Harman notes that he hasn’t been to Cyprus, which reminds me of my own trip there a couple of years ago. Two stories:
1) G.H.: at first you’ll nearly kill yourself driving on the left. I was in Australia. We were driving out of Melbourne to see, yes, the penguins who beach themselves on an island there. (All together: adorable!) We get to an intersection getting onto a highway. I start to cross, or rather pull right into oncoming traffic. I hear a scream like a horror flick from all the passengers. I then slam the gas to shift to the other side of the road, but in doing so come face to face with a truck. Another scream. (It was rhythmic, too, like you hear in screams in a comedy: Aaah!…. then shift of all eyes, then Aaaah..!) Then I somehow averted the truck, pulled into the lane, shared a nervous laugh with my friends (some of whom still strangely talk to me—if you were in that car and you’re reading this: Hi, I’m glad to be alive, too), and went to see penguins. So a happy ending. But I should say, after that I drove just fine (perhaps that scathing memory kept me remembering which way to go). Now, I’ve logged several thousand miles on the left hand side with no problems. What works really well is using a stick shift (which is much cheaper anyway), since I never forgot when I was driving stick.
2) And you must have a car in Cyprus. Freelancer Extraordinaire and I used the “transportation” system to get to the beach areas on the west side of the island. This meant taking a series of vans that would drop us off at weird points in various towns, where we’d wait in heat without hope of moving on, before finally another van would arrive to get to the next point. It took us six hours on the way back to make it 40 miles on the highway. Also, if going to Cyprus: avoid the beaches. Lot’s of Brits who, as best as I could tell, were ill informed of the hazards of being bright red and still baking the sun at 11 am. But Nicosia is quite the city. If you want to see the Turkish side, however, you’ll need to tell the driver you’re going to city hall, not to the border crossing, since they pretend not to know where it is. And make sure to get a map of the turkish side when you cross, or like me, you’ll get lost since your Cyprus map has the Turkish side completely shaded, and it’s really hard to find one’s way back to the UN checkpoint.
PHILOSOPHY IN A TIME OF ERROR 