Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

With these photos of the panijiri at chapel Panagia Makrini in a cave high above Kallithea in the west of Samos, Mike and I would like to wish all the people on Samos, all the friends of the island of Samos and all of our friends a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Light a candle and bring warmth to the hearts of all people!

Hope many of you from all over the world will visit (again) Samos in 2008.

Christmas presents

Are you still looking for some christmas presents?
How about.............
a Vespa???
or.......... a Ford Escort???
Maybe you need a complete household???
Ok ok, i admit it, the panoramic view to Kokkari is shitty and disturbing. I am sorry, next time i will shoot the crap as a close-up to avoid the shitty panoramic. But i think the washing machine there looks pretty good.......

If you have any wishes for christmas, just let me know, i point it out where to find your christmas present.
Oh Samos, what a lovely place to be,
where christmas presents are for free......

Greek curiosities part 1 / LIDL

There are so many strange things happening every month to me, so i decided to write down the funny stories. Here is the first one:
Going for shopping with me love it happened to me:
My love Conny wants to stopp at Lidl. Like always, she is filling the basket and i have the fun to empty my wallet.
After shopping i am checking the bill.... and there it is......shock..... ΣΤΟΛΕΝ ΧΡΙΣΤ !!!!!

There is a stolen "Christ" on my bill as you can see at the photo below.
My love has stolen the "christ"? And therefore i have to pay 2.99 for the kilo??? What the heck did Conny do in LIDL??? Or, is it a christmas joke?
Fear is coming up and i think of cops coming to LIDL, arresting me because i have kidnapped Christ.... what a mess.... ( i have big imagination sometimes :0 )
So, lets check the basket whats in there..... hmmm....eggs........dipers.......kitchen paper.........
and than i found it..... Conny baught a traditional german christmas cake called "Christstollen"!!!

Propably not knowing what it is... the company translated "Christstollen" to "stolen christ" and write it in greek alphabet.

Here we are:
ΣΤΟΛΕΝ ΧΡΙΣΤ
( very delicious )

Samos for sale! / Fence me in!

Driving around on Samos island, I noticed almost everywhere the signs "poleitai" - for sale, in most cases with telefon numbers on it! Seems everbody wants to sell their grounds or old and/or dilapidated houses and leave the island?!





Another thing that struck my attention: fences! Seems to be one of the fastest growing markets on Samos: buy some property and shelter your territory immediately by building a big fence around it! And of course, typical for Samians, your neighbor will start to build some fence too, at least as impressive as yours!
Maybe the revival of a good tradition on Samos? Because already Polykratos built some very impressive walls around the ancient town of Samos.

Avlakia

In this hot summer 2007 on Samos, I paid many, many visits to the north coast of Samos. And several times I stopped in the small village of Avlakia. This place is not so much recognised by tourists who come to Samos. Most tourists and locals are passing this village at high speed on their way on the main road along the north coast.
You really need to slow down, stop your vehicle and walk down the stairs that lead to the sea to discover the beauties of this place.
Avlakia is located west of Kokkari, between Tsamadou and Tsa(m)bou beach.
O.K., here is my presentation of this picturesque small village and its surroundings. Most of the 91 fotos used for this presentation were taken in the time range from July to October 2007. Hope you will enjoy it.
Then maybe next time you come to Samos, you might want to stop for a visit or even stay in Avlakia, swim in the sea or spend some time in a taverna!

If you want to see the full size (540x438 pixel), please go to:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1387701kwYdyY5E


Online Videos by Veoh.com

Samos, greek and green

Here is a version of my presentation "Samos 2007, greek and green",
thanks to the video platform "veoh" in relatively good online quality (Mike gave me the advice to try this one!)
The 87 fotos used for this presentation I took during several stays on the island in the years 2004 to 2006.
Music is played "live" by a good friend of mine, the bouzouki player and singer Yannis Loulourgas from Pithagorio. I met Yannis in his shop in Pithagorio, then a musical instruments workshop solely, on the second day of my very first visit to Samos way back in 1999.
The music you hear comes from a performance of him together with some of his friends and music collegues from the island at the ancient theatre of Pithagorio, I think this was 3 years ago.

If you want to see the full size (540x438 pixel), please go to:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v1337966RTsBdwMa


Online Videos by Veoh.com

Leaving on a jet plane / cheese or chicken

Everything comes to an end, so did my stay on Samos for this year.
This summer I really missed the typical blue aegean sky most of the time during my stay on Samos, only on a few days we had it. Most of the time it was hot and hazy with south or east winds. Beginning of September was nice, I already reported on this. But that didn't last for very long.
The last morning in Pithagorio on Samos, a beautiful morning! After a cool weekend in mid October with several rain showers finally the sky was clear again. Perfect for shooting landscape photos. And I had to leave Samos!


