Souvlaki is one of the most popular street foods in Greece and for good reason. Its stuffed with well cooked and seasoned meat, garnished with a cooling tzatziki sauce, wrapped in a delicious crispy pita and best of all? It tastes like heaven! Souvlaki stands for “meat-on-a-skewer”, however the majority of Greeks and especially those from Athens call any type of pita wrapped meat a souvlaki, specifying the type of meat and method of roasting separately. For example Souvlaki with Pork Gyros or Souvlaki with Chicken Skewers etc.

This souvlaki recipe can actually be a very healthy dish if prepared the right way. By using good quality pork for your pork gyros, low fat yogurt for the tzatziki and avoiding dipping the pita in oil and frying but opting for a healthier baked version instead you can have the full-blown souvlaki with pork gyros experience in less than 270 calories – yes that is less than your average sandwich! That being said, if you feel a little naughty add some extra virgin olive oil to your souvlaki with pork gyros and enjoy a more street-food like experience.

Homemade souvlaki recipe – Preparing the pork gyros
The most important step in making the perfect, traditional Greek pork gyros souvlaki is nothing else but the pork! Select good quality pork meat, preferably slices of tenderloin and season with a selection of Greek spices like oregano, thyme, garlic and onion. The secret ingredient in this traditional Greek pork gyros recipe is adding a tiny bit of honey and vinegar to the marinade to break the intense pork meat texture. Marinading your pork gyros in the fridge for at least a couple of hours will allow the spices to infuse the gyros and give it the desired aromas.

The best way to serve your traditional Greek souvlaki with pork gyros is nothing other than wrapped in a delicious traditional Greek pita. Finding the original Greek pita can be quite challenging as most supermarkets stock only the arabian style ones but you can most likely find them at your local Greek deli. Of course tzatziki is the preferred sauce to garnish with. Don’t forget to garnish with some salt and paprika, sweet or spicy if you like an extra kick. Most Greeks enjoy their traditional Greek souvlaki with some potato chips stuffed in the pita so feel free to try adding some as well.

To read about how to prepare. please visit: My Greek Dish

Everybody knows families can be trying at the best of times.  Throw into the mix members of a Greek family, and you'll soon understand exactly why it is that the word 'drama' originates from Greece.

The extended Greek family is very adept at making one feel guilty for something you have, or quite possibly haven't, even done.  And usually the older they get, the better they become at it.

Here, Greek Gateway shares their Top Ten guilt-tripping lines that they can recall their Greek elders having said at least once:

10) “Αυτό θα φορέσεις?”

Literal Translation:          That's what you're wearing?

What they really mean:  This line mostly applies to women, but it can also apply to the occasional male, depending on the situation.  Sometimes the Greek parent will take a quick glimpse at what you're wearing before you dash out of the door for a night on the town with your friends,  and they'll stop you dead in your tracks to let you know that your outfit looks either 1) too provocative...2) too revealing or 3) too trashy.  Don't let it get you down though - they're just used to turtlenecks and knitted stockings.

9) “Δεν θα πας να δείς τη θεία σου?”

Literal Translation:        You're not going to see your aunt?

What they really mean: This one might be a little difficult to understand at first.  Have you ever gone on vacation to Greece and all you want to do is go island hopping and pass out on a beach? Exactly.  But sometimes, before you leave, your parents will guilt you into visiting every last aunt, uncle and cousin that you have back in the homeland, leaving you little time for fun in the sun.

8) “Τη θα κάνεις με αυτή τη δουλιά?”

Literal Translation:         What are you going to do with that job?

What they really mean: Are you currently employed as a Doctor or lawyer? Bravo!  Your Greek parents think the world of you.  But wait...you're not? What's thay you say?  You work in computer science You write for a newspaper? You're a professional photographer?! “Τη θα κανίες μαι αυτή τη δουλιά?!!!”

To read more, please visit: Greek Gateway

Amidst warm applause and in a highly emotional ceremony, UNICEF Greece on Thursday presented the Lambros Kanellopoulos award to Greece’s coast guard for its search-and-rescue efforts in the Aegean, especially its work for the protection of refugee and migrant children. The award was one of the prizes handed out by UNICEF in 2015 for Universal Children’s Day celebrated on November 20.

Earlier, a video of coast guard officers’ sensational efforts to save small children had been shown.

According to senior coast guard officer Athanassios Hondronasios, the number of refugees and migrants arriving by sea had increased 1,873 pct in comparison with 2014. During that time, there had been 4,800 rescue operations, in which 89,000 refugees and migrants were rescued, including 16,500 children and infants.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

Startup Safary is a multi-dimensional event that guides its participants through the startup ecosystem of the hosting city.

