It´s a cool, cool summer (Part 3)

Today we decided to blend with the locals and take the bikes. We went all the way to the city centre by bike - it took us about an hour or so. Then we did some more sightseeing, as you can see from the photos (the white building is the University). We also visited the King´s house, the Botanical Gardens and the Market Hall.

It´s a cool, cool summer (Part 2)

This is our first day in Lund. A compact and picturesque city. We leave the car at a parking (cost about 2 euros an hour) take a stroll in the streets, doing some sightseeing and shopping. The weather could be better (it´s raining on and off) and this discourages us from taking the bikes instead of the car. We eat italian (a lunch buffet with unlimited pasta, pizza and salad costs about 8,5 euros - not bad for Scandinavian cost standards!). The main sight in the city is the romanesque Cathedral. Opposite that, one can find a very helpful tourist office. And here´s proof that we are actually here!





















In the evening we went for a couple of beers in the city centre (a place buzzing with life, called Stortorget). The weather was OK for Swedish summer standards so most of the clients were sitting outside, in the bar´s terrace, still some had to use the blankets available! In the night time picture you can see Maria in front of the City Hall, next to the Stortorget.

It's a cool, cool summer! (Part 1)

'How do you cope with such a hot summer in Greece?' friends from abroad asked us this year... They had heard in the news that temperatues in Greece exceeded 45o C, hence the question.
Well, the answer was pretty simple and straightforward: '...we leave for cooler climates.'
And so we find ourselves in Sweden... In fact in Denmark as we fly from Athens to Copenhagen. However, the Danish capital is not our final destination:

We take the train, cross the Oresund bridge and in less than half an hour we are in the Swedish city of Lund where our home exchange partners live.

The change of temperature was indeed dramatic! Almost half the temperature of Athens! And the sky couldn't decide whether it should stay dry or start raining...

The house was very pretty and Scandinavian: detached, with a tile roof, a lovely garden and in a quiet neighbourhood. Our exchange partners were kind enough to leave us a Swedish pie, with broccoli, mushrooms and walnuts, that took care of our hunger!
We spent the night there and left the next morning for the city of Åhus about one hour drive away.

We stayed in a hotel which is by the beach and very popular with the locals. Indeed the beach was long and sandy, but only a few people were courageous enough to enter the sea (which had a grey black colour, nothing like the Greek blue).

Ah, and by the way: Åhus is the home of the famous Absolut vodka. (to be continued...)

A book and an interview

Stathis wrote a book on 'Internet monitoring in the workplace' which was published by a Greek Law Publisher. Under his newly acquired capacity as a writer, he was interviewed on the subject by a Greek daily newspaper (the photo accompanying the article is not of Stathis!!)

A weekend in Munich

Stathis had to go to Munich for a lawyers' conference, so Maria joined for the weekend before the conference. Munich is a nice, compact and tourist-friendly city, so we enjoyed it!

Birthday in Paris

12.5.2007 - it's Maria's birthday and we took the opportunity to spend a long weekend in Paris to celebrate!

A new look for the website of Intervac in Greece!

Those of you that have been reading our blog, know about our favourite way of spending our vacation: doing home exchanges. In fact we are members (and as a hobby of ours we are also representatives for Greece) of the first world wide organization of home exchanges, called 'Intervac'. So what's new? Well, Maria has been working lately on the website of Intervac Greece and has come up with this wonderful result that you see in the picture. You're just a click away from enjoying it in full!

15 minutes...

Stathis had his 15 minutes of fame when Athens largest daily newspaper ("TA NEA") published in 5.3.2007 in the weekly legal supplement ("TA NOMIKA NEA") an interview about the role of the in house counsel and the Association of Corporate Counsel he represents in Greece.
You can read the interview by visiting the newspaper's site (www.tanea.gr).

Update

It's been quite some time since we last updated our blog, so I guess this means we've been busy... or lazy ...or away! So, for our friends that keep asking (huh?) here's a recap of our latest news:
-We spent Christmas in Berlin with Maria's extended family (parents, brother+wife+kids). It was cold but not too much and we had a very good time. Highlight of our visit: Potsdam (not to be missed when in the area). In the photo Maria is standing in front of a house in the 'Russian neighbourhood'.