Almost 11 o'clock on monday morning, here I stand on the platform looking back on Samos before entering the door of the aircraft.




German reality had me within half an hour when I realized, that the service on the LTU flight back to Frankfurt had been "right-sized" to Air Berlin standards as it seems (LTU belongs to Air Berlin now).
A quick change back to "Guten Appetit" after a long time of "Kali Orexi" on Samos. The announcement "After we have reached our cruising altitude, we will serve you a sandwich. You have the choice between cheese or chicken" came almost as a shock. In comparison to last years flights with LTU, what a mediocre breakfast!
I ordered the cheese variation of this sandwich and - according to the label on the box - this is what I got: "Sandwich Landbrot Gouda".


Faced with such a splendid meal I couldn't resist and took a photo of that well contained and quality asured small piece of bread with cheese before I ingested it with the help of tea and orange juice.


I tried to talk about this with a highly sun-tanned elderly woman sitting next to me. She replied dry and cool: "for me such a sandwich is enough! If you have the impression that the quality of service has gone down over the years when flying to Samos, why don't you try a different island next time! Hmmm....

For the next 7 or 8 month, I hope that Mike will put some photos of Samos during fall, winter and early spring on this blog from time to time.

Samos – home of the old and rusty

Driving around Samos island, for sure you will have noticed many old car wrecks left in the fields or under the trees along the roadsides, almost like a big open air car museum. Seems like the samian people want to present their old cars and car wrecks to the tourists who come to visit the island.

Mike has already depicted his favorite car wreck here. My favorite car wreck, a small truck, was located in a bend on the road between Mytilini and the monastery Agia Triada. But when I looked for it again this summer, I couldn’t find it anymore.

It has been removed, don’t know where it is now. Maybe somebody has seen it lately and knows where it is? Or maybe it ended up like many others here - more or less uniformely shaped for easier handling - on the back of a truck on their way to a ferry in the harbour of Samos town.

Well, it took some time to find a new favorite car wreck, so here is my new one! Found this bus wreck at its ultimate stop in a sunny field somewhere in the hills above Kokkari.

Samos, the island of the "Evolution Revolution"

Worlds first stone age mobile phone found on samos island, 04.september 2007 at Avlakia.

Hmmm.... must be a model from "Nokiage", provided by "Vodastone".
The phone bill has been paid with pebbles, cash of course, or like we germans use to say with "kies kies".

The haze is gone!

For many many days the skies over Samos were hazy and the weather hot and sticky. That's not good at all for taking fotos of landscapes. Last evening and during the night, clouds came to the island. Today (Thursday, Sept, 6th) the situation changed dramatically, we had blue sky with nice white clouds casting shadows on the landscapes of the island. And a very good visibility in the afternoon. What a relief!
I left Pythagorio and drove around on my motor scooter to take some fotos. Here are 3 examples of how it looked like today in the afternoon on Samos, 2 fotos show views on Samos-town, the third foto shows the Samos straits with the view on the turkish coast in close distance.

This is the weather I like, but in this exceptionally hot summer I had to wait for many days.

Wine tasting at Ampelos

Since it hasn't rained for a long time on Samos, some villages on the island are faced with the
fact that their wells will run out of water. Some springs already deliver no more water.

But not so in the village of Ampelos! Located on the north coast, high above the sea in the middle of green vineyards. As I came to know yesterday in the afternoon, still lots of liquid are coming out there from this well in the upper part of Ampelos!

This young guy found out the secret! During the happy hour, instead of water, the flowing liquid is the new wine. (as you can see from the lable on the bottle! Double-click on the foto to get a bigger image!)

And of course, the guy enjoys trinking it.

Well, if this story isn't true, at least it is well told!

Harbour at night

It's always nice to take a walk around in the port of Pythagorio. But especially in the evening and in the night, the magic starts! The greek people every evening do their rounds, they call it "volta". Many beautiful motor and sailing yachts anchor in the port, some of them come back every year to Samos (like most of the tourists, :-) ). Some motor yachts are really big and for sure cost millions of Euro. To me it seems, that people have to stay on their boats in the evening and night, otherwise nobody would know that they own or rented these beautiful boats.

I like to walk around. Many bars and restaurants along the harbour front invite you to enter and stay for some time. The flair in the port is international, unfortunately not so much left of original greek life. Over the years it has become a place for tourists from everywhere who like to spend their money a little bit faster. Interestingly, most tourists who come to Samos don't even want to listen to greek music for more than 5 minutes.