It started in 2013 in Berlin, Germany from members of the city's startup ecosystem. Since then the event has expanded to other European cities and from 2014 it is also taking place in Athens, Greece, a city with the thriving startup ecosystem the last years, especially during the financial crisis.

Although Greece has a long history of entrepreneurship and doing business and although the first online companies started appearing in the country as early as 1998-1999, following the dot.com rise in the USA, it was only after 2010 with the economic crisis that startups started taking off. Five years in, Greece has a developing startup scene, with a lot of companies scoring big funding rounds or acquisitions, while many initiatives have started aiming at supporting new entrepreneurs.

This year Startup Safary Athens, an activity organised under the auspices of the Global Entrepreneurship Week, is taking place on November 20-22 and for three days the town's coolest startups and tech companies will open up their doors, while co-working spaces and incubators, academia and other institutions will host keynotes and side-events supporting the networking between the startup scene of the city.

Participating startups include Heliix, EazyBNB, NutrINsider, Palo Services, Conferience, Tourismart, isMOOD, Owiwi, Travelplanet24, Apivita and 100Mentors. Participating initiatives include Orange Grove, egg, Bios Romantso, InnovAthens, The Athens Incube, Stone Soup, Aephoria and Found.ation. Startup Safary Athens support among others Hellenic Professionals Informatis Society, UK Trade & Investment, City of Athens, Hellenic Startup Association, American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce and ESYNE.

Startup Safary Athens organisers have put together for another year a really completed and diverse program for all the participants. Highlights include:

The Apivita Experience Store (Solonos 6 & Kanari, Kolonaki):

The company will host at its Experience Store in downtown Athens a series of keynote speeches (Apivita's Head of Human Resources, Apivita's CEO, Felix BNI's Peter Economides, Taxibeat's Nick Drandakis), as well as a recruitment session and a free diagnosis of face skin type and beauty tips.

InnovAthens (Technopolis, Kerameikos):

Seasoned institutional investor Loukas Pilitsis (founding partner at Anchorstone Partners and ex-head of Piraeus Bank Group's VC & PE) has put together a discussion panel on supporting Greek startups in scaling globally during the crisis times. He will be joined by Intale's COO Orestis Tzanetis, HSA's President Socratis Ploussas and Eurobank's Head of Digital Innovation Sotiris Sirmakezis.

StartupLab at Orange Grove (Leoforos Vassileos Konstantinou 5-7, Kallimarmaron Stadium):

The incubator set up by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Athens will be transformed into a Startup Lab of creativity and entrepreneurial experiments for this year's Startup Safary Athens. Orange Grove will host Dutch entrepreneurs and experts with experience in the Netherlands, USA, Africa, Asia and Latin America, while participants will have the chance to either start developing their ideas or early-stages startups or delve deeper into the business worl by following hands-on workshops in topics like business plan execution, advanced marketing automation, nomadic entrepreneurship etc. During Startup Safary Orange Grove will introduce for the first time in Greece the Valorisation Canvas which will help participants to develop their ideas.

Startup Safary @ the egg (Leoforos Syggrou 190, Kallithea)

The egg is a 12-month incubation program set up by Eurobank and Corallia Clusters. This year they have put together a full program with keynote speeches, as well as presentations from the companies hosted in their premises. Speakers include Athanasios Kalekos, partner at Odyssey Venture Partners, Theodoros Moulos, COO at Pinnatta, Vaggelis Papakonstantinou, co-founder at MpLegal Law Firm, Fanis Rigas, co-founder at Kariera.gr and serial entrepreneur, and Dimitris Gkanatsios, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. In between the speeches, the visitors will have the chance to see pitches from egg startups in tourism, agrobusiness and foodtech, e-business, industrial design, ICT and edutech, medicine and pharmaceutical and logistics sectors. Last but not least egg will give voice to young innovators to pitch their own ideas for 5 minutes in front of egg stuff and visitors.

See the full program of Startup Safary Athens, arrange your own schedule of events and book your tickets at http://athens.startupsafary.com.

 

Athens is taking part in the Global Entrepreneurship Week for many years now. Host of GEW in Greece is the Federation of Hellenic Associations of Young Entrepreneurs (OESYNE). Listen below to the message of the President of Global Entrepreneurship Week Jonathan Ortmans for GEW Greece 2015.

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, November 24, at 7pm at Syntagma Square. Athens' Mayor Giorgos Kaminis will give the signal for the official illumination of the city center and welcome the holiday season!

Festivities will kick off at 5:30 pm with a music tour by two groups of the Athens Municipality Philharmonic Orchestra that will start from Ethnikis Antistasis Square (former Kotzias Square) and Monastiraki metro station. The groups will then meet at Syntagma Square to welcome Athenians and visitors.

At 7pm, Athens Big Band will feature Greek singer Sakis Rouvas who will make a special appearance at Syntagma Square and perform songs dedicated to Paris.

