Surreal....

I know this is Cyprus, and things sometimes happen in an almost Discworldian style, but even so...

Yesterday, Richard asked the lawyer to proceed with searches on the house we want to buy.

Today he received an email from the lawyer, quoting his fees, and saying what he would be doing - drafting and negotiating the contract, stamping the contract, filing with the land registry. So far so good. Then it went on to say:

5. Look after the payments on your behalf (payments are done in stages according to work progress by the developers).

6. Apply to the Council of Ministers for the necessary permission to register the property on your name and of course Mr B.......'s.

Uh... but the house is already built so it's not in progress. And we have NO idea who the Mr B mentioned might be. Moreover, the subject-line in the email referred to 'property at L.......... Street' whereas we had understood the address to be 4, C........... Street.

Richard wrote back, asking if we had been sent an incorrect message.

The lawyer replied that the email was indeed intended for someone else, and apologised.

But then he went on to say that he referred to L.......... Street because the title sent from the estate agent concerns a propery at 4, L.................. Street!

I looked at the photocopy of the title deeds we were given. The map showing the plot is clearly marked (in English) as C........... Street. The text (in Greek) appears to have two addresses: one is the Greek equivalent (K................ Street) but there's also an address at L................. Street mentioned on the document.

Then I looked at the copy of planning permission for the upper two storeys, which we also had a copy of. It's not easy to read handwritten Greek, and the photocopy isn't very clear, but it does indeed look as though the address given is L............... Street.

Strange.

Richard phoned the agent. She said that streets in Larnaka are being renamed, so perhaps this was formerly C.............. Street, now L............... Street.

Hmmmm.

Well that might make sense - who knows what they might do? - except that the plans are dated 20 years ago, and the deed was most recently altered in 2005. Or so we think. Not being fluent in Greek (or in Cypriot culture, despite over 8 years living here) we're not quite sure what it means. And we certainly don't want to sign a contract for the wrong property!!

The agent will apparently phone tomorrow morning and confirm either way.

Sigh.

Still no news from Daniel, either. But we hope that 'no news is good news'. He's probably very busy. Or perhaps the email system isn't working properly, and messages are taking several days to arrive (as happened last summer). If the port is also out of range for mobile phones (unlikely, but I suppose possible) then he might not even have received our text messages.