On Saturday, 20 June 2020 the Acropolis Museum celebrates 11 years of operation and welcomes back its visitors. The Museum has undertaken all the necessary measures for the protection of the health of its visitors. On this day, the Museum will be open from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., with a reduced entry (€5) to all exhibition areas. Additionally, visitors will have the opportunity to see the temporary exhibition ‘Chisel and Memory. The contribution of marble craftsmanship to the restoration of the Acropolis monuments’, which will continue until 30 September 2020, with free entrance. On Saturday 20 June, the Museum's second-floor restaurant will operate until 12 midnight.

Moreover, gallery talks held by the Museum’s Archaeologist-Hosts will commence this week. Visitors wishing to participate are required to wear a protective mask (not provided by the Museum) and to use the whisper guide system headsets (provided by the Museum to participants).

The lost statue of Athena Parthenos

The Acropolis Museum brings to life, digitally, the statue of Athena Parthenos. Made of gold and ivory, this masterpiece was designed by Phidias for the Parthenon. The Museum invites you on a walk of knowledge about its construction materials and techniques, its myths and allegories, its radiance, and its adventures. 

English: Every Friday at 11 a.m.

Duration: 50 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session. 

Price: €10

A walk through the Museum with an archaeologist 

Visitors have the opportunity to participate in evening walks through the Museum exhibition galleries, making unanticipated stops and various discussions, together with an Archaeologist-Host.

English: every Friday, at 6 p.m.

Duration: 60 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session.

Price: €10

Walking in the ancient neighborhood of the Acropolis Museum 

Visitors are given the opportunity to wander through the archaeological excavation which stretches underneath the Museum, like a giant exhibit. They will be able to walk on the ancient neighborhood’s streets, take a closer look at the houses with their courtyards and wells, enter the heart of the impressive mansions with the private baths, examine the workshops with the water reservoirs, take a magical stroll through time and the daily life of the people who lived in the shadow of the Acropolis’ rock for over 4,500 years.

English: every Saturday & Sunday, at 11 a.m.

Duration: 45 minutes

Participation: Limited to 10 visitors per session.

Price: €10

Flux Laboratory Athens shares the dance project ‘WHAT IF IT WAS YOU?” on the occasion of World Refugee Day, on Saturday, June 20, 2020. Performed by artists Joanna Toumbakari and Andi Xhuma, and choreographed by Markella Manoliadi, the piece has been inspired by Imany’s song “Take Care”, aiming at conveying through dance a call for unity and encouragement among people.

The project has taken the form of a video dance directed by Andi Xhuma and will be openly disseminated through international social platforms and channels on Saturday, June 20. On the same day, the dancers will perform live with the participation of the audience in various, symbolically significant places in the center of Athens as well as Flux Laboratory Athens (12 Geronta str., Plaka). 

Drawing upon the recent solidarity demonstrated by the global community and people’s strength to applaud healthcare workers during the period of confinement, the audience is invited once again to sing and, symbolically, applaud as another gesture for solidarity and unity.

In compliance with the safety guidelines pertinent to social-distancing in the pandemic, the audience is kindly asked to follow the performances, wearing a mask or scarf. During the performance at Flux Laboratory Athens, the participants are encouraged to stand around the perimeter of the building, enjoying the piece through its open doors.

Flux Laboratory produces transdisciplinary artistic projects and experiments with new creative and collaborative processes. Since 2016, Flux Laboratory supports and produces projects in Greece under the auspices of the Embassy of Switzerland in Greece. The research core of Flux programming in Athens is the Body itself. The Body is being explored as an integral tool of artistic creation, a source of knowledge and experience as well as a dynamic element that underpins the concept of social cohesion and community development.

Samsung Electronics Hellas, British Council, and INNOVATHENS Powered by Samsung organize the fascinating webinar “New Experiences using Natural Language Processing in Artificial Intelligence” on Friday, 19 June 2020, at 19.00. The webinar will be live-streamed through the British Council’s and INNOVATHENS’ Facebook pages.