-Stathis is still busy with work and on weekends studying for his MSc. Maria is also busy at work but on weekends she tries new outfits or new recipes!
-We did spend a weekend in London in January, taking advantage of a business trip Stathis made. We returned with the 5th DVD series of '24 (Twenty-Four)' and we are looking forward to viewing it!
-We plan to visit Paris in May and Denmark and/or Sweden in July. Any suggestions?
That's it for now! Keep visiting our virtual or our bricks and mortar homes!

Let's stay in Greece, this year...

To the surprise of many (including ourselves) our summer vacation this year did not involve any trip abroad Greece. Partly because of our decision to leave in July instead of our customary August and partly because we didn’t have in mind any one particular place that we really wanted to go to, we finally decided to stay in Greece (as a Ministry of Tourism’s slogan for internal tourists says).
Thinking about it we thought that whichever place would have …the honour to host us should have the following qualities: small, quiet, new for us, easily and fast accessible. A few places came to mind including Leros in the Dodecanese; however we finally opted for Paxos, in the Ionian Sea, not far from Corfu.
Getting there was half the fun: we first went by plane to Corfu and spent the night there. Corfu is an interesting hybrid of cultures: we dined in an (excellent) Italian restaurant (‘La Famiglia’), wandered around the small streets (a la Napoli) of the town and marveled at the Chinese exhibits of the former British Governor’s mansion turned museum of eastern cultures.
From Corfu we flew to Paxos but our departure point was not an airport! No, Sir, it was a …marina, base of operations for the Airsealines. Yes, we used a seaplane! An interesting experience, flying low and having a nice view of the islands and the sea below and finally landing, (oops, is it …sea-ing?) in the Air Terminal of Paxos (despite the imposing name it is actually the edge of the marina and the fishing harbour!!)
We were greeted by one hotel staff waiting with a van to take us. Our hotel was about 10 to 15 minutes walking distance from the capital port town of Gaios which gave us the rare (in Athens) opportunity for some walking every day. Our first evening was spent visiting a local photo exhibition in Gaios and watching the World Cup match for the 3rd place (you know who won, right?)
Next day, the first of our actual Paxos vacation, was quite easy-going: swimming at the hotel beach and eating there (the food was OK but the jazz music that accompanied all our meals, including breakfasts was perfect). Of course we watched the grand finale of the World Cup the result of which was celebrated noisily by the the many (MANY!) Italian tourists in Paxos.
In the course of the coming days we had the time to get to know the island. We hired a car for a day and went around visiting the few villages. The longest distance across the island is no more than 20 to 30 minutes by car, so that wasn’t really difficult.. We were amazed to see so many villas (summer, mostly, houses) and in so nice surroundings. The island is green from one end to the other full of cypresses and olive trees. There aren’t so many beaches and most of them are pebbled ones. Anice place to visit at the northern part of the island is the Old Lighthouse: we watched the sunset from there, despite the rain! (oh, yes, the weather was very unstable in the first days).

Another nice sunset we saw over a steep cliff’s edge from the bar called ‘Erimitis’.

We also went to the nearby island of Antipaxos (less than half an hour away) and the beaches there were sandy. The colour of the sea was a spectacularly clear blue that made the yachts anchored in the bay look as if they were floating in the air. And speaking of yachts you wouldn’t believe how may we’ve seen come and go during our stay in Paxos! We hiked across the island of Antipaxos which has a few houses but not what one would call a village. We thought we were quite athletic in walking so much until we saw an old British guy (probably over 80 years old) doing what we had been doing and with ease! Not to be missed the wine from Antipaxos.
Naturally we went around the island by boat (a must for all visitors) also visiting impressive caves at the west side of the island. Maria was brave enough to swim in one of them, too. As for meals, the best dinner we had was at ‘Vassilis’ restaurant in the tiny port village of Longos.
We spent our time at the hotel reading (we read over 6 books the two of us combined, which is a record considering we were there for just about 10 days). Ah, and playing table tennis!
The most adventurous encounter we had was with a …snake by the beach when moving the beach chairs and with the mosquitos that were waiting for us every night at our room’s entrance door (they were quite the gentlemen though: they never came inside the room!). And with the exception of a brief 10 minutes visit at the local Internet café (at Maria’s insistence!) we managed to stay away from our emails!
The cultural high of our visit was the Greek rock concert at the Museum yard (Machairitsas, Yellow Bicycles, Kazoulis – nice guy, he gave us a ride to the town in his car the next day – and others). And of course this being summer vacation, we had to go the local disco’s grand opening after midnight! (not very wild – and they served us beers that had expired since last season!)
So, that was it for our common vacation this year! Maria was lucky enough to have a second round in Rhodes but not Stathis. Ah, well, Athens is not half bad in August anyway…