One of my favorite places for taking a drink is the bar "Tabula Rasa", I like the carefully and beautifully designed environment and the view from there on to the yachts in the harbour. On the photo you see how it looked like 3 days ago! Somebody just told me that this was the yacht of Steven Spielberg!

Kostas, the owner of the place, takes care of the music. Here you can see him (far left) together with another guy, and the waitresses, two lovely girls from Poland, Martha and Jeanetta.

Panijiri at Ydroussa, August 28th 2007

First I went to the chapel Ag. Ioannis, where the sermon took place. This chapel you can find below Ydroussa surrounded by vineyards. It was already almost dark when I arrived. Many people gathering around outside the small chapel listening to the singing and words of the priest.
Then I went up to the village of Ydroussa. There, they have two places (platia) where the action was going on.

Both platia are seperated by the church. Up to 10 pm I was almost alone on the platia where I decided to stay first except the musicians, tuning their instruments and setting up equipment. At about 10:15 pm, from all sides people came into the platia. Within twenty minutes or so the place was full. Music on both places started at about 10:30 in the night.

A special half hour show was given by a sexy looking colorful female singer, dressed in black, and a bouzouki player dressed in white.

15 packages with 12 bottles of champaign each (or whatever liquid is in there) were rushed out of the taverna and built up in front of the musicians in the platia. In a hurry, all bottles were opened by the waitors to honour the singer!

It looks like too much of bouzouki playing makes a bit tired!



Accompanied by the full moon, I had a great time walking around the two platia and enjoying the music and dances.

Prices: 7 Euros for chicken and potatoes, 5 Euros for 0,5 Liter of Samaina sec, 2 Euros for Coca Cola, 1 Euro for a small bottle of water. What I didn't like so much was, that they were asking 5 Euros for a greek salad!

At about 1:30 in the night I felt it was time to go back to Pythagorio. Had a nice trip back on my motor scooter, almost no traffic on the road along the north coast, very mild temperatures, little wind and the light of the full moon made almost everything clearly visible.
Stopped at Tsabou beach and had a nice swim in the sea.
This night, I didnt encounter a police control.

At 4 o'clock in the morning I was back in Pythagorio, the night still being unbelievably warm . . .

Starting a blog

Here I was sitting in the harbour of Pythagorio, enjoying my filter coffee and the view on the port, waiting for Michael to arrive. He came together with Conny and their half year old daughter Jessica.

"Why not start a blog on Samos", he came up with this idea after some time of conversation and drinking. O.k., we do it, now! So both of us disappeared inside the internet cafe Pythagoras, leaving Conny and Jessica behind, forgot about anything else sitting in front of the new screens and computers here and about 3,5 hours later we had the thing running: "samos-images", the photographic journal of Michael Anhaeuser and me.

We felt we had deserved at least one beer, so here you can see us relaxing after we had finished this first session on our new blog. Thanks to Conny for taking a series of photos.

We will publish new photos and stories from time to time and we do hope that lots of you in the rest of the world will participate and contribute comments.

Night shift in Kontakeika

Everywhere you can find them in Greece, the small pteripteros (kiosk) where you can get cigarettes and almost anything you need, especially after most of shops are closed in the night. Walking around the small passages in Kontakeika (in the northwest of Samos, close to Karlovassi), I met this man here in his pteriptero in the evening. Asked him, if I could take a photo, he smiled and said yes.

rusty

A very common subject on samos island: The old rusty abandoned carwrecks. This one is still my favorite, although now its painted dark blue.

Harvest 2007 has begun !

Since two weeks the harvest of grapes on Samos is proceeding. Everywhere in the vineyards you can see samians and albanians (cheap labour!) collecting the ripe grapes. On the roads there are many cars packed with grapes in plastic containers heading for the wine factories in Karlovassi and Samos-Town. This photo is from the area near Platanos.

Summer on Samos

Since July, when I (Peter) came to Samos in Greece, the temperatures on the island have always been above 30 degree centrigrade. Most of the time between 33 and 38 degrees, but we had several heat waves too with temperatures up to 44 degrees!

So, sometimes, I feel the need to look for cool places! Then I leave the pretty hot place Pythagorio, formely known as Tigani (the pan) and take a ride somewhere to the coutryside.

I like the tall & shady trees in the taverna Kutsi (south side of Samos) or in the taverna Aidonia (valley of the nightingales).

Or I take a ride along the north coast of Samos on my motor scooter, ending, e.g., in the harbour of Karlovassi, where I watch the ferries arriving and leaving and where most of the time a nice cool breeze is blowing.