 

Natural Language Processing has been the subject of intensive research and an object of high hopes for decades. Yet, most of us still do not see any spectacular tangible results like eloquent androids or omnipotent AI present in popular Hollywood movies. Still, many companies advertise their AI systems as truly intelligent.

What is the truth? Has anything changed in the NLP area recently? To what extent do we actually use NLP in our life and what exactly is it? Do computers really understand human language? What does “understanding human language” actually mean and what are its potential implications? Finally, what can we expect from the NLP technologies in the close future, and should we be afraid of it? Dr. Lukasz Slabinski will try to answer these questions from the perspective of Samsung Electronics, a company that is one of the largest producers of intelligent consumer electronics. Mr. Kostas Karpouzis will be the moderator of the webinar.

Participation is free.

The science talk will be live-streamed through British Council’s and INNOVATHENS’ Facebook pages.

Dr. Lukasz Slabinski is the Head of the Artificial Intelligence Department at Samsung R&D Institute in Poland. He and his team work in various AI areas like NLP, Data Analytics, and Computer Vision to bring new AI-powered functionalities to Samsung’s global customers. Before joining Samsung, Dr. Slabinski worked as a scientist in research institutes, as a university assistant professor, and as an entrepreneur in his own start-up company – always exploring how AI can aid people in their lives.

Kostas Karpouzis is currently an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) in Greece. His research interests lie in the areas of human-computer interaction, emotion understanding (Ph.D. thesis in Greek [PDF]), affective and natural interaction, serious games, and games based assessment and learning. Since 1998 he has participated in 15 research projects at Greek and European level; most notably the Humaine Network of Excellence, within which he completed his post-doc in the field of mapping signals to signs of emotion, and the FP7 TeL Siren project (Technical Manager), which was voted Best Learning Game in Europe for 2013 by the Games and Learning Alliance Network of Excellence. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (formerly Humaine Association) and the Student Activities Chair for IEEE Greece. He’s also a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (Springer), Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (Springer), and Journal on Synthetic Emotions. 

Following the 3-month shutdown that was imposed by the Greek health authorities to contain the coronavirus outbreak, museums across the country have finally reopened.

 

The Public National Health Organization (EODY) and the Ministry of Culture & Sports have collaborated extensively to ensure a 2 and 1.5-meter distance among all visitors inside and outside respectively, is maintained at all times. Other measures include the mandatory use of protective face masks and an 8-people group tour maximum.

 

The Acropolis Museum President, Professor Dimitris Pantermalis, stated: "the closure of the Acropolis Museum was not only unpredictable, it was a huge shock (...), but ultimately this downtime became rather creative." He said that a lot of maintenance work took place as well as improvements in infrastructure and lighting, so that now "we are moving towards the opening of the museum completely renewed," he noted.

 

eDirector of the National Archaeological Museum, Maria Lagogianni, told ANA-MPA that "we want to ensure employees feel and actually are safe, but also that visitors can enjoy the museum knowing that their health safety is not at risk." Strictly scheduled visits and controlling visitor flow is key to offering a safe museum tour, she underlined.


To read this article in full, please visit: amna.gr

About The Festival 

The Athens & Epidaurus Festival is the foremost public cultural organization in Greece and one of the oldest active festivals in Europe. Spanning 65 years, the Festival has welcomed some of the greatest music, dance, and theatre artists of the international and local scene, attracting large audiences from around the world.

Up to the year 2005, the Festival was held exclusively at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens and the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. In the summer of 2006, five brand-new theatre stages were launched at the Peiraios 260 industrial venue which has since emerged as a major springboard for contemporary art. Furthermore, artistic productions and site-specific performances are presented in other venues all over the Attica region, under the banner of the Festival.

Nowadays, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus focuses on music, with special emphasis on celebrated orchestras and famous soloists, while the Peiraios 260 venue highlights the latest trends in theatre and dance, inviting internationally acclaimed, avant-garde creative teams, and commissioning new works by talented Greek artists.

