Recognition of a Cypriot Winter

As low temperatures drop to around 40 at night in Nicosia, I am reminded that there is a “winter” in Cyprus after all. For someone from the Midwestern U.S. this may sound ridiculous, but Cypriots had warned me during my time here last summer and again this year that the winters “get cold”. The reason their warning has some truth has to do with the difference between the building materials used in Cyprus, specifically the mud brick and sandstone structures that make up the urban fabric of the Old City. The relatively poor insulating qualities of the walls and the amount of exterior walls that surrounds most rooms in a house with a central courtyard (my room has 3 exterior walls) brings the temperature down drastically after the sun goes down. In addition, there are no central heating systems in these hundred+ year old houses which forces people to use electric space heaters to escape the cold. Although the temperatures are not bitter cold, the winter season is more difficult to escape because the cold follows you indoors. It also didn’t help that there was no hot water in my hostel for the last week…

The exterior of a deteriorating building near my hostel. The wall is made of mud brick with a plaster coating to protect the bricks from the elements.