Schoolmates having fun

In the beginning of April, Stathis and four of his old schoolmates and good friends decided to visit Milan. This was the first time we ever went abroad as a group and the city served as the backdrop. As we stayed there just for three days we barely had enough time for some sightseeing, some shopping and a wonderful half-day trip to lake Como (not to be missed!). And even though the city has a perfect public transport system there were some complaints about the lack of private transportation! We are already planning our next trip... but don't tell it to the wives!

Keeping the tradition (but with a twist)

As all our friends know, we like to go abroad on one of the most traditional Greek holidays! Sunday prior to Lent is the culmination of Greek carnival with people feasting and watching parades. Then comes what is called Clean Monday (Kathari Deftera) (known as “Ash Wednesday” in other Mediterranean, primarily Catholic countries), as tradition has it that all meat and cheese residues have to be cleaned out of pots and pans in the household. In Greece, Kathari Deftera is a day of picnics, Lenten foods (including unlevened flat bread called “lagana”) and kite-flying, an activity particularly loved by children. But although we usually spend this three days break in London, this year we are going to Berlin! We leave Athens at 15 oC and expect to find sub-zero temperatures in Berlin (Come to think of it, this was a German winter for us: we went to Munich, now to Berlin - we even had house guests from Frankfurt for a week!) Aufwiedersehen!

A change of employment for Stathis

From March 15th and after almost five years of exciting in-house legal work for HERACLES GCC (the Greek subsidiary of Lafarge S.A.), Stathis is looking forward to meeting new challenges in another great company, BP.

Christmas feeling ...at last!

It is not very easy to get into the Christmas spirit with 18 degrees (Celsius) outside... So, we left for a weekend break in Munich. Indeed, the Christmas spirit in Germany is omnipresent: as soon as you arrive at the Munich airport a typical 'Christkindlmarkt' awaits you - a 'village' of wooden kiosks that sell clothes, candies, snacks etc. And such markts are all over the city, too. There wasn't much snow, unfortunately (only some ...leftovers!) - but it was quite cold anyway (-7 to 0 degrees). Finally, we found some use for our pullovers and other winter clothing... All in all, we had a good time and hope that some of the Christmas spirit will find its way to Athens too!

Διασκέδαση στη Λάρισα

Παρασκευή 11 Νοεμβίου, αργά το απόγευμα. Ταξιδεύω (η Μαρία) από το Βόλο (όπου είμαι για το πανελλήνιο συνέδριο πληροφορικής pci 2005)προς τη Λάρισα. Η φίλη μου μού έχει υποσχεθεί μια ωραία βραδυά στη νυχτερινή Λάρισα και δε με διέψευσε καθόλου.Πρώτος σταθμός το εστιατόριο "Τηγανάκια". Γεμάτο από κόσμο (βγαίνουν πολύ οι Λαρισαίοι, φαίνεται) και συνεπώς πολύς καπνός (το μόνο αρνητικό στο μαγαζί). Το φαγητό όμως είναι υπέροχο, ειδικά τα γεμιστά μανιτάρια και το κοτόπουλο με τη γλυκιά σάλτσα,η διακόσμηση πρωτότυπη (σουρωτήρια για "καπέλα" στα φωτιστικά) και οι τιμές πολύ καλές, καμμία σχέση με τις εξωφρενικές της Αθήνας.Το πρόγραμμα συνεχίζει στο ΑlloBar (ελπίζω να το γράφω σωστά). Πολύ χαριτωμένο, ωραία μουσική, νέος κόσμος.Το καλύτερο σάς το άφησα για το τέλος... Μετακινείστε συχνά το βράδυ για να διασκεδάσετε με το ποδήλατο? εγώ πάντως όχι, αλλά μάλλον οι Λαρισαίοι το συνηθίζουν. Τέλεια αίσθηση να σε κτυπάει το δροσερό νυχτερινό αεράκι και να μη σκέφτεσαι για ταξί ή τοπού να παρκάρεις. Έξω δε από το μπαρ υπήρχε ειδική θέση για να παρκάρουν τα ποδήλατα. Μήπως αυτή η πόλη πρέπει να αδελφοποιηθεί με το Γκέτεμποργκ? Άννα μου, πέρασα πολύ ωραία, σ'ευχαριστώ!