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

This week I made a great discovery – one of those little things that makes daily routine just a bit easier, just a bit more ‘modern’. And the fact that this all about Athens made me equally surprised and excited. Maybe this is a sign of things to come…? Granted I’m a few months late, but I really hadn’t heard much until now – great apps need great marketing too.

TfA Tickets is a mobile app that allows you to purchase tickets for all Athens public transportation, right from your mobile device. The app displays the tickets, in count-down time, so you (and any ticket inspector) are totally clear on your ticket status.

 

The app is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch (iOS 7.0+) via the App Store, or for Android via GooglePlay. Tickets are purchased directly via the app on your phone, payable by stored credit card, and activate 2 minutes after purchase.

 

You can buy all regular timed tickets, airport tickets and even multi-day tourist tickets. You can buy multiple tickets at once, in case you're traveling with friends, and purchased tickets will still be visible on your phone even if you lose data signal.

 

I think this is just great! I’ve already used it several times, and – to be honest – it’s about time. Now if I could only explain to the onlookers as I waltz past the tickets machines that I am carrying a legitimate ticket…

 

But there was more to my week than apps! On my weekend wander around town, I came across a gem in Kerameikos. Rakor is an easy, cool, affordable, delicious, vegetarian-friendly place to eat. It is a stone’s throw from both Thiseio and Gazi, and is really worth the walk over. This is fresh food – with meat, fish and vegetarian options – an interesting wine and beer list, and relaxed friendly service, in an airy, hipster-esque space that is very welcoming. A new favourite.

 

And with your new TfA app, getting there will be a breeze.

 

Until next week,

 

Jack

 

Plataion 10, Kerameikos

+30 211 710 8877 

Facebook & TripAdvisor Reviews

 

After weeks of wrangling over revenue sources to replace an unpopular education tax that was scrapped, the government is expected to announce an automobile registration fee hike based on CO2 emissions and the age of the vehicle.

Firstly, the exemption from registration fees will be narrowed from the current exemption for vehicles with emissions of 100 grams CO2/km, and will only apply to cars with emissions of up to 90 grams. The change will apply to vehicles acquired after October 1, 2010.

Under the current regime, 200,000 vehicles were exempt from fees, with most of these being in the 90-100 gram range. The government will reportedly impose a fee of nine cents per gram in this category. Hence, a car with emissions of 98 grams will now be charged with an 88 euro fee.

Secondly, all vehicles registered after 1 November 2010 will be saddled with fee hikes. This covers approximately 480,000 vehicles, which currently are charged between nine cents and 3.4 euros per gram. This is expected to be hiked by between 10 and 30 cents per gram, with cars that have low CO2 emissions paying less.

To read more, please visit: The TOC

Traditional Greek cuisine is based on the pure products from Greek Mother Nature to form a balanced nutritional model that can ensure a better quality of life and physical health.  Products with unique quality and unsurpassable nutritional values include; olive and extra virgin olive oil, dairy products, honey, ouzo, fish, juices, water, nuts, wines, mastic from Chios, crocus from Kozani and much more  These products have blended together and created a noble cuisine rich in nutritional ingredients, which can satisfy the high gusatory and nutritional needs of modern man.

Let's take a look at some of the highly regarded Greek products:

As the basis of every recipe found in traditional cuisine, olive oil plays a dominant role in Greek nutritional habits. Greek olive oil is known worldwide for its purity, exceptional taste and high nutritional value.  You will find it everywhere - in glass or plastic containers with the words "visrgin" and "extra virgin" printed on them.

You will find unique cheeses of exceptional quality in the market, and you should make the effort to try these cheeses, such as kaseri, graviera, kefalotiri, myzithraand metsovone. These cheeses vary according to their origin, taste and name. Some of these cheeses are found throughout the country, while others are locally produced for local consumption. The most famous is of course Greek feta cheese. This is a white semi-soft, heavily salted cheese which is the basic ingredient for the Greek or Horiatiko salad, but it is also used in many other recipes.

Greece is not only the birthplace of Dionysus (God of Wine), but also the birthplace of wine making.  This wine came from the islands of Chios and Thassos and was famous throughout the Ancient world.  Historical and social reasons, as well as various natural disasters, were the main reasons why the art of wine making was neglected from the middle of the 19th century up tot he beginning of the 60's.  Greek winds are produced from a variety of grapes, many of which are unknown to Western wine lovers.

To read more, please visit: Visit Greece

As reported by London's Independent Newspaper, archaeologists unearthing the lost ancient city of Selinunte on Sicily's southwest coast have found a city frozen in time, little different from the day 2,500 years ago when it was suddenly attacked and its residents massacred and enslaved.

