Cyprus is wonderful, but if there is anything to complain about, it is the working hours of stores, restaurants, bars, etc. When we arrived in August, basically EVERYTHING (except kiosks, bakeries, and the grocery stores) was shut down for the whole month, as is customary in many places in Europe. However, when September rolled around, we were routinely foiled by stores closed for no explicable reason, with no hours posted, and no notice they would be closed on their Facebook pages (which is another minor complaint– nothing here has a website, but most things have a Facebook page, with very little helpful information and basically never updated. Cyprus, you’re doing social media wrong.) It has a major chilling effect on us wanting to anything, because we go through all of this effort to find out where a place is, how to get there, where to park, and so on…only to find it closed. Why go through all that when I can just buy shoes or whatever I’m looking for online?
As an example of our woes, Severin has tried to stop at this little shop that sells French stuff– you know, wine, cheese, crackers, etc– at least six times. He’s stopped after work, during work at different times, on the weekends, different days. Always closed. We know it’s open sometimes, because they send us promotional texts to our cell phones. (We didn’t actually sign up for said texts, but Embassy phone numbers are recycled as people come and go, so I get all kinds of weird promotional messages in Greek that I can even read.) We showed up at Alphamega, the largest grocery store, at 10 am on a Saturday morning only to find it didn’t open until 11 am. I showed up to Carrefour, the other large grocery store, at 7:15 pm on a Friday evening only to find out it closed at 7. 7!?!?!?!
We had been counting our lucky stars, because apparently the working hours we have now are generous compared to the working hours of two years ago. Two years ago, it was illegal for stores to be open at all on Sundays and after 3 pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The law was changed in 2013 due to the financial crisis, under the belief more working hours would generate employment and increase consumption, which it did. When we first arrived in August, there was some debate in Cyprus’ House of Representatives that the 2013 law should be allowed to lapse and stores revert to their old hours. It was hard for me to fathom the government would actually regulate the hours stores could open, but I should note for our readers that Cyprus had a communist president until 2013 and the communist party remains the second largest party in Cyprus’ House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and effective today the old hours are being reinstated. The rules don’t apply to bakeries and kiosks (kiosks are kind of like large gas station stores– they sell ice cream and chips but no produce or unprocessed food). Some large stores may stay open on Sundays anyway and just pay the fines, but given we are in the habit of doing most of our grocery shopping on Sunday afternoons we are quite worried about having to adjust our schedule– especially because it means pretty much everyone who shopped on Sunday will now be shopping on Saturday between 11 and 3! There is hope though, because the bill is disputed between the executive branch and the House of Reps, so now Cyprus’ Supreme Court will step in to decide whether we will get to grocery shop on Sundays or not.
Not being able to grocery shop at a modern-style grocery store with a decent selection is a total first world problem, I know. But a problem, nonetheless!!