Been There, Done That

So, it's official: Stathis has graduated as a Master of Laws, from the University of Strathclyde. (LL.M. in Information Technology and Telecommunications Law).
Which gave us a good excuse to travel for an extended weekend to Glasgow, to attend the graduation ceremony, exactly 10 years after our first trip to Scotland. And it was also an opportunity to relive the atmosphere of student days. The ceremony was nice, a bit too 'formal' but we guess this is to be expected from the British...

2005: Summer in the ...colonies! (2nd part)

…Of course what would a trip to the Côte d'Azur be without a visit to a modern Greek …colony? Time to go to Monaco, the colony of all modern times rich Greeks, starting with Onassis. On our way there (driving on the famous corniches, the seaside motorways, which reminded us of the old Athens-Corinth motorway), we had a stop at the beautiful villages of Villefranche and St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. In the latter, just to warm up, we visited the villa Ile-de-France, built by and for the wealthy Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothchild in 1912. It now is a museum surrounded by many ‘theme’ gardens (the French one, the Japanese one, the rose garden etc.)

Monaco’s old town was nice but the rest of the (more modern) city is so crowded and full of tall and rather ugly buildings! But we guess there’s no other way to house so many aspiring Monegasques! A surprise was waiting for us when we visited the Grimaldis’ palace: the audio guide was available in Greek, too – that’s so uncommon abroad, that we’ve only seen it at the Parthenon marbles hall of the British Museum! This confirmed our suspicion that Greeks are no strangers to Monaco… Another quasi-greek coincidence in Monaco: the orange easyCruise boat of Stelios Hadji-ioannou was anchored at the port. Monaco was also the site of a small adventure for us: we had left the car parked at the port, where we had found free parking space, but we had left the lights on! So, when we returned after a few hours, the battery was, of course, dead. We had to call road assistance – they came after about an hour (the company name was ‘Heracles’, another coincidence) and were very helpful. But it was very funny to see our car and the road assistance car among the Ferraris and the Bentleys that were in abundance at the port and Monaco in general… Unfortunately, this delay prevented us from visiting the Monte Carlo casino.

And after the modern we went to an ‘original’ colony: Antibes, the ancient Antipolis. Once again, we liked the small old town centre. What we didn’t like was Juan-les-Pins, Antibe’s sister city, famous in all tourist guides. Too touristic for our tastes: it reminded us of Faliraki in Rhodes. Cap d’Antibes, on the other hand was full of exclusive villas among the pines. But before Antibes we had been to the nearby 'Marineland', sort of a ‘Disneyland’ with dolphins and whales as the undisputable actors! The sea creatures presented an amazing show in special pools before large audiences. One can also admire seals and sea lions (can you tell the difference between the two?) as well as sharks. We liked the place and we went back the next day, having fun also at the nearby water park (‘Aquasplash’)

On our last day we allowed ourselves the small luxury of lunch at the beach of hotel Hilton on the Boulevard de la Croisette, in Cannes. The sea was less than inviting, as usual, but the service was good…

So the time had come for us to leave… Air France was good enough to allow us and our luggage to travel together this time. We arrived to an empty Athens – at the peak of the August vacation period. Maria continued her vacation, departing a few hours after our landing for Rhodes, whereas Stathis had to stay behind to attend to business and other obligations.

