Latest Posts
Gastronomy
An Ode to Local Products
No more avocado toast and croque-madames. From Thessaloniki to Crete and from Corfu to the Cycladic islands, menus are packed with bacon waffles, chocolate pancakes, bagels, banoffee pie, cinnamon rolls and cheesecakes, eggs Benedict, brioche etc, etc. What happened to the humble egg fried in olive oil, to galaktoboureko (custard pies) and loukoumades (deep-fried little donuts), to graviera and xynomyzithra cheeses, or to louza, syglino and apaki cured meats? There…
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Gastronomy
How Can Greece Become a Gastro-Tourism Destination?
It’s about more than just taking a trip abroad. More than having a good meal of dishes inspired by a cuisine you’ve always wanted to discover, in a land where it was conceived and transformed with the passing of time. It’s about an entire philosophy, a life stance, a multifaceted experience. Gastronomic tourism has been a category in itself for a long time, a particularly special chapter in the field…
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Tourism
Leaving Room in Greece for Everyone
Labor Day, this year September 5, marks the “official” end of summer in the USA. Time for schools to start, for people to start thinking about the coming autumn and winter (always cold and snowy in Minnesota) and to look back at summer with nostalgia or regret. Summer 2022 was a glorious time for me! After three years of waiting and postponing due to Covid, I was finally able to…
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History
Doing the Right Thing with the Parthenon Marbles
The UK newspapers have all been buzzing this week with the suggestion that the British Museum may be ready to discuss the return of the Parthenon Sculptures with Greece. This all arose after the new chairman of the BM Trustees, George Osborne, said that there is a “deal to be done” over sharing these ancient treasures with the country of their origin. This comment was followed by an interview for…
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History
The Parthenon Marbles: An Ever Poignant Question
I was deeply moved during a recent visit to the Acropolis Museum in Athens. The usual marvelous sensory and cultural feelings that always occur while viewing the marbles of this splendid museum, designed by the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, were heightened, on the occasion, by seeing the fragment of marble which arrived earlier this year from the Salinas Museum in Palermo. This is known as the Fagan fragment. This fragment,…
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Life
Studying in Thessaloniki: The Campus on My Doorstep
A coming-of-age story on the streets of Thessaloniki.
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Life
I believe in Greece
Every time I see the Parthenon it takes my breath away, never ceasing to inspire me. I walk around the perimeter of the Acropolis on which the Parthenon sits almost every day. It stands there in daylight as guardian over this ancient city and at night, a flood of light transforms it into a beacon. I do my best thinking near and around it. I am in Athens writing a…
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Destinations
A House in Kritsa
“It was all a bit spontaneous,” I say, when people ask me how we came to buy a house in Greece. And so it was. But it was also the result of a forty-year love affair with the country, which began with a cassette version of My Family and Other Animals.
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