The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus features primarily ancient tragedies and comedies by established Greek and international directors. Meanwhile, the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus, whose reins were gradually handed over to the Athens & Epidaurus Festival by the Friends of Music Society in the early 2000s, focuses on experimental music and musical/theatrical performances.

Under its current Artistic Director Katerina Evangelatos, the Athens & Epidaurus Festival aims to expand its international scope through co-productions with world-renowned theatre and dance companies, as well as showcasing Greek artists, supporting artistic research in the area of performing arts, and connecting research with audience development.

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XpatAthens is proud to be a Media Sponsor of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival

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Athens Photo Festival and the Benaki Museum on 25 May agreed on new dates for the Festival, in 2020. Athens Photo Festival will be held from 16 September to 15 November 2020. Additionally, as a result of difficulties experienced by applicants due to the coronavirus outbreak, the deadline for submissions has been extended to 30 June 2020.

The Festival is accepting submissions from artists and photographers for its exhibition program. The selected works will be exhibited at the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138, one of the most prestigious museums in Greece.

The Festival will feature the work of emerging and established artists from all over the world, with the aim to reflect the diversity of photography and visual culture today. Exploring diverse cultural, artistic, social, and political perspectives, Athens Photo Festival is committed to offering a dynamic platform for the exchange of ideas, artistic expression, and engagement with photography in all its forms.

The call is open to all the image-based genres, ranging from fine art and conceptual to documentary and photojournalism, installations, interactive and multimedia works. This year's exhibition program will be composed of a diverse selection of over 80 image-based projects, selected through this international call for proposals.

Athens Photo Festival will continue to follow the updates on COVID-19 closely, while adhering to the guidelines put forward by our governments, to ensure the measures we take will help protect our artists, teams, and audience.

The festival was founded in 1987 on the initiative of Stavros Moresopoulos, under the name International Month of Photography in Athens, as a biennial event. It is the longest-running festival of photography in Greece, and one of the five oldest of its kind in the world. In 1997, the festival turned into an annual event. In 2008, it was officially renamed to Athens Photo Festival in order to reflect upon the festival’s expanding program which now embraced a wide range of events that are completely in tune with today’s social and aesthetics needs.

Throughout the years, the festival has remained faithful to its founding purpose, raising audiences awareness of photography and acting as a catalyst for lens-based practice within Greece and a showcase for contemporary trends, a new talent from all over the world, and the very best of Greek photography. The extensive documentation from its over 30-year history of festival activities, including photos, texts, and information about the artists will be soon available online on this website.

"Greek Summer is a state of mind… This year, enjoy your Greek summer wherever you are…" is the message of the most recent Greek tourism campaign.

 

The campaign was presented last week at Cine Aegli open-air cinema in Athens. It included the screening of the campaign's new video to representatives of tourism organizations, politicians, the media, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

According to Marketing Greece CEO Ioanna Dretta, the campaign aims to send a positive message and inspire travelers around the world to come to Greece whenever possible.

 

"Through the campaign we aim to create a lasting expectation. To build a new brand and create a desire (for travel) that can be fulfilled for all once the conditions allow it. The Greek summer will always be here," Dretta stated before the screening.

To read this article in full, please visit: gtp.gr

XpatAthens works with writers, bloggers, cultural platforms, and local media houses in order to give our readers unique, useful, and up-to-date content.

We are always looking to meet and connect with new content contributors. If you believe that your content would be a positive addition to XpatAthens, click here to learn more about working with us!

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Who Is Eleni Maria Georgiou?
 

 

 

 

The measures for COVID-19 continue to ease. Following high schools, kindergartens and primary schools have also opened. There goes another fortress. I know parents who breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news. "At last young children will get back into their daily routine and we will be able to get to our jobs and have some time for ourselves. " I also know others who were questioning whether to send their children to school for what will actually be two weeks of classes. In all honesty, it’s not about children learning new things it’s about taking away from them the pressure that this whole situation with COVID-19 has created.

