The Station of Skarinou, station of coffee, "ampelopoulia" (birds) and peacefulness, existed for sixty so much years, an oasis of resting and recreation, for the travelers of the entire Cyprus.
The Station of Skarinou built near the banks of river Pentashinos is characterized by rich vegetation of pines, acacias, eucalyptuses, cypresses and various fruit trees. Its amazing natural environment, its cool climate and its locality, contributed for the station to become famous to all Cyprus.
Somewhere at the beginning of the 20th century, the "Restaurant of Ppassia" (property of Ropa family) began to function in the region of Skarinou Station. Its first customers were various coachmen that travelling from Nicosia to the city of Limassol and Paphos and visa versa, stopped at Skarinou in order to rest and refreshed.
While the time was passing, the station became famous for the services that were offered there and thus continuously more travelers preferred it. As a result in 1938 and 1938 respectively, two more restaurants opened at the area while at the same time many "pramateftades" as they were called then the travelling salesmen, they were gathered daily, outside these restaurants selling goods that were produced by themselves like "pastellaki" and "matzounia" (a sweet that is not produced in our days). Seeing their clientele daily multiplying, the householders of the restaurants began to include in their menus "ampelopoulia", due to the fact that the region around was famous for this species of birds. Thus, the geographic place of the village that was found precisely at the center of Cyprus and also the gastronomic food that was offered there, made Skarinou very famous to the entire island.
The fame that was acquired in the region, it was exploited by the residents of the villages around, which were gathered at the station during feasts and organized various events. A characteristic of these events was the celebration for the Carnivals, where people from Skarinou on Sunday were using any material they had available to make a camel (something like the Carnival King that we have in our days) and put it at the center of the station. Then they were gathered there, together with residents from the communities of Agios Theodoros, Lefkara and Kofinou all disguised without exception and had fun with dance and songs until Green Monday.
In 1960 two petrol stations were created, which were maintained there until 1985.
It must be mentioned that certain important events marked the history of the station. On 14th of April in 1941, at the "Restaurant of Ppassia", the foundation of AKEL took place, in a space where afterwards Paraskevou Ropa changed it into a den, in order to hide at the duration of the EOKA fight in 1955-59, the head of EOKA, George Griva Digeni. At the same time, at the duration of the Turkishcypriot Mutiny in 1963, there were a lot of cases where the restaurants accepted gunfires from turkishcypriots of the neighboring village Kofinou.
In 1983 the manufacture of the motorway Nicosia – Limassol meant also the beginning of the end for the station. The restaurants and the petrol stations closed simultaneously because nobody was using the road anymore.
Some years afterwards, the son of one of the old householders came back in the region and opened again one of the old restaurants.
|
