Some good reportage about Greece for a change!

The OECDreleased a list that ranks countries based on the highest number of scientists per capita in fields such as mathematics, physics, technology and engineering. As it turns out Greece was placed among the 10 “smartest” countries in the world.

The first place was occupied by South Korea with 32% of students in the country studying in a scientific field, according to data from 2012. The country showed a significant drop in numbers since 2002 when percentage was 39%.

Germany came second with 31% and Sweden placed third with 28%. Sweden also placed second, after Norway, in regards to the widespread use of computers in the workplace. Finland came fourth with 28% as well, while according to the OECD most students in the country specialize in the research and production of medicine.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

by

Ioanna Zikakou

The Marina Zea in Piraeus is getting ready to hold the 15th East Med Yacht Show in 2016 and welcome international charter professionals, private yacht brokers and travel agents to give a broad display of over 60 Greek luxury crewed yachts for charter.

After being held for many years in the docks of Poros Island, the event was decided to be held between May 13 and May 18, 2016, in the Marina Zea in the port city Piraeus, one of the largest ports in the world.  

In a press conference, Piraeus Mayor Yiannis Moralis underlined the importance of the yacht show for the city's exposure.

“Industry professionals, travel agents, residents and the thousands of visitors that will visit the yacht show will have the opportunity to get to know the attractions and beauties of Piraeus”, Mayor Moralis said and added that the yacht show’s location — Marina Zea — is one of the most impressive spots in Piraeus.

The Municipality of Piraeus will support the yacht show through its ongoing tourism campaign “Destination Piraeus”. All participants and guests at the show will have the chance to get to know the city through the campaign’s apps for smartphone and tablets that support a number of languages.

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

Athens is one of the most popular European Christmas destinations. In specific, the Greek capital ranks 24th in preferred destinations among foreign tourists, beating out other European destinations. The first places are occupied by London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.

Athens, despite being one of Europe’s most popular destinations, is also one of the cheapest with hotel rates averaging about 74 euros a night during the Christmas period. In order to attract tourists from new markets in Europe during the winter period, Athens’ International Airport along with Marketing Greece, have started a new promotional campaign entitled “Speak Aθenian. Be an Aθenian,” to promote Athens as a destination.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter
by Toni Aravadinos

Greek teacher Angeliki Pappa was included in the list of 50 nominees for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Award 2016. The Teacher Prize Academy nominated Pappa for her work on dyslexia. The prize of one million US dollars will be awarded for the second time, and it is widely known as the Nobel Prize of teaching.

The aim of the Global Teacher Award is to recognize the exceptional contribution of a teacher to the profession, and to highlight the important role of teachers in society.

The top 50 candidates were selected from 8,000 entries and applications submitted from 148 countries around the world. The winner will be announced at the Global Education & Skills Forum, to be held in March 2016 in Dubai.

Angeliki Pappa specializes in teaching English as a foreign language to students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. The Greek Teacher has always been aware that there were no resources, or special methods available to support students with dyslexia who wanted to learn English in Greece.  

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

by

Ioanna Zikakou

The city of Trikala in Central Greece has become known as a winter destination because of an innovative idea to turn an old mill into the largest Christmas theme park in Greece. Four years after its inception the project has evolved from a small Christmas fair to a large theme park that last year welcomed more than 850.000 visitors.

“It wasn’t easy in the beginning to convince the city’s council to spend a million euros to make a seasonal theme park that operates only for 38 days per year and then it is deconstructed, while visitors pay nothing to enter” said Odysseas Raptis, the CEO of eTrikala S.A. who runs the project. “Our goal wasn’t to make money from the project itself, but to find a way to stimulate the local economy.”

Within four years, they are almost breaking even, while the “The Mills of Elves” brings in about 15 million euros to local businesses and the surrounding villages.

“Greece didn’t have a big Christmas theme park and we thought that this would be an excellent idea for people to come to our city,” added Raptis.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter
by Anastasios Papapostolou

 

 

Walking the cobblestone pathway of Europe's largest archaeological park in Athens is a rewarding history lesson in the world's grandest open-air university.

There are no fees, no professors, no homework. You don't even have to attend everyday, just as and when there's an itch of intrigue.

Like Rome, Athens surrounds you with the ancient: the Acropolis, the Theatre of Dionysus, Herodes Atticus, Arch of Hadrian and the Athennian Trilogy.  It's the crumbling Meccano kit of empires built and empires destroyed.