And then there are families with members in the high risk group of people. What should they do? Should they risk it? The children will of course be happy to see their classmates and their teachers again. They will be happy to hug each other. Oops, here it is again. Hugs. This is forbidden though. We have all discussed this with our children. Yes, but how do you keep children away from each other, especially young ones? Hugs and kisses are their world. Lots of dilemmas. Many questions. We are called to decide upon very important issues every day. It's not easy. We need to weigh the pros and cons, but again, it's not easy. The measures may be more relaxed but the pressure is camouflaged and continues in a different form.

As most of us are slowly coming out of the quarantine, we are a bit numb. After all, what is the right thing to do? What is the safe thing to do? We know there is not 100% safety or protection guarantee. They simply don’t exist. And that's what worries many of us. We each face different challenges. Your priorities are different from mine. That’s exactly what we need to take into consideration and base our forward moving on.

If there’s a topic you’re interested in and would like to learn more about you may contact me via email. For more information about me and my work check the XpatAthens Directory or visit my website. Because this is your life!

The award-winning sports tourism event returns for the 8th consecutive year on October 16-18, 2020 in Messinia, Pylos and Costa Navarino. Through its global message “sports unite people”, the event will offer the opportunity of discovering the magic of the Messinian landscape and the history highlighted by the top sports celebration, to people of all ages from Greece and abroad.

Participants will have a chance of running one of the top 21.1km Greek Half Marathons, along with Greek-American ultramarathon Dean Karnazes. In addition, they can choose between the 10km route or the joyful 5km route which is also suited for dynamic walking. Athletes starting from the Navarino Dunes of Costa Navarino, will run along the picturesque coast towards Pylos and cross the magnificent Voidokilia beach while passing by the Gialova lagoon. This is one of the most significant wetlands in Europe. It is the southernmost station of migratory birds in the Balkans to and from Africa that has been designated as a Natura 2000 nature protected area. The Half Marathon is the only trail running route in Greece that combines soil, sand, and asphalt. The event offers race timing for all runners. All races are co-organized with Messiniakos Gymnastic Club and EAS SEGAS Peloponnese Region.

On the same day, the 1km children’s race will be held in two groups, for children 10-14 years old and kids up to 9 years of age.

The impressive 5km route that emerges by the sea, as well as all other routes, have been planned by the former marathon runner, current classic marathon course national record holder, running coach, and director of All About Running, Nikos Polias.

Navarino Challenge has remained at the forefront of the 2020 Tourism Awards, claiming the highest distinction in Greek tourism by winning the Platinum Award in the Sustainability category. The significant accolades received by the event, also include the Gold Award, once more, in the Sports Tourism category and the Silver Award in the Integrated Marketing Campaign category. The Platinum award is the first one to be received by a sports tourism event in Greece.

Distinctions do not stop for one of the top sports tourism events in Europe since it was also the first sports tourism event in Greece to win an award in the “Best In Wellness” category at the International Travel &Tourism Awards by WTM London last year.

In the context of this year’s recognition, Active Media Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Akis Tsolis stated: “Our most recent distinction highlights the innovative sustainability initiatives that we have implemented in a sports tourism event, for the first time in Greece. Our excellent collaboration with Costa Navarino, all cooperating bodies, the Municipality of Pylos-Nestor, businessmen from Pylos and Messinia as well as our sponsors, indicates more than ever, the importance and value of solid strategic relations. Despite the unprecedented conditions we are experiencing, sports tourism is not only an integral part of the Greek tourism product, that we all need to protect, but something even more valuable for the future. There is considerable room for growth in outdoor sporting activities, which promote economic and social development for local communities, while highlighting the unique cultural elements of each place”.

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Early bird 40% discount!
Register today!

