German Lemons

There seems to be a theme to this week.

It is Sunday, the village has a decent size compliment of tourists. Most of them are German.  Blimey, these folks chatter; we can hear them coming from a street or two away.

We have been sitting in the garden at the new outside dining table getting on with important Sunday afternoon jobs.  A little reading, a killer sudoku or two, some daydreaming, a craft project.  The table is laden with all of the items needed for those as well as coffee cups and secateurs weighing light items down against an occasional breeze.

All of a sudden a tourist ventures into the garden.  With no preamble he asked:

Are you tourists?

Feeling a little confused as to why we were being quizzed about our status by a tourist we replied:

No, we live here.

He looked entirely baffled so we tried again.

We live here.  This is our home, our house.

Comprehension dawned and was quickly followed by the real point of his incursion.

May I take a citron?

Ahh, the great tourist obsession with lemons.  Or, as this week seems to be showing, a German obsession with lemons.

Happy to oblige we picked up the secateurs-as-paperweights and snipped a couple of clementines from the tree, complete with a handful of leaves, before allowing him to select his lemon.  Chancing his arm slightly he then pointed to a second lemon and asked if he might have that one also.  We agreed and snipped once more.

He and his companion thanked us and then disappeared down into the village with their fresh-as-can-be-citrus fruits clutched in their hand.

We chuckled as we remembered a holiday we had here in Cyprus before we relocated here in 2006.  We booked a hotel in Latchi for a few days and when we arrived found that the car park was surrounded by lemon trees.  Each tree was laden with the most fantastic looking fruit.  As we checked in we cheekily asked if we might pick a lemon or two.  The receptionist’s expression, as she said we might, was fairly transparent.

There are lemons everywhere and these tourists worry that we might miss one?  Why bothering asking me?  Could they not just help themselves?

How quickly we have become used to having our own trees, though as the regular garden pictures show we are still  besotted with them.