While in Cannes, we heard from friends and relatives that ‘Tachidromos’ a magazine distributed with the ‘Ta Nea’ newspaper has published, as expected, an four-page article on us and Intervac. It was describing in a very positive –and truthful- manner the advantages of this way of spending one’s vacation. But at that time we were living ‘the real thing’ and absolutely enjoying it!

2005: Summer in the ...colonies! (1st part)

Our Greek friends find it strange that we prefer to travel abroad during the summer… ‘Why would you want to do that? Summer means sun and sea and the best place to have these is Greece!’ seems to be everybody’s comment. Well, we like to live new experiences exploring other cultures and ways of life is our honest answer.

But it makes you think… Can we combine our wish to travel abroad with the typical (Greek) summer features? And let’s see what else we’d like to be added to the equation: let’s find a place that’s not very far so we don’t spend all our time in planes; it would be great if people there speak French, for Maria to practice her newly acquired language skills; and it has to be a place with a nice Intervac home for us to use (see www.intervac.org, our preferred way of vacations).
The result is obvious, isn’t it? La Côte d'Azur! (French Riviera for English speakers) So no Scandinavia this year – we’ll visit the colonies! (Ancient Greeks settled in the area in the 5th century B.C.)

We briefly considered going there by sea and car, but in the end we decided that flying was much quicker. And it was, just not for our luggage! Air France decided that our luggage were not in the same hurry as we were, therefore they shouldn’t need to be in the same plane as we were! So we landed in the airport of Nice with just our carry-on luggage and a nice small travel bag for each one of us, courtesy of Air France, with the basic stuff we would need (toothpaste and the like…), until our luggage were delivered to us the next day.

Our home for the coming days would be a comfortable apartment overlooking a small forest at the village of Mouans-Sartoux, at the outskirts of Cannes.

We spent our first evening in the city of Cannes, to orienteer and relax. The dinner menu had mussels. Finding our way back home was a small adventure, as we over-depended on the car GPS system which we used for the first time! (A very useful feature for the next days, though, which rendered road maps useless).

After spending one more day in Cannes, we decided to visit the famous Saint Tropez. A very picturesque but crowded town! Of course not only Saint Tropez but the entire Riviera was full of tourists (yes, just like us…), which meant that it took quite some time to go from one place to the other. Unfortunately and despite our searches, we didn’t manage to see any famous person -although Bruce Willis had visited a Saint Tropez beach a day ago. Ahm, the beaches… Rather disappointing we’re afraid: narrow, overcrowded and the sea far from crystal clear.

The next day was a trip to history and literature: the island St. Marguerite in the gulf off the city of Cannes. This was where the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ was incarcerated. The weather was fine, so the short cruise combined with a walk in the paths of the wooded island and some swimming made for a wonderful half day – and it got better when we visited in the evening the village of Mougins. This is where Pablo Picasso stayed and we agree that he had a good reason to do it: a village on top of a hill, small, pretty and, despite us tourists, rather quiet.

The next morning we thought, since we are so near, why not visit the Italian Riviera too? So, off we went to San Remo… The city is famous for its song festival, but we can’t really find any other reason to recommend it. Back in Mouans-Sartoux, the mood was festive in the evening: live music and dancing in the village square.

The city of Grasse is just a few kilometres away from Mouans-Sartoux and is ‘the perfume capital of France’. (That’s another good thing about France: every place seems to be famous for something…) We visited the Fragonard perfumery and then enjoyed music and dancing as the city celebrated its ‘jasmine festival’. So we satisfied our senses of smell and hearing… How about taste? After all, this is France! A sumptuous four hours lunch at the 2 Michelin stars restaurant ‘Moulin de Mougins’ was a wonderful and rewarding experience. The night ended with splendid fireworks above the night sky of the gulf of Cannes.

