XpatAthens

XpatAthens

Monday, 25 May 2015 07:00

Niarchos Center Starts To Take Shape

Cultural venue in southern Athens to house National Opera and Library.

Dressed in a hard hat, rain boots and a fluorescent yellow vest for a group tour of the under-construction Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), including the new homes of the National Opera and Library, as well as a 170,000-square meter park on the shore of Faliro Bay in southern Athens, I spotted a small detail that made me smile: In the building site’s staff cloakroom, where SNFCC supervisors and architects have lockers with their names on them, I was standing next to the one belonging to Renzo Piano. The celebrated Italian architect, in charge of designing the buildings, other structures and surrounding green spaces of the new complex, is closely following each stage of the colossal project’s development during his regular visits to Athens.

Two young foundation executives acted as our guides: 40-year-old chief operating officer John Zervakis and 30-year-old assistant chief operating officer Lenia Vlavianou, both of whom have been overseeing the project since its start. They represent a new generation of Athenians set to witness a dream come true during the crisis years.

Inside the former horse racing track’s vast space, things are beginning to take shape. Upon first glance the site’s green areas – essentially a beautiful Mediterranean garden – look almost ready with only a few final touches missing.
Meanwhile, the construction site resembles a beehive, with its hundreds of workers and cranes in motion. This is where Piano’s genius lies: the sense that you’re in a place where heaven and earth meet, a gigantic sheltered spot where the city meets the water.

The site’s main entrance is on Peisistratou Street. First we passed in front of the 1,000-vehicle parking area before moving on to Poseidonos Avenue, then toward Syngrou Avenue and the new National Opera’s facade. An open space called the Agora – to serve as a visitors’ reception area – will also make an appearance here, while the new buildings of the National Library extend along Syngrou Avenue. This is where a 400x30-meter canal that will also serve as a flood control will be constructed. The ride continued toward the area where the park begins.

For more on this story, please visit ekathimerini
Story by Margarita Pournara
Wednesday, 19 August 2015 07:00

The Top Ten Food And Drink Holidays In Greece

Here, we examine the Daily Telegraph's pick of the top 10 food and drink holidays in Greece for 2015, including wine tasting, olive harvest and traditional Greek cookery courses, in destinations such as Santorini, Paros, Crete and the Cyclades Islands.

1) Sifnos
Sífnos in the Cyclades has one of the more distinctive, scrumptious island cuisines, and was the birthplace of Nikolaos Tselementes (1878–1958), author of the first Greek cookbook and Greece’s answer to Mrs Beeton. He documented such local dishes as revytháda (baked chickpea stew), mastélo (lamb and red wine clay-pot casserole), and kókoras krasáto (cockerel in wine sauce). Course participants will get to grips with these and other recipes as well as mastering a repertoire of local herbs. Courses can be booked on the spot through the concierge service of the comfy Verina Suites in Platys Gialós or the equally cutting-edge Verina Astra just outside Artemónas. 

Courses: £16 per day including ingredients and lunch. Verina Suites and Verina Astra from £80 a night

2) Santorini
Santorini is the other Cyclade with a notable local cuisine, relying on indigenous white eggplants, fava (split yellow peas, not the sound-alike broad bean), baby tomatoes, caper greens, cheeses and sausages from neighbouring islands.  Yiorgos Hatziyannakis, head chef at Pyrgos village's acclaimed Selene Restaurant and Bisto, has been instrumental in the revival and promotion of traditional island cooking.  Selene offers three foodie experiences. The most popular is the guided folklore museum visit, short cooking demonstration and set bistro menu.  There is also a one-day hands-on cooking course (every Thursday from 10:30am) at the upstairs restaurant.  And the three-day course, which includes winery and cheese-factory visits, a fishing trip and various meals, is available for groups only by pre-arrangement.

Museum visit/cooking demonstration£35, drinks extra; one-day course £65 or £110 with gourment meal; three-day course from £275

3) The Cyclades and Thessaly
Cooking courses on the Cycladic island of Tínos, famous for its dovecotes and marble relief sculpture, or in the historic Thessalian hill-town of Ambelákia with its ornate mansions are offered by Cooking Lessons Greece. Tínos is a short ferry ride from either Piraeus or Rafína (the latter close to Athens airport). Ambelákia, 150km south of Thessaloníki and 350km north of Athens, is best accessed with a hire car as part of an extended mainland trip. The one-day (10am–5pm) Tínos lesson involves ingredient-shopping for a three-course lunch and then preparing it.