The allure of Sicily's beauty is nothing new.  Around 650 B.C. the Mediterranean island seduced a band of colonists from the port of Megara in ancient Greece who settled near the mouth of a small river on the southwest coast.  The colony - names for the wild celery ("selinon" in Greek) that grew in the surrounding hills overlooking the sea - grew into a prosperous trading port.  Ships from across the ancient world sailed into its harbor.  Residents of the city of 30,000 at the far western edge of anceint Greece purchased good from Egypt, Tirkey and France with coins imprinted with images of celery leaves.  With its commercial wealth, the city erected mighty temples to a pantheon of Greek deities.

Approximately 2,500 years ago, however, the glory days of the city the Greeks called Selinus came to an abrupt end,  In 409 B.C., an estimated force of 100,000 troops from Carthage traveled across the sea from modern-day Tunisia and laid siege to the city.  After Selinunte held out for 10 day, the Carthaginian invaders breached the city's walls and massacred approximately 16,000 residents and soldiers who tried to defend the city.  Another 5,000 residents, mostly women and children, were taken as slaves,  The once-thriving city became a ghost town after the attack.  Carthage's attempts to repopulate Selinunte never took hold, and it finally razed the city around 250 B.C. during the First Punic War.

To read more, please visit: History.com

The Athens Polytechnic Uprising in 1973 was a massive demonstration of the popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974. The uprising began on November 14, 1973, escalated to an open anti-junta revolt, and ended in bloodshed in the early morning of November 17 after a series of events starting with a tank crashing through the gates of the Polytechnic.

What Happened In History

Since April 21, 1967, Greece had been under the dictatorial rule of the military, a regime that abolished civil rights, dissolved political parties, and exiled, imprisoned and tortured politicians and citizens based on their political beliefs.

The junta, trying to control every aspect of politics, had interfered with student syndicalism since 1967, by banning student elections in universities, forcibly drafting students, and imposing non-elected student union leaders in the national student's union. These actions eventually created anti-junta sentiments among students, such as geology student Kostas Georgakis who committed suicide in 1970 in Genoa, Italy as an act of protest against the junta. With that exception, the first massive public action against the junta came from students on February 21, 1973.

On February 21, 1973, law students went on strike and barricaded themselves inside the buildings of the Law School of the University of Athens in the centre of Athens, demanding repeal of the law that imposed forcible drafting of "subversive youths", as 88 of their peers had been forcibly drafted. The police were ordered to intervene and many students were reportedly subjected to police brutality. The events at the Law School are often cited as the prelude to the Polytechnic uprising.

On November 14th of 1973 students gather at the Athens Polytechnic to demonstrate against the Junta. This demonstration which is coordinated with occupations of campuses in Patras and Thessaloniki turns into a student rebellion that gathers strength every day as more and more people join. On the 16th, the students and fellow demonstrators attempt to march from the Polytechnic to Syntagma square but they are halted by the police.

As more people gather at the Polytechnic, there are already plans for ending the student rebellion, using tanks from the nearby bases in and around Athens. The students are preparing for a siege, collecting food and medical supplies, building barricades, and broadcasting on a clandestine radio station that the time is right to overthrow the junta and calling for their countrymen to join them in central Athens. Anti-Junta and anti-American graffiti are painted on buildings and passing buses which spread their message throughout the city.

At 2 am on November 17th, tanks are ordered to crush the student rebellion at the Polytechnic. At 2:15 a group of students comes out to negotiate a surrender asking for half an hour to evacuate the campus. The officers in charge will only give them fifteen minutes but don't even wait for ten. At 3 am a tank crashes through the gate of the polytechnic and police and military storm the campus. As the gate crashes to the ground students rush out to escape and are beaten with clubs and arrested. At least 34 demonstrators are killed though there are rumors that the number is much higher. Several hundred are injured and almost a thousand are detained at the school and at the Ministry of Public Order which had been under siege by demonstrators.

For the next two days, crowds attempting to gather in central Athens are broken up by police and soldiers who are everywhere. Tanks are parked in squares around the city and surround the Parliament building.  The rebellion at the Polytechnic is over and the country is put under martial law for the next week. Groups larger than four people are not permitted to gather and there is a curfew between 7 pm and 5 am. 

How This Day Is Commemorated In Greece

November 17 is observed as a holiday in Greece for all educational establishments. Commemorative services are held and students attend school only for these, while some schools and all universities stay closed on this day. The central location for the commemoration is the campus of the Polytechneio. The campus is closed on the 15th (the day the students first occupied the campus in 1973). The commemoration day ends traditionally with a demonstration that begins from the campus of the Polytechneio and ends at the United States embassy.

Practical Information About This Day

Police security is always on high alert on November 17th. Commemorative demonstrations are observed and thus the streets of central Athens are closed - it is recommended that drivers avoid central Athens on this day. Public transportation (buses, trains, trams) in central Athens is also typically affected by the demonstrations.