The next day our excursion took us to the villages of Biot (home of many glasshouses) and Saint Paul de Vence (a typical medieval fortified village, one of the most visited places in France). And then to the rightful capital of Côte d'Azur: the city of Nice (or Nikea as it was called when it was first colonized by our Greek ancestors back in 350 b.C.) with its famous Promenade des Anglais! Since you managed to read this far, here’s a free tip worth at least 10 €: parking is hard to find but don’t despair. Just park it in the parking lot of a casino, go for swimming, visit the old city with its narrow streets and its vendors, have dinner and then, just before you leave, spend some time –half an hour is enough-, at the casino itself. No need to actually play, although we did try the slot machines. Remember to ask the casino staff to stamp your parking ticket and then you can drive away having paid, well, nothing! Another original idea we tried in Nice: a restaurant where they serve you whatever they have decided; you don’t have to –and can’t really- order! Nice food but we couldn't understand why the service was so slow...

A book recently read...

(The book review that follows is in Greek) Το πιό πρόσφατο βιβλίο που διάβασα (Στάθης) ήταν το "Μια σταγόνα Ιστορία" (τόμος Α') του δημοσιογράφου Δ.Καμπουράκη. Το βιβλίο ήταν δώρο που έπιανε σκόνη στο ράφι, αλλά ήταν από καιρό στα 'υπ'όψιν' βιβλία (όσο πάει γίνονται και πιό πολλά δυστυχώς)... Η Ιστορία είναι κάτι που με γοητεύει και ενδιαφέρει αλλά το στυλ της δημοσιογραφίας του συγγραφέα του βιβλίου μάλλον όχι... Τέλος πάντων... Το βιβλίο με συντρόφεψε σε ένα πρόσφατο ταξίδι στην Ελβετία για ένα συνέδριο δικηγόρων (οπότε η παρούσα αναφορά σχετίζεται και με το θέμα του blog που είναι τα ταξίδια!). Το καλό του βιβλίου είναι ότι έχει πολλές μικρές παρουσιάσεις (3-4 σελίδες) ιστορικών ανεκδότων και έτσι έχει ποικιλία και δεν κουράζει. Βρήκα όμως μερικά λάθη και αναρωτιέμαι και για την ακρίβεια κάποιων στοιχείων του. Εν τέλει θα το συνιστούσα σε όποιον θα ήθελε 'μιά σταγόνα ιστορίας' - αλλά για κολύμπι στη θάλασσα της ιστορίας, προτιμήστε κάτι άλλο.
****Νοέμβριος 2005: Στο ταξίδι στη Σκωτία διάβασα και το δεύτερο βιβλίο της σειράς. Το βρήκα πιό ενδιαφέρον. Αν δεν υπήρχαν και τα 'διδακτικά' σχόλια του συγγραφέα στο τέλος κάθε παρουσίασης (κοινοτοπίες, ευτυχώς σύντομες) θα ήταν καλύτερο...

Summer 2004: Northern Exposure (4th part).-

One more city/country to visit in this trip: Estonia. Just 1,5 hour by boat across the gulf from Helsinki and we found ourselves in the beautiful medieval and fortified capital city of Tallinn. We were rather surprised to see that the city was not too big; it was picturesque, with beautiful and colorful buildings and full of restaurants, cafes and tourists. Sort of a smaller version of Prague. This came as a surprise as Estonia is virtually unknown in Greece and it's a shame. By the way, although Estonia was part of the former Soviet Union, one can hardly notice it, as both the lifestyle and everything else (such as signs for example) have nothing Russian about them. (Well, if one notices some details such as the sewer taps one can see that they are made in Russia and bear Russian letters on them)..

Returning from our trip to the North, we only stayed for a day in Athens, heading this time southeast, to Rhodes. We spent a couple of weeks there enjoying the sun and the sea and seeing (Maria's) family and friends. We even went on a 24-hour trip to the island of Nisyros (quite pretty and reminiscent of the Cyclades, despite being part of the Dodecanese complex of islands. It even reminded us of Iceland -see our 2003 summer vacation description- as we visited the island volcano's crater, to see again the earth boiling and releasing steam and ...ugly smells!)

Finally we returned to the (Olympic!) city of Athens, to get a taste of the Olympic metamorphosis of the city and watch a few sport events, too.