24.-25.12.2018 Berlin
Christmas was in Berlin and family Christmas Dinner on the 24th, in the German way, was hosted by Marina and Franz. As Franz is a professional musician and Marina a long-time amateur player of the piano-accordion there was a good Christmas carol sing-along.
26.12.2018 Larnaca, Cyprus
On Boxing Day, the Christmas Dinner Party, less Franz, re-assembled in Schönefeld Airport to go to Larnaca. There was a short taxi ride to the Island Hotel on the beach near Larnaca Airport. There were hundreds of flamingos wading in the Salt Lake as we passed.
The reason we came here is to visit the grave of Retha Sterritt, Roland’s former partner, who died last year near Nicosia, Cyprus. The cemetery was just a short walk from the hotel down a dusty track. Actually a muddy track at this time of the year.
Retha, together with most of her children, was only nominally Jewish having abandoned that kind of thing after being a refugee in Germany during the war. However, one of Retha’s daughters had relatively recently, rediscovered the religion and wanted the full trappings and so the burial ended up being in the only Jewish cemetery on Cyprus. For reasons unknown, the gravestone doesn’t include useful stuff like a proper full name and dates that mean anything to non-Hebrew speaking people.
After a bit of research, we hit on the idea of a type of Stolperstein as an additional commemoration. You see Stolpersteine all over Europe set in the pavements outside houses. They are 10×10 cm concrete cubes topped by a brass plate with names and dates of Holocaust victims. This was a concept initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992. Since 2005 all the plates have been made by hand by the sculptor Michael Friedrichs-Friedlaender. We tracked the sculptor down in his studio in Berlin and he kindly made us a similar plate for Retha. Retha was not, of course, a Holocaust victim but her family were, and it seemed like an appropriate way to get some proper names and Gregorian calendar dates on the grave.
The cemetery had a padlocked gate and a shoulder-high concrete wall all around and we had no idea who to contact to get it opened so we bought two step-ladders and went over the wall.
27.12.2018 Larnaca, Cyprus
Cold and wet. I spent the afternoon searching for a replacement AC-DC adapter that I must have left in Singapore. I found a laptop charger that might do the job voltage-wise although the connector pin was wrong.
Micki came to collect me in the car from our old stamping ground of Larnaca Marina. I stood there for ages in the rain while Micki waited at yet another marina.
28.12.2018 Larnaca, Cyprus
The guerrilla grave-tending began. We fixed the brass plate and tidied up best we could but the cemetery is otherwise a mess with building rubble and tumbleweeds.
I found a charger plug in an electrical shop in Larnaca that would do the job but I had to also buy a soldering iron and multimeter to fix it.