The two-day course includes a tour of a local winery or the local Nisos brewery (same group size, price €290–350).
The one-day Ambelákia course (9am–5pm) is similar (same group sizes and prices) but includes breakfast.
The two-day course throws in a winery visit. 
One-day courses from £120, two-day courses from £230

4) Arhanes village, Crete
Since the 1990s, Crete has been a leader in the promotion and revival of traditional Greek cooking and ingredients. With its long growing season and established pastoral culture, the island was a natural for the role. The bistro-deli Bakaliko, in the central square of Arhánes village 14km south of Heraklion, offers light sit-down menus as well as local products to take home – wine, raki, the rusks much loved across Greece, olive oil and paste, carob products, cheese, charcuterie and more. It also runs single-day cooking courses (9.30am–3pm) each Tuesday from May to October inclusive. After a welcome snack and pitches by local producers, the lesson begins in earnest with five pan-Hellenic recipes given a unique Bakaliko twist, ending with participants consuming the feast produced.
 
£85 a head for 4–5 people, otherwise £70, to a maximum of 12

5) Monemvasia
The luxurious Kinsterna Hotel, 7km south-west of fortified Monemvasiá, opened in 2010 in a painstakingly restored 17th-century mansion. Its spa, rooms, suites and “residences” have since set a new quality benchmark for the Peloponnese. Kinsterna hosts short demo courses run by its head chef. In Session I, participants select fresh ingredients from the gardens, which find their way into hearty filo-pastry pies. There’s a fish dish to tackle too. Session II focuses on spoon sweets, marmalades and a sweet tart. 

Rooms from £170, lessons from £60

To read more, please visit: The Daily Telegraph
Friday, 25 October 2024 07:00

October 28 Holiday In Greece - Ohi Day

October 28th is a national holiday in Greece. It is the day that commemorates the rejection by Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on October 28, 1940. This day is known by Greeks around the world as ‘Ohi Day’ (No Day).

What Happened On This Day In History

It is said that at 3:00 am on October 28, 1940, an ultimatum was handed to Ioannis Metaxas at his home in Kifissia by the Italian Ambassador of Athens, Emanuele Grazzi. The ultimatum required the free passage of the Italian army through the Greek-Albanian border and thus began the occupation of some strategic areas of Greece.

After reading the letter, Metaxas turned to the Italian Ambassador and replied in French (which was the official diplomatic language at the time) with the historic phrase: 'Alors, c'est la guerre' (Well, this means war), thereby stating his negative position toward the Italian demands.

Grazzi in his memoirs, released in 1945, described the scene as, 'I have been ordered Mr. Prime Minister by you and I gave him the letter. I watched the emotion in his hands and in his eyes. With a firm voice and looking at me in the eyes, Metaxas told me, ‘This means war!’ I replied that this could be avoided. He replied NO. I added that if General Papagos... Metaxas interrupted me and said NO! I gave a deep bow, leaving with the deeper respect, this elder, who preferred to be sacrificed instead of enslaved.'

At the time, Metaxas expressed Greek popular sentiment, which was the denial of allegiance. This refusal was passed through to the Greek press with the word ‘Ohi’ (No). The word ‘Ohi’ was first presented as a title in the main article of the newspaper 'Greek Future' of N. P. Efstratios on October 30, 1940.
 
Traditions & Practical Information About This Day In Greece

On this day in Greece, most public buildings and residences are decorated with Greek flags. You will see parades and other festivities throughout the country. It is a national holiday, which means that everything is closed, with the exception of cafes and food venues.

The October 28th holiday is also celebrated by many Greek communities around the world; parades and festivities are observed internationally including in major cities in the USA, Canada, and Australia.

Source: Newsbomb
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














One of the things I learned from my upbringing was to never question when someone less-fortunate needed help.

“Help first, then ask questions,” my dad would tell me when I worked shifts at the Chateau Restaurant and Lounge on Pittsburgh’s North Side as a kid.

The restaurant was in a bit of a rough neighborhood and I was always perplexed at my dad’s willingness to offer free food— often to random people or groups. The Pittsburgh Steelers football players always got free lunches at my dad’s place. Their training facility was nearby and they often came for some good old diner food after a tough practice session.

And the police too.

“Celebrities and cops are always free,” my dad explained. The celebrities because they bring more people and the police because they protect us.

And then there were the homeless and the poor— from the surrounding neighborhood of Manchester, a run-down neighborhood that had seen its share of problems.
You always give first and ask questions later— if someone needs food, you help them.

