Between the 19th and 26th of March 2018, I was in Nicosia on a Geography field trip with my university. The city stands as Europe's last divided capital, separated along the United Nations Administrated Buffer Zone in Cyprus (aka. The Green Line) between the Republic of Cyprus in the south and The Northern Republic of Cyprus (recognised only by Turkey) in the north.
My fieldwork project set out to look at Geocaching within Nicosia to see how the city's history and other stories are told through geocaches as well as whether geocaching has needed to adapt to the social, cultural and political environment of Nicosia. During the three days of independent research, I visited 13 Geocaches in both the walled city of Nicosia and the wider area. At the time of writing, I am still processing all that I have seen and experienced, as well as wondering where to start in terms of my final report.
Noticing that at the time, there was only one geocache within Northern Nicosia (GC6H09T: Büyük Han), I decided to create a second geocache to commemorate my time here as an undergraduate.
I picked this site for the geocache because the street art mural of a whirling dervish by artist 'Paparazzi' (brought to my attention by fellow students on a walking tour during our last day) which faces the green line, has for me at least, come to represent how my time has seen the creative and artistic interests of cultural geographers coupled with the conflicted reality and security implications which interest the geo-politically minded.