I’ve been living and working in Cyprus for 3 weeks, and then had to travel to Israel for a week to celebrate my birthday with my family (I am 32 now! Yey… 😮 ), spend some quality time with my new girlfriend, and also fix some mess that suddenly appeared out of nowhere with my Israeli business.

I came back to Cyprus this morning, to find that nothing has changed. A peek at a newspaper a cypriot was holding revealed that the greek plane crash is still in the news; it was the news when I left, and it’s still the news now when i’m back. The same thing holds for the house. The old “Ice Tea” cardboard box I left on one of the tables is still there, the bread in the freezer seems untouched, and in general it looks like nothing was moved. This gives me a feeling that I never really left this place.

It seems Cyprus is a slow and relaxed island, when a disaster happens, it is in the news for weeks. When people die in a car crash, it is news. If a dog was killed in the center of town by a motorcycle, it makes the news. This would not happen in Israel. Dead dogs are never news, and car crashes are so numerous they produce daily statistics. Or perhaps Israel is a place where so many events are happening, and happening so fast and so often, that anywhere else seems peaceful, serene, uneventful.

I’ve come to like this generally relaxed atmosphere.