WELLNESS HUB
XpatAthens
Tilos Island Leads The Way In Creating Renewable Energy
Trireme Olympias-Sailing To History
Set up in 1982 by the historian and academic, John Morrison, naval architect, John Coates, and writer Frank Welsh, the Trireme Trust was created to investigate a centuries-old controversy about the nature of the trireme, the most significant warship of the ancient Mediterranean world. Their collaboration resulted in the building and launch in 1987 by the Hellenic Navy of a full-scale reconstruction, the Olympias, powered by 170 oars arranged over three levels.
A series of six sea-trials between 1987 and 1994 demonstrated that the ship could be rowed efficiently and fast, despite the universal academic opinion that a three-level arrangement of oars was wholly impracticable. In 2004, Olympias was used to carry the Olympic flame across Piraeus harbour shortly before the opening of the Athens Olympic Games.
In September 2004 the Naval Supreme Council decided to designate the trireme as an exhibit in a specially designed space of the Naval Tradition Park. It was also agreed that the trireme should be assigned to the command of the Battleship Averof at the Hellenic Maritime Heritage Park.
Hellenic Maritime Heritage Park
Flisvos 175 10, Paleo Faliro
Telephone: 210 9888211
Operating Hours
Tuesday to Friday: 09:00 - 14:00
Weekends: 10:00 - 17:00
Article Sources: Hellenic Navy & The Trireme Trust
Omonia Is Back! The Revamped Square To Be Revealed At The End Of The Week
A video from the testing of the new fountain at Omonia Square.
Athens Awarded At The CDP Europe Awards For Its Environmental Policies
Speaking about environmentally friendly solutions, that will free up public space and adopt a new model of sustainable mobility, Mr. Bakoyannis said: "At the end of the day we should be very clear about our strategic goals if we are to go backward or move forward ".
Talking about the day after this unprecedented health crisis, the Mayor of Athens said that history has taught that past pandemics were catalytic for the transformation of urban centers, adding that "this crisis is an opportunity to transform our cities bring them into the new century, to a different era with different challenges."
Mr. Bakoyannis then pointed out the need to find local solutions that will promote the reacquisition or releasing of quality public spaces and adopt a new model of sustainable mobility, which will not only concern cars but also accessibility, public transport, and alternative means of transportation. "We have to make sure, and this is very important for us in Europe, that we are really changing without losing our souls. "We do not want to turn our cities into theme parks, you know, we want to keep our DNA alive."
CDP is a non-profit organization that annually evaluates the actions of cities around the world and recognizes those that stand out. In 2020, for the second year in a row, Athens ranked high and was included in the A-list Cities, along with 87 cities around the world, for their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The CDP Europe Awards 2021 were attended by heads of large corporations, distinguished for their activities, such as LafargeHolcim, Lenzing, Handelsbanken Fonder, Ørsted, Eni, Norges Bank Investment Management, and others.
XpatAthens extends a warm thank you to This Is Athens and the City Of Athens for sharing with us news and inspiring stories about how Athens is constantly becoming a cleaner, friendlier, and more welcoming city to live in.
The Ark Οf Τhe World
A primary concern of the Ark is not to separate the family when there is parent interest in and capable of taking care of the child. Single-parent families with serious financial and social problems calling on our services can find support for their very basic needs, such as food, clothes, medical care and everything they need to live with dignity. At the same time, families receive counseling services, take part in parents’ groups led by family relations specialists and receive information on training programmes in order to be empowered to take responsibility of their children.
Homer’s Odyssey Named World’s Greatest Tale Ever Told
"If any story can be considered the greatest tale ever told, Homer’s Odyssey has a better claim than most. Twenty-four books long, it runs to more than 12,000 lines of hexameter verse (the poetic form used in Greek epic and Latin epic after it) and follows the adventures of the wily, complicated Greek hero, Odysseus, in the aftermath of the Trojan War. The Odyssey has been valued as a cultural highpoint for millennia: in the 5th Century BCE, the Athenian playwright Aeschylus referred to his tragedies as “slices from the banquet of Homer.
Writers from Dante to James Joyce to Margaret Atwood have taken inspiration from this original quest story. But Odysseus’ quest itself is an almost mundane affair, amid the gods and monsters which populate the poem. Because it is not about sailing off to find something wondrous and new (a golden fleece, for example, or an undiscovered land). It’s about a man trying to get home at the end of a 10-year war.”
