to enter your home without permission and with ill-intent.

There is definitely more history from me to look into on this next subject, but the general understanding I have about water heating in Cyprus is this: Hot water tanks are stored on the roofs of buildings, not on the inside. In the United States, we generally insulate our water heaters inside the homes as it is efficient at keeping temperatures high. But here in Cyprus, the roofs are generally warm to hot most of the year, so polyurethane tanks are used to store hot water on roof tops with solar panels to power the heating process. One of the isolation apartments I stayed in had a digital temperature gauge on the wall that took me awhile to understand why it usually read anywhere from 65 to 73 degrees Celsius. It was the water heater temp, and it dropped during the night. A lot of older buildings have a switch you need to hit to turn on the hot water to the bathroom where your shower and sink are. They do not always have hot water in kitchen sinks, because you have a stovetop or appliance to help you out if you need small batches of heated fluids. With the near constant sunshine during the daylight hours of Cyprus, hot water can easily be summoned to the pipes this way. No where else in the world that I have travelled does it this way, but I imagine it is not entirely uncommon in the Mediterranean.

Further discussion on the topic of water: it is cheap here. For as much as I consider Cyprus pretty arid, they seemed to have little water concerns currently. While reading into the water heating tanks on the roof, I read anecdotes by a 20 year ex-pat in Cyprus who described a period of time where water was only piped a few days a week, so cold water storage tanks became common in homes for the days the water did not run. Part of this was several years of drought and the other part was no alternatives for fresh water. But this storyteller said after a few good ‘wet years’ and the creation of desalination plants along the coast (there is one just east of the Larnaca airport) the water problems seemed to be long forgotten. I can see off in the inland horizons the use of wind turbines and I wonder to myself if the islands renewable energy resources are enough to power the desalination process for fresh water. If it is enough, the island has near limitless fresh water potential. But if the renewables are not enough, then one would assume the cost of bottle water would have skyrocketed with the massively inflated hydrocarbon fuel costs in the year of 2022… which it hasn’t.

I just wish there were not so many plastic bottles being used here. (Seriously, 1.5 liters of delicious, refreshing water can run you like 75 cents, so water bottles are so much easier than refilling from the tap constantly as you consume huge amounts throughout the hot days). I really hope they have one hell of a separation and recycling program on the island for plastics. My inner environmentalist might never forgive me for my time here in Larnaca otherwise.

-Adam E