I know, I know, I'm behind.

But I'm going to skip ahead - straight from the introduction of Cyprus to the final chapter.

Today was our last day in/on Cyprus, and it also happened to be the most depressing day of the trip. So, in order to better capture my experiences, I'm postponing the past 9 days to be blogged about at a later date. I promise, they've been ridiculously busy, typically resulting in schedules starting at 9 am (or earlier) and finishing at some point between 10 pm and 12 am. So yeah, except for one night, I've gotten at most five hours of sleep for over a week now.

Back to today.

We crossed the UN Buffer Zone across the city of Nicosia into the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (the government recognized only by itself and Turkey), and we continued up into the northern part of the country to the town of Famagusta. The drive was beautiful. This country is gorgeous, and Famagusta may just have been the most beautiful town we've seen.

We knew that it would be a serious day, thanks to the warnings of our professor. Rather than meeting with speakers, politicians, average citizens, and NGOs, we had a day of just observing the effects of the Cyprus Problem.

Random fact: Famagusta is supposedly where Shakespeare's Othello was set. We went there first and ran around the castle walls and had a good ol' American tourist time. We saw the huge Gothic mosque, which (in contrast to Spain) had originally been a cathedral. And then we ate a lot of food - as always.

Even given Famagusta's tourist-friendly appearance, there were still a few signs that this was not just your average Mediterranean beach town. Around us, there were various buildings that were crumbling around us - for what reason, we weren't sure. But it was somewhat unsettling just to see what must have been beautiful buildings a few centuries ago, now half-destroyed ruins.

See, in a very simplistic version (which is dangerous, I realize), the history is that after conflicts in the 1960s between Greek-speaking Cypriots and Turkish-speaking Cypriots, each "motherland" country intervened. In 1963-64, it was the Greek military that came and killed many Turkish Cypriots.  The response was the Turkish military's invasion (if you're a Greek supporter) or intervention (if you're a Turkish supporter) of 1974, which resulted in more deaths. And it continues today, as the Greek-Cypriot Republic of Cyprus and the TRNC are still divided by an island-wide UN Buffer Zone because the two communities have been unable to find a solution to the problem.

What we saw just further complicated the problem and the hopes for a solution that I have. The tour continued from there to the former tourist center of Famagusta known as Varosha, which is now entirely a "Forbidden Zone," still held today by the Turkish military. Literally, it's an entire ghost town. No one but the Turkish army is allowed inside it, no photographs are permitted, and guards with guns will intimidate anyone even holding a camera.

Even still, we drove around the outskirts of the Forbidden Zone and looked past the fences and barbed wire. At nothing. It's absolutely empty. In 1974, the residents of this neighborhood had to literally pack up and leave overnight to escape the oncoming Turkish army. And no one's been allowed back since then. Instead, the houses and hotels were left exactly as they were. Now they're crumbling, and it's essentially a prime example of The World Without Us. It's really, really strange.

Even more unsettling was to walk on the beach, which had once been a high-class tourist destination, with high-rise hotels that you might have seen in any tropical location. The sandy beach itself was beautiful, with turquoise water that I could watch all day. But my typical beach enthusiasm wasn't there, thanks to the view on land. I really wish that I could have taken a photo without risking my life or incarceration because the 360-degree panorama would have been overwhelming. Behind the beautiful beach was a seven-kilometer stretch of beachfront property, also completely abandoned. Besides the standard decay, this part of Varosha had also been bombed in 1974, and it was still apparent on the sides of these hotels.

It was just weird. And PCR hippies that we are, right in front of one of the guard towers, a few of us drew a giant peace sign in the sand and walked away.

From there, we visited a museum of the mass killings of Turkish Cypriots at a schoolhouse (which, horrifyingly, included schoolchildren). And then a few memorial sites for Turkish Cypriot victims of additional killings and the site of a mass grave.

It was upsetting, to say the least. I'm still processing it. It's not the happiest, most hopeful way of ending the trip, but it was an important reminder of how recently the violence happened and how it still affects practically everyone on the island. It was draining but important to see.

I just couldn't help but think of all the tourist groups that we saw wandering around the current town of Famagusta and wonder if they ever bother to pay attention to the violent history that lies just 10 miles away from their happy little cruise stops. According to my professor, the answer is no. Therefore, I'm really glad to be in this program, as exhausting as it is.

(Once I get the chance to upload my photos, I'll update this with whatever I managed to get around the guards...)