I often questioned my dad’s business acumen as I grew older, asking him about cost of goods and food, the profit and loss margin on the free food we were giving and whether or not he could really afford to give away all this free food.

“Shame on you,” he responded, asking me if I’ve ever been deprived of anything at home. He reminded me that despite his regular giving, I always had clothes on my back, food on my table and everything I asked for, so obviously… the restaurant was doing well.

A Facebook post on my newsfeed reminded me of my long-departed dad today, because I think it’s what he would have done.

Liana Denezaki shared a few pictures that were shot by Odysseas Galanakis in central Victorias Square in Athens, showing a 92 year old woman unloading and distributing bags and bags of sandwiches and cakes that she, herself, prepared.
By
Gregory Pappas

To read more, please visit: Pappas Post
Friday, 29 April 2016 08:27

Athens Typology City Guide

There is an app for every appetite, every obsession and every moment of the day. And just when you think you've seen them all, you hear about some new amazing piece of software that can work magic on the mundane.

Greece is slowly becoming a veritable wellspring of app development - from tourism to taxis and table reservations - with new innovations popping up all the time.

The other day I came across an app that, although not created in Greece, serves up a truly fascinating experience that fits the description of that thing 'you never knew you needed so much...'

How many times have you been wandering around the city, looking up at buildings that seem to be unimaginative (ugly?) blocks of concrete, the leftovers of a hastily-erected city in the mid-20th century? On a good day I've often thought 'How did that happen?' - on a bad day I've thought far worse...

Well, all your Athens architectural ponderings can now be answered, thanks to the Athens Typology City Guide app.

The app, developed by the Design Studio Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, helps you to find places and buildings that other guides will never take you to.

Following five years of academic research in eight cities, the team unveiled a series of original city apps that present a compilation of 20th century urban architecture. The buildings (for the most part ones you have probably never noticed) were chosen in order to provide a glimpse at metropolitan design in the 20th century, comparing the patterns and differences in building styles found around the world. In total,360 buildings from Hong Kong, Rome, New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Delhi, São Paulo and Athens have been carefully analyzed and are presented in a separate app for each city.

The Athens app showcases 54 buildings, most of them of the 'what were they thinking' variety - with accompanying background information that helps you to understand precisely what they were thinking. With this little app in your pocket, the previously hideous buildings of the city centre take on a new life, as you begin to understand that each building has a 'past' and an entire set of reasons that it is the way it is... Much like people ;)

Check it out on the AppStore and Google Play, and see Athens in an entirely new light. And just like people, you may not end up loving these buildings any more than you did before - but you will at least understand their stories a bit better...

Until next week,

Jack
After archaeologists excavated parts of two of the three militarized harbors built in Piraeus, they found for the first time the 5th century BC Naval bases of Piraeus, including the ship-sheds, the slipways, and the harbor fortifications.
 
Bjørn Lovén, director of the Zea Harbor Project, led the excavations and says that the naval fortifications at one time housed about 400 fast and maneuverable ships called triremes. These vessels were tended to by 80,000 sailors and soldiers.

Lovén and his team most recently excavated the remains of six ship sheds. The sheds stored triremes to protect them from marine woodworms and to keep the hot Mediterranean sun from shrinking their timbers and causing leaks. The sheds were huge—spread between the three ports of Piraeus (Mounichia, Zea and Kantharos), they covered 110,000 square meters or more than 1 million square feet. That is about the size of 17 football fields.

Carbon-14 dating of pottery and wooden foundations placed the ship-sheds between 520 and 480 BC. Those dates are significant because it likely means they housed triremes that took part in the Battle of Salamis in 480, a key event in Greek history.

To read this article in full, please visit: Smithsonian
Thursday, 23 April 2020 09:00

The 4 'Greekest Places' In North America

Throughout the centuries of Greece's turbulent history, Greek people have gone through economic hardships many a time; prompting thousands to immigrate in search of a better future. In search of a better future, many Greeks people immigrated to foreign countries such as Germany, Australia, Canada, and the United States. There have been several immigration waves toward North America the first of which occurred around 1822. According to historical records, about 328 Greeks were living in the United States by 1860.

Luckily, the Greeks all over the world have managed to keep their culture very much alive, sometimes preserving traditions and customs more than the people in Greece.

Recently, the Pappas Post compiled a list of North America’s Greekest places, neighborhoods, and monuments; the places that make the United States and Canada significant fountains of Greek culture.