BBC Culture polled experts around the world to nominate up to five fictional stories they felt had shaped mindsets or influenced history. They received responses from authors, academics, journalists, critics, and translators from 35 countries, who looked at novels, poems, folk tales, and dramas in 33 different languages. Homer’s Odyssey topped the list, followed by Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
To read this article in full, please visit: greekcitytimes.com
Atokos - Greece's Pig Island
In recent years, a herd of black pigs has appeared on the beach of the island and it has become the ultimate attraction.
The Wait Is Over - Navarino Challenge 2025 Schedule Is Revealed
Τhe special offers and discounts of Discount Partners valid during the event can be found HERE!
The Haloa: Ancient Greece’s Most Mysterious Girls’ Night Out
The Haloa was led entirely by women; no male priests, no hierophants, no patriarchal supervision. The first priestess presided over the rituals, which began with a bloodless offering to Demeter. After that, the tone shifted dramatically: an all-night feast, wine flowing freely, jokes that would make Aristophanes blush, and pastries shaped like… well, let’s say the ancient Greeks were not subtle about fertility symbolism.
But here’s the twist: almost everything we know about the Haloa comes from male authors who never attended. They relied on hearsay, imagination, or centuries-later commentary. So when they describe women shouting obscenities, waving giant phallic props, or being encouraged to pursue “illicit loves,” we have to ask: is this ethnography, or is it fantasy?
The Haloa was almost certainly a fertility festival. The symbolism is everywhere: fruits, grains, wine, sexual imagery, and even the burial of symbolic genitalia in the earth to “wake up” the soil for spring. But the more scandalous details (the wild dancing, the provocative songs, the supposed sexual license) may reflect male projections more than women’s actual behavior.
Modern scholars now suspect that the Haloa was less a debauched orgy and more a rare moment of communal joy, solidarity, and ritual empowerment for women. A space where they could breathe, joke, eat, drink, and reconnect with their bodies and each other, without the constant gaze of men.
After all, Athenian women were politically marginalized, confined to the household, and excluded from most public life. A festival where they could speak freely, laugh loudly, and mock social norms must have seemed terrifying to some male writers. Cue centuries of exaggeration.
But because the sources are fragmentary, biased, or simply unreliable, the Haloa remains one of antiquity’s most tantalizing enigmas. A festival glimpsed through a fog of satire, moral panic, and wishful thinking.
And maybe that’s what makes the Haloa so captivating today. It’s a reminder that ancient women had their own rituals, their own humor, their own agency. The Haloa invites us to imagine a world where women gathered in winter to celebrate life, fertility, and each other, far from the constraints of the everyday.
A girls’ night out, yes! but one wrapped in mystery, myth, and the delicious possibility that the truth was far more complex (and far more human) than the ancient gossip suggests.
My Week in Athens… Jan 24
I’ve been living in Greece for about 5 years. I’ve had my ups and downs with the ‘system’ and know that it’s not up to par with a lot of other places in the world. Even though I now know what to expect, there are still some things that make my hair stand up. So here’s my story…
I’m a first time mom and my son is just about 8 months old. I gave birth at a public hospital (yes, it was just fine) and have since been taking advantage of my IKA insurance (pension & health insurance for private sector employees). You may remember some weeks back that pharmacies were not accepting prescriptions from IKA insurance holders. What does this mean? Well…
When I went to my doctor’s office to get a prescription for my son’s upcoming vaccine shot, I was told that it cannot be issued because pharmacies will not accept it. If this was something my brain couldn’t compute, then what she said next nearly nocked me off my chair: ‘Unless of course you ‘know someone’ with a pharmacy who will give you the vaccine shot without paying and then take them the prescription at a later date.’ Did I hear correctly, did my doctor just tell me that I need a ‘meson’ (an inside source) to get my son’s vaccine shot? Was she for real? Ah, but yes, she was very serious.
Because I didn’t ‘know someone’ with a pharmacy, I paid for the vaccine shot at my local pharmacy in hopes that once this disagreement between IKA and pharmacists was over, I could claim my 70 Euro!
Should I tell you about my experience when I tried to claim 70 Euro from IKA? Let me put it this way…3 floors (up and down the stairs because the elevator wasn’t working), 4 booths with very ‘happy to greet me’ employees, and some 5 different pieces of paper. Needless to say, I did eventually get my claim made.
Ah, and despite all these wonderful (and eventful) stories I still continue to want to be here. Go figure! There’s just something about this crazy place that makes it stick!
Cheers from First Time Mommy in Athens.
In this weekly space, keep up with ‘Jack’ as he navigates daily life in Athens… Anecdotes, stories, hits & misses, the good, the bad and, well, the rest…
