Z4 wrote:PeterWilliamson wrote:Well, this is sure to slightly annoy a few people (if anyone can be bothered to read it all...Jeez it goes on a bit!) but I thought I'd point out some of the BAD BITS of Cyprus, so anyone thinking of moving there can get an accurate picture of what they might be letting themselves in for...
You know your(sic) in Cyprus when:
• Medical care is stone age (at best). The "Living the Dream in Cyprus etc" sales blurb reckons that most "healthcare professionals are trained in England and America". Yeah right! Like anyone who can easily earn £100K+ as a doctor in UK or USA is going to Cyprus! Cases of medical malpractice/butchery I have personally witnessed include:a friend's death while in hospital due to them stopping essential medication
• There is no water...no intention of building new desalination plants or improving the infrastructure..."it'll be fine...we might get around to doing something next year, maybe" or "look! It's raining! Everything's fine. Just don't look in the reservoirs!" (which are currently just 11.5% full)
a cat scratch - went septic (might result in amputation of two fingers) because doctor insisted "it's OK!"
a routine, minor eye operation - didn't use dissolvable stitches and didn't prescribe eye drops, even though they were an essential part of the healing - resulted in massive complications
a heart problem which cost the patient THOUSANDS of euros for a stay in a hospital bed while "doctors" just scratched their heads and smoked
dentistry, while very cheap, is akin to battlefield dentistry
a friend got a minor lung infection which resulted in her being flown to UK to be hospitalised for REAL medical treatment (after the Cyprus "healthcare" system nearly killed her)
routine prescription of banned drugs
massive over-prescription of antibiotics
complete ignorance of basic healthcare when presented with a infected wound (no attempt to flush or clean the wound, just another prescription of antibiotics)
a person left to die after operation - the surgeons finished up and left, but the patient was simply left to die on the operating table with no intensive care treatment, food or water
gynaecologist kissing his patients
a child who had lymph nodes unnecessarily removed because they couldn't be bothered to wait for blood test results - which came back negative - no surgery was required. The child will now have a massively compromised immune system for the rest of her life
• Most houses are built by morons:you can't put bog roll down bogs
• Bureaucracy is every Cypriot's favourite pastime. Queuing (or queue-jumping) is their second favourite, and bribery is their third.
they are uninsulated
made of concrete for some inexplicable reason, using massive amounts of water and energy
Title deeds only exist in fairy tales, so you can't actually sell your ugly concrete shitbox
• Many of the private schools do not teach compulsory Greek. What is the point of sending your child to school when they don't even learn the native language? Admittedly the private schools are very cheap...I suppose you get what you pay for.
• Cyprus is not in the EU. It does not abide by the EU rules and regulations (eg. governing smoking in public, use of toxic pesticides and other dangerous chemicals in/on food products and crops, anti-corruption of police and government, ignorance of drink-driving laws)
• The country is politically unstable (north/south divide). The "politicians" have no intention of ever solving the "Cyprus problem" because they'd all be out of a job, so they just backbite and slag each other off on a daily basis.
• Legal system is incredibly corrupt. If you are not Cypriot, you are guilty. If you own a taverna and can entertain the policeman and his friends, you are innocent. I attended court for a non-Cypriot friend's hearing, and he was not asked to say ONE SINGLE WORD throughout the whole, corrupt, procedure (he was not even asked to confirm his name). He was found guilty (of course) and issued with a hefty fine. He was not given one second to defend himself.
• Talking of legal matters, Cyprus has some of the most expensive (and ineffectual) lawyers in the world. To sell a house in England: €395. To sell one in Cyprus: €2000. And they'll screw it up.
• Don't even try to sell your house through an estate agent. Because nobody in their right mind is buying anything in Cyprus at the moment, they have INCREASED their commission to 7% + VAT. Compare this to the 1.25 - 1.75% that you'd expect to pay in the EU. And you'll get that inimitable "Cypriot level of service", too.
• Food is often WAY past its sell by date (two month old fish, anyone?) in the shops. I am not one of those namby-pamby people who will throw out perfectly good produce because the 'best before' date tells me to, but some of the stuff in the shops would surely kill most living creatures.
• Consumer products are overpriced, out-dated and never guaranteed (ever tried getting a REFUND in a Cypriot shop?!)