1. Nashville Parthenon, Nashville, Tennessee

The Nashville Parthenon was built for the World Fair in 1897 to the exact specifications of the original. It’s quite surreal seeing it in its full glory, even containing inside the golden and ornate statue of Athena — the original left only in literature and long melted away by invaders as victors’ wartime booty.

2. Danforth Avenue, Toronto, Canada

Claiming to be the “largest Greek neighborhood” in North America, Danforth Avenue is a mecca for all things Greek in Toronto. Dozens of restaurants, coffee shops and the Taste of Danforth one of the largest Greek street festivals in the world make this place unique and profoundly Greek.

3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This museum holds the most extensive collection of ancient Greek artefacts outside of Greece. Great effort has been made to collect and preserve ancient Greek relics and Byzantine artefacts, mainly thanks to Greek-American benefactors Mary and Michael Jaharis, who have an entire gallery named after them in the museum.

4. Mt. Olympus Park, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

Mt. Olympus Park is like a big, fat, Greek Disneyland, featuring 44 water slides, seven rollercoasters, a wave pool with nine-foot waves, eight go-kart tracks, and numerous kiddie rides with attractions like a life-size Trojan Horse, roller coasters named after Hades, Cyclops, Pegasus and Zeus, Pan’s animal farm, and Poseidon’s underwater go-kart track.

 

To read the full list of Greekest places in North America, please visit: The Pappas Post

 

 
 
Wednesday, 07 July 2021 13:18

Greek Food & Its Amazing Health Benefits

Greek food is often considered among the most healthy cuisines in the world, as it is linked to the Mediterranean diet, which has been proven to have countless health benefits.

As a rule, the Mediterranean diet is mainly plant-based, as it is high in vegetables, fruits, legumes, and unprocessed grains while low in meat and meat products. These ingredients are bound together by olive oil, an essential ingredient when it comes to defining the basics of healthy Greek food and the Mediterranean diet.

According to several studies, the Mediterranean diet is associated with reduced risk of several chronic diseases, including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Some have even linked it to preventing depression.

Here are some of the superstar foods in this delicious health-promoting diet!

Olive oil

Olive oil is the common denominator in the different dietary patterns of the Mediterranean diet across the region, with Italy, Spain, and Greece being the top three producers in the world. Extra-virgin olive oil is rich in carotenoids and polyphenols, offering antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. It's the main source of fat in the diet, and it is also used for cooking and baking.

Wheat

Wheat is the basic grain of the Mediterranean while another traditional grain is farro (or emmer), an ancient wheat with renewed popularity in recent years. Bread is often baked using unrefined wheat and barley flours. Mediterranean wheat is also used for couscous and pasta. Traditionally, wheat was ground with millstones, producing a fiber-rich whole-wheat flour with a lower glycemic index.

Wine

Alcohol is common in the traditional Mediterranean diet, dating back to ancient times. However, it is consumed in moderation and usually in the form of wine and, as a rule, during meals. Red wine, in particular, contains antioxidant polyphenols and flavonoids while helping increase HDL (good) cholesterol and decrease LDL (bad) cholesterol levels.

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are a good source of fiber, folate, and manganese while also providing proteins, iron, and magnesium. Chickpeas are one the earliest known cultivated legumes, they are the key ingredient in many traditional Greek dishes.

Garlic

This essential ingredient of all Mediterranean cuisines is often found in a variety of sauces and dishes. For instance, tzatziki, a staple in Greek food, is yogurt mixed with garlic, cucumbers, and olive oil, while aioli, an Italian sauce, is made mixing garlic with eggs and olive oil. The sulfur compounds in garlic produce both its pungent odor but are the key to its health benefits, which include anticancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory effects.

Feta and yogurt

Traditional feta cheese and yogurt are fermented, which makes them rich in probiotics, also providing an extra portion of protein to a diet that’s mostly plant-based. Authentic Greek feta is made with goat’s milk or sheep’s milk while yogurt with honey is a common Greek breakfast.

To read this article in full, please visit: greekreporter.com
Tuesday, 31 May 2022 07:00

Greece Launches New Tourism Campaign

Anyone considering visiting Greece for a holiday needs to think twice as once they’re in Greece, they may want to stay forever. That’s the central theme in a new campaign for Greek tourism, launched by the Greek National Tourism Organization on Monday, May 30. 

A video for the “Greece: You will want to say forever” campaign features an Austrian man, Otto, who tells his story of ending up in Greece to a backdrop of beautiful images from the Greek islands.

The Onassis Foundation supports the new summer tourism campaign and Ogilvy produced the promotional video.



Originally published on: ekathimerini.com
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