the elevator story

Ahhh, it's been a while since I've had a really good "Cyprus moment" to share with you guys. Well, not really, I guess I have them all the time - things I would've written big long blogs about when I first got here, but sadly these idiosyncrasies have just become part of normal everyday life so when it takes 45 minutes to get the bill at a restaurant and when I stand in "line" at the deli for a half hour, or get shoved out of line by a 10 year old at the bakery (they learn by example from their parents of course), or have the driver in back of me practically sitting in my back seat as they attempt to drive "through" my car, I don't even blink an eye anymore. Like they say, if you can't beat em, join em. So that's what I do. I've learned that "line" means a big mob of people casually pushing their way toward the counter. I've learned that when I want to go faster I just ever-so-gently touch the front of my bumper to the back of theirs and they will usually move over to the other lane. Yep, I think I've pretty much assimilated.

But every once in a while, I still have those "are you fucking kidding me?" moments. Like on Friday, for example. Barb and I were going to a friend's house for a party. On the way in, we ran into 3 others going to the same party so we all got in the elevator together. You know the type, the small European elevators; they aren't exactly the hotel suite sized ones we are often used to in American apartment buildings. In fact, we all sort of looked at it skeptically before entering but then remembered that we've been in a million elevators just like this since we've been here. After all, we ARE in Europe (hybrid with the Middle East), and we got in anyway. Doors closed, we pressed 3. We went up about 4 feet, then down about 2 and then it stopped. We pushed the button again. Nothing. Pushed some other buttons. Nothing. Frantically pressed the "open door" button, over and over again. Nothing. Then we tried the "alarm" button which made an ever so faint brrrring brrrrring sound…inside the elevator. Thanks. Just in case we didn't know we were stuck…

Barb's a bit claustrophobic so she's starting to panic a bit as she looks up and quickly identifies that there is absolutely no way out of the 5 foot by 5 foot square box 5 of us were packed into. She decides she's going to pry us out so she grabs the inside of the tinfoil looking doors and pulls them apart only to expose…the very thick bank vault-looking doors with levers and switches and wires all over the place. Somehow she felt a bit comforted. The rest of us, however then had the scary realization that those were doors that no one was going to be able to "pry" open. We noticed a phone on the wall behind a dirty little glass door that looked like it had never been opened (surprising because the elevator didn't look like it had never been stuck before!). The phone was green plastic and reminded me of a phone maybe my grandmother would've had in her kitchen when I was about six. Barb picked it up. Nothing. No dial tone. Nothing. We all have cell phones, but being that we're in a thick metal box, they weren't getting much reception. The little sticker thing on the wall above the buttons said maximum capacity is 400 kilos. For those of you who don't know, 400 kg is almost 900 pounds. That would mean we'd each have to weigh almost 200 pounds (and we don't)! The same stupid little sticker also had an emergency number. Perfect, we thought, and we had the native greek speaker call it and explain to them that we were stuck in an elevator in one of their properties, gave the address, with a lot of shouting and repeating, partly because there wasn't much reception and partly because the guy on the other end of the line was, well…Cypriot and we were bothering him, of course, because he thought for a minute he might actually have to do his job. But no, in the end, he didn't. Why? Well, as he explained to us, the guy who is in charge of the area that we were in was on vacation. And, once again, in true Cypriot fashion, didn't have anything else to say about that. He was away, and therefore, we must continue to be trapped in the elevator. Good-bye.

Then we heard a familiar voice outside the elevator as our friend Mark, who was also on his way to the party came up and pressed the elevator button only to hear 5 familiar voices on the inside. He thought he might have a crowbar in his truck, so went out to check and came back with an ax (yeah, I have no idea and didn't ask). I felt like I was in a horror movie as we saw the end of the ax coming through the crack in the elevator doors as he tried to pry it open with no avail. We were ok though, I had a 6 pack of beer and two of the others had bottles of wine, so we knew we'd be fine! Between us and the other greek speakers who were at the party, we called the police department, the fire department and the marines at the embassy, just so we'd have a lot of people on their way, hoping that maybe one would show up. By then, several people from the party had come downstairs to talk to us and keep us company. Finally someone told us they heard sirens! They actually used sirens to come rescue us. We're probably in the paper today, I haven't checked yet. (There's not a lot of news here!)

In the end, it was the fire department that came first. They used some little gadgets they had and managed to get the door open. We were so grateful, we offered them our beer and wine and our efharistoumes (thank yous). Did they smile? No. Did they ask if we were ok? No. Instead, in Greek, they told us that it was our own fault because we weighed too much. Assholes. Really. So then we went to the party and ate lots of pizza and drank lots of beer so at least next time we get stuck we can at least agree that it was our fault because we weighed too much. Like I said, if you can't beat em…