No other country can boast such a hard-bastard dynasty of athletes, Titans and Gigantes.  And it's the Greek history and landscapes, even more than empirical brick-and-mortar that jointly built the modern Greece we know today.

Here is a country routed in our consciousness, whether we've visited it or not.  The names of ancient Gods and Goddesses are taught to us at an early age, and the epistemology of their philosophers still widely referenced in society today.

Those of you with a loathsome memory of school Maths will recall Pythagoras's Theorem, the Trigonometry thorn that created hatred ina ll exam-sitters for Greek mathematicians.  Then, there are the philosopheres and the poets - the scholars.  Greek mythology and Greek tragedies.  We think of the Olympics, we think of Greece.  Even their yoghurts are famous.

To read more, please visit: Daily Mail Online

by

David Constable

Microsoft announced today that it has acquired the big-data focused company Metanautix, an innovative startup founded by Theo Vasilakis three years ago. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Vassilakis, who was an engineer at Google before becoming an entrepreneur, was able to get $7 million in capital to start Metanautix, including cash from well-known venture firm Sequoia. 

“I am excited to announce that Metanautix has been acquired by Microsoft,” Metanautix CEO Theo Vasilakis wrote today in a statement. 

“Three years in, we can take this work to the next level by joining forces with Microsoft. We look forward to being part of Microsoft’s important efforts with Azure and SQL Server to give enterprise customers a unified view of all of their data across cloud and on-premises systems.”

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

In Greece, underwater excavations of Lechaion, ancient Corinth’s partially submerged harbour town, reveal the infrastructure of more than a thousand years of flourishing maritime trade. Researchers from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and the University of Copenhagen are using cutting-edge methods to uncover the configuration and scale of the harbour.

Corinth ranked among the most economically and militarily powerful, and enduring, cities of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods. The city had an exceptional geographical advantage in the North East corner of the Peloponnese and controlled the Isthmus that facilitated land travel between Northern and Southern Greece, and travel by sea between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean.

Corinth, which lay some three kilometres from the sea, built on this natural advantage by constructing two harbour towns – the main harbour Lechaion on the Corinthian Gulf to the West, and Kenchreai on the Saronic Gulf to the East (see map to the right).

"According to ancient sources, most of the city's wealth derived from the maritime trade that passed through her two harbours, eventually earning her the nickname ‘Wealthy Corinth’," says archeaologist Bjørn Lovén from the University of Copenhagen and co-director of the Lechaion Harbour Project (LHP).

The moles and warehouses of Lechaion saw vibrant maritime activity for over a thousand years, from the 6th century BC to the 6th century AD. Ships and fleets departed from here laden with cargoes, colonists and marines destined for ports all over the Mediterranean and beyond. 

To read more, please visit: Humanities DK

A global campaign currently circulating on the social media calls to award the Eastern Aegean islands with the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution in the refugee crisis.

“The people of Lesbos and other Greek islands in the East Aegean, despite the on-going fierce economic crisis, have fought with the waves to save the valuable lives of desperate people fleeing the war zones of the Middle East, have provided safe shelter, warm clothing and food”, the campaign on Avaaz.com reads.

International media have been reporting how the native populations of the Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea (and many other external, worldwide, non-profit organisations and diaspora Greeks) have done and are doing anything possible to help the displaced Syrian refugees and make them as comfortable as possible, although they themselves have very little to offer, due to to a severe economic crisis for many years.

The campaign hopes their acts and sacrifices do not go unnoticed, “because they are significant contributors to World Peace and Stability, and are clear examples of love for others in the world to use and to learn from”.

More than 750,000 of the 900,000 migrants who have arrived in Europe this year landed in Greece, 60% on Lesbos, in the world’s biggest wave of mass migration since World War II.

Click HERE to cast your vote and support the Greek islands. It only takes seconds!

To read more, please visit: Greek Current

London, Barcelona and Paris are the top three cities to hold meetings in Europe, according to event management software firm Cvent, with Athens coming in 19th on the company’s list of the leading 25 destinations for meetings across the continent.

Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid, Rome, Brussels and Dublin complete the Top 10, with four cities in the leading 25 in Germany, and two cities each in England, Spain and Italy.

Cvent said it examined meeting planner engagement levels with hotels and venues between July 2014 and June 2015 in 2,500 European cities in its Supplier Network.

“The macro trend we found is that the competition between cities to attract meetings and events is fierce,” says Kevin Fliess, Cvent Vice President of Marketing.

“We are seeing smaller markets investing to lure meetings away from big cities. Two good examples of that would be Manchester and Birmingham in England.”

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages