For more than 9 years, Plisskën Festival has consistently proved itself to be one of Greece’s leading Festivals and proudly returns to Technopolis this year on September 11 & 12! 

Exceptional programming has seen some of the world’s most iconic artists, alongside the best alternative and up and coming talent including legendary headliners Giorgio Moroder, Floating Points, Quantic, Jungle, The Black Madonna, Hunee, Peter Bjorn and John, Tinariwen, Mogwai, Mulatu Astatke, Death in Vegas, La Femme, Mac deMarco, Forest Swords, David August, Liars, Fuck Buttons, Nicola Cruz, Sama’, Afrodeutsche, Ellen Allien, Optimo, Tuxedomoon, Son Lux, Swans, Andy Stott, Debonair and many more.

Aside from a line-up celebrating a broad mix of styles and quality, Plisskën also continues to push the boundaries of their environmental and social ethos.

Wanting to be more environmentally conscious,they have been awarded the ‘Commended’ rating from the Greener Festival Awards global governing body for 2 consecutive years.

And The Lab, an annual series of workshops organised by Plisskën, takes place in Athens prior to the festival.  Through a number of theoretical and practical seminars hosted by professionals in their respective fields, The Lab participants get the chance to learn about all of the elements that comprise putting on a festival.

Plisskën is considered as the most innovative and exciting multi-genre festival of the Summer. Our Ethos is about providing a meaningful and enjoyable music experience with respect to all its counterparts whether they be of human or environmental nature!

On the occasion of this year’s August Full Moon, the Acropolis Museum will offer to its visitors the opportunity to enjoy the Museum exhibits as follows:
 
On Saturday 21 August 2021, the Museum exhibition areas will remain open from 8am to 8pm with free entry to all visitors, on the occasion of the Museum’s participation in the "Greece 2021" initiative.

The Museum second floor restaurant will be open until 12 midnight and visitors will be able to enjoy the moon from the terrace for dinner/drinks (telephone reservations on +30 210 9000915).
 
On Sunday 22 August 2021, the Museum exhibition areas will remain open from 8am to 10pm. The second floor restaurant will be open during the same hours.

• English: 6 p.m. (2 simultaneous talks)
• Greek: 8 p.m. (2 simultaneous talks)
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session. For registration, please refer to the Information Desk at the Museum entrance on the same day. First-in first-served.
• Health protection measures: It is necessary to wear a mask (not provided by the Museum) and to use the whisper guide system headsets (provided by the Museum).
• Cost: The general admission fee to the Museum is required (10 euro).

Morning Saturday and Sunday gallery talks, "Marathon - Salamis. In traces of myth and history" and "Walking in the ancient neighbourhood of the Acropolis Museum" will be held as usual.

As one of Greece's most beloved instruments, you may listen to the bouzouki sound everywhere you go in the country from koutoukia, Greece's underground taverns, to live music performances by Greek rebetiko artists. Would you think though, that bouzouki can even be heard in a hospital's corridors? If you answered no, think again because that's exactly what happened in AHEPA hospital. 

37-year-old Dimitris Kyrtsos, had a tumor removed from his head a few months ago all while playing his favorite musical instrument, the bouzouki, right there in the operating room! As the man explains, he saw videos on YouTube with other people playing instruments during their surgery and he liked the idea. He was under partial anesthesia, which means he remained conscious during the procedure, and he totally nailed the Greek song "Mavromata Mou", which he dedicated to his wife! 

The World Tourism Association for Culture and Heritage (WTACH) has commenced a study into the tourism carrying capacity of Athens in a new partnership with the Athens Development and Destination Management Agency (ADDMA).

WTACH will set the parameters and guide the research, which is being carried out in cooperation with the University of Piraeus' Department of Tourism Studies.

The objective is to raise awareness of the tourism carrying capacity of greater Athens, especially in peak season, with the view to easing pressure on the city’s urban infrastructure and better spreading the benefits of tourism, both geographically and throughout the year.

Pre-Covid, multiple cruise ships often arrived on the same day in peak season. Localized spikes in tourism numbers, not just from cruise passengers, have the potential to compromise the ability of Athens to provide sustainable, safe, and accessible tourism experiences, throughout the city, which is known for world-famous attractions such as the Acropolis, National Archeology Museum, the Roman Agora, and the Plaka and Anafiotika neighborhoods.

The research will canvas the opinions of local residents groups, local tourism-related associations, relevant business leaders, and civil servants.

Depending on the outcomes, the findings may be useful as a tool to lobby political leaders to secure improved tourism management policies.

Mr. Vangelis Vlachos, CEO of ADDMA, said that the study will provide vital empirical data showing the impact of the visitor economy on the Greek capital. The research would also give the city an “important new destination management tool”.

For more information, please visit: wtach.org

A Greek-Australian researcher is one of the scientists penning a new article describing just how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects the formation of glaciers and its crucial role in climate change.

The research was undertaken by Vera Korasidis, a palynologist, or scientist who studies pollen and pollen fossils, and her colleague Peter Buck, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, who co-authored the paper.

They believe that a drop in greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, caused a great global cooling event some 34 million years ago.

This unfortunately means that, conversely, a rise in such gases would inevitably mean an equal-sized global warming event, as has long been thought by climate scientists.

The ultimate manifestations of global warming are disputed by some, who see them as the normal fluctuations in climate as we have seen throughout the history of the planet.

But there is no disputing that the more carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, the warmer that atmosphere will become.

This is the first time that researchers have shown in a study that global cooling, as a result of less available carbon dioxide, created the massive glaciers that formed 34 million years ago.

Korasidis notes that “Before then, vast regions of the world, including Antarctica, were covered in lush rainforests. There were no permanent ice sheets” on Earth.

During these many years, known as the “Eocene Oligocene transition,” the average average temperature across the entire globe decreased by more than 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in approximately 300,000 years.

Vittoria Lauretano, the lead author of the paper, works as an organic geochemist in the realm of the paleoclimate at the University of Bristol’s Organic Geochemistry Unit. She states “This geologically quick change shows how atmospheric carbon dioxide drives major shifts in climate.”

Evidence from marine sediments shows unequivocally that the globe indeed was a very temperate place prior to that era, with not even a glacier anywhere on Earth.

To read this article in full, please visit: greekreporter.com

Athenians have always poured their pain into poetry, painting, and music. Thus, Greece’s well-documented economic woes fuelled a fertile decade of unprecedented cultural growth in its capital city.

 

Art moved out of buildings and into public spaces: from the grandest galleries and boxed-in museums; to pop-up exhibitions in disused shops, alternative culture hubs, and politically charged spray paint on neighborhood walls. In this bumper final episode, Sofka Zinovieff sets her sights on unpacking Athens’ wildly varied arts scene—and on untangling the fascinating marriage of big money and the arts. We’ll go in search of the boldest buskers and street murals, and hear how the great rivalry between two famous shipping tycoons transformed the city’s cultural landscape. (Clue: it involves an opera legend and former first lady).

“Almost anywhere you go in the capital, there’s a church nearby,” says Sofka Zinovieff in this seventh episode of Athens Unpacked that is literally a matter of life and death.

 

Get ready to visit the city’s finest and most famous graveyard - the final resting ground for a pantheon of modern Greek heroes; walk down the street of Eternal Repose; and address the oily business of baptism, Greek-style. You’ll also encounter the confectionary treat Athenians turn to remember their dead; learn about the must-have accessory newborn babies wear to ward off misfortune and find out why Greeks shout everyone else on their own birthdays.

As the August full moon rises over the Parthenon, the Acropolis Museum welcomes locals and visitors to experience this annual event like never before.

On Saturday 21 August 2021, the Museum exhibition areas will remain open from 8 am to 8 pm with free entry to all visitors, on the occasion of the Museum’s participation in the “Greece 2021” initiative. The Museum's second-floor restaurant will be open until midnight so that visitors can take in spellbinding views of the full moon while enjoying a nice dinner. 

On Sunday 22 August 2021, the Museum exhibition areas will remain open from 8 am to 10 pm. The second-floor restaurant will be open during the same hours while visitors will have the opportunity to participate in the gallery talk “Afternoons in the Acropolis Museum”, where they will be introduced to the fascinating stories hidden in the treasures of the Museum’s galleries.

For more information, please click HERE!

It may be that nowadays the electric car makes quite the impression and is funded by big industrial firms, but in Greece, it was already constructed for the first time 45 years ago!

The electric car is hosted in the industrial museum of Syros. The car was built in 1973 in an old mill building close to the Neorion yard of Ermoupolis, the capital of Syros.

This electric car is the model Enfield 8000, an innovation at the time when the problem of air pollution had made its appearance in the big cities. At the same time, the concern related to oil stocks and dependence on them also grew big. It seemed that an electric car would solve many problems.

History of the electric car of Syros island

The car’s history began in the late 1960s. The company Enfield Automotive, based in the Isle of Wight of Great Britain and owned by the Greek John Goulandris (a member of a large shipowner family), won a competition for a contract with the Council of Electric Energy of England. Shortly before the start of the production of the car, Goulandris encountered technical problems with the Isle of Wight and so decided to move the factory to Syros. It was a risky decision, as the island of Syros had a long tradition in shipbuilding but no relation to the manufacturing of cars, let alone electric. However, it seems that the outcome vindicated Goulandris. The designer of the electric model was George Michael. The construction involved men from the yard, engineers, craftsmen from Syros, Piraeus, and many other places around Greece. It was a truly Greek affair.

To celebrate the history of the first electric car in Greece, a documentary was filmed, titled "A tale of two Isles", directed by Michael Stavropoulos (Director of the magazine for cars). One day Michael Stavropoulos went to Syros to try a modern electric car. On this occasion, he was introduced to the Greek story of the electric car, talked with people involved in the construction, and finally made a movie about the Enfield 8000.

To read this article in full and discover more about the Enfield 8000, please visit: omilo.co

Omilo Greek Language and Culture inspires people from all over the world to learn Greek, while exploring Greece. They offer 1- and 2-week courses for adults that combine beautiful course locations, experienced teachers, and a balanced combination of Greek classes with cultural activities. All these make Omilo a place where people enjoy learning modern Greek and have fun.

Besides the courses, Omilo also creates online publications to help adults expand their language skills through Language Books and eBooks for different language levels.