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.