• Cyprus is a dumping ground for stolen cars from all over Europe.
• It is nearly impossible to buy goods from abroad - ordering something off the internet is a near impossibility (most companies do not deliver to Cyprus because they know the product will probably be stolen/delayed/overcharged by "customs" officials). The post office/customs system is a law unto itself - charges almost certainly will be made on anything you try to import, regardless of whether all EU taxes have already been paid (Cyprus is NOT in the EU, remember?). The postman may/may not get around to delivering your post....if he feels like it.
• The price on the shelf ticket is rarely the price you pay at the checkout.
• Internet access is hugely expensive, incredibly slow and notoriously unreliable. Congratulations on actually being able to read this through your lousy connection!
• Shops don't open until 11am, unless it's after Easter (but not before Lent) and a Thursday (except in January when they open at 10:30am) then close for lunch at 12:30pm (except from October 20th - November 18th and February 21st - April 4th in a leap year) unless it sells meat in which case it closes for a slightly earlier lunch in March, September and December (but not on Mondays and only on Thursdays between August and October unless it's the owner's "saint's day") or if it's a hairdresser then it's not allowed to open on Thursdays at all and cannot actually cut hair on Saturdays (unless you have light brown hair (but not highlights) on a Wednesday) and re-open after lunch at 4pm (from April - June) or 4:30pm at other times (apart from Passover when they open an hour earlier and close (except on Fridays or if there's a sigma in the month) half an hour later) then all shops (except peripteros, door manufacturers, bakeries, hat shops, stationers and steel fabricators) must close by 8pm (except on the run-up to Christmas when they must be closed before anyone else finishes work so they don't get a chance to buy presents (apart from spanners, underpants and jousting poles which can all be bought between 9pm and 9:17pm in December) unless it's the third Tuesday before Green Monday) unless the proprietor feels like not opening at all because he simply can't be bothered.
• Nobody can drive. Cypriots actually drive AT other cars to prove a point. Whatever that point may be.
• Cypriots do not value life as highly as civilised people. Somebody dies..."oh well, never mind. Have an olive".
• They speak a language that not even Greeks can understand.
• They shoot sparrows (and dogs...cats....people.....)
• Meat is inedible. "Lamb chops" are like scrawny bits of old sinew, "pork chops" are from pigs so excessively over-fattened and pumped full of hormones that they are frighteningly huge and flavourless, and the cattle are crammed into pens so they cannot ever move, and fed a noxious mixture of illegal chemicals and growth compounds resulting in the most bland, flavourless beef you could ever wish to vomit.
• Torturing animals is a national pastime. People on this forum regularly prove this point by saying "I read in the Daily Mail last week about some bloke in England who garotted a kitten...etc. etc.". This simply proves that in civilised countries, evil acts such as these are so rare that they are NEWSWORTHY. In Cyprus, a day WITHOUT animal cruelty would surely make the headlines.
• Lying is a fine art. "I'll meet you there at 6pm" really means "I have no intention of meeting you whatsoever. I'm just lying, again". And lying is not something to avoid or be ashamed of in Cyprus - I think there are national awards for "best bullshitter".
• God it's boring. Life on a small island loses its interest when you've literally "been there, done that" many times (I guess the frustration of having very little to "do" takes about two years to kick in). And any event (theatre, performance, festival etc) always has the Cypriot trademark: "a bit shit".
• Cyprus actually takes the Eurovision song contest seriously.
• Most Brits in Cyprus are dejected, boring piss-artists with nothing to do except slowly drink themselves to death before the skin cancer kills them, while trying desperately to "sell the dream" to anyone who listens, in the vain hope that they can flog their cheap 'n' nasty "villa" to them, so they can escape to England where their sterling income/pension will not get completely destroyed by the lousy euro exchange rate.
THE GOOD BITS:
• Many village folk are the friendliest people on earth and gave us an endless, free supply of olives, grapes, oranges, apples, firewood...whatever is in season.
• It's almost impossible to pay for coffee or beer in the local taverna - some lovely local will buy it for you.
• It's nice and sunny most of the time.
• Council tax is ludicrously cheap.
• Courgettes and aubergines are cheap (although the huge amounts of pesticides dumped on them will probably outweigh any nutritional benefits).
Wow, how long did it take you to write this?
Probably as long as it would take someone to refute most of this BS!