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Runners can act promptly and take advantage of the early bird offer on registrations until July 31. Athletes can register in the Half Marathon with a 40% discount and find out about valid early bird offers in all other routes. Children’s race is held at no cost. The event, always prioritizing the participants themselves, offers a refund of their registration costs until August 31.

More information on premium accommodation packages will be announced in the coming weeks.

The event continues to innovate for another year by having Samsung Electronics Hellas as its Official Technology Partner. Following last year’s successful contribution towards the organization of a paperless event, Samsung returns with the top Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra, which change the way videos and photos are captured through their 8K Video and the most advanced 100X Zoom, offering brand new features and impressive shots. At the same time, the Galaxy Z Flip, the first full screen folding smartphone, with flexible glass and excellent design, offers convenience and unique style.

Samsung and Navarino Challenge will offer all participants the opportunity to purchase the Galaxy S20, S20+, and Galaxy Z Flip, with a 20% discount.

Navarino Challenge is held under the auspices of the Greek National Tourism Organization and is co-organized by Costa Navarino , The Westin Resort Costa Navarino, and Active Media Group with the support of Pylos-Nestor Municipality.

As every year, the event will be held, in accordance with the strict standards set by the Greek Ministry of Tourism, the General Secretariat of Sports and the relevant sports Federations.

Always having the safety and health of all participants and staff as its main priority, Navarino Challenge will be planned and delivered based on the protocol of races, which will ensure public health and safety of all parties involved. Moreover, the event is already strengthened with top consultants specialized in this area.

Official technology partner: Samsung

Official sports supplier: Luanvi

Official supporters: Poseidonia, Pylos-Nestor Municipality

Partners: Fysiotek Sports Lab, Karalis Beach Hotel

Official rental partner: Avance 3

Athletic partners: Explore Messinia, FitnessArt, Navarino Golf Academy, Navarino Outdoors, Navarino Racquet Academy, Pilates by Mandy, Red Swim Academy, Swim Academy, Triantafyllidis Beach Arena, Vizantinos target sport club

CSR Partner: Captain Vasilis and Carmen Konstantakopoulos Foundation

Assisted by: VitaNTravel, Karalis City Hotel & Spa, Lifeguard Patrol, Pylos Association of Enterprises for Tourism Development, Maritime Athletic Pylos Association “Nestor”, Target Security

Sports Production: Active Media Group

 

YouTube Channel

Hashtags: #navarinochallenge #costanavarino #sportsunitepeople #eatwell #runwell #livewell

Photo Credit: Babis Giritziotis

Costa Navarino is the prime, sustainable destination in the Mediterranean, located in the Greek region of Messinia in the southwest Peloponnese. One of the most unspoiled and breathtaking seaside Mediterranean landscapes, this area has been shaped by 4,500 years of history.

Its philosophy is driven by a genuine desire to promote Messinia, while protecting and preserving its natural beauty and heritage. It will comprise a number of distinct sites featuring five-star deluxe hotels, luxury private residences, conference facilities, spa and thalassotherapy centres, signature golf courses, as well as a wide range of unique year-round activities for adults and children.

Navarino Dunes, the first area, is home to two luxury five-star hotels, The Romanos, a Luxury Collection Resort, and The Westin Resort Costa Navarino; Navarino Residences, a collection of luxury villas for private ownership; and The Residences at The Westin Resort Costa Navarino – fully furnished resort apartments for sale; the signature golf course The Dunes Course; Anazoe Spa, a 4,000m 2 spa and thalassotherapy centre; the state-of-the-art conference centre House of Events; specially designed facilities for children; and a variety of gastronomy venues, sports, outdoor and cultural activities.

Navarino Bay, the second area, is home to the signature golf course, The Bay Course and to the earth- sheltered Bay Clubhouse, while an ultra-luxury, all-suite and pool villas resort is currently under construction, alongside an upscale, vibrant, lifestyle resort at the nearby site Navarino Waterfront. At Navarino Hills, two new 18-hole signature golf courses are also being constructed.