Friday, August 29, 2008

Fallen Beauties


Early this morning I happened to walk around in the port of Pythagorio. Taking photos of course and watching the early morning sky and the sunrise over the coast of Asia minor. Sun rise today was approx. 7 o'clock. Some clouds around the mountains of Cape Mykale.


When walking over to the side of the port where the Pythagoras statue is located, I came across this fallen beauty . The first one of the new lamp poles in the port of Pythagorio to be damaged?


Here you get an idea of how it should look.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Dirty main street or mainly dirty looking street?

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The special alchemy of white stone and dark rubber tyres of vehicles lead to a surprisingly fast change in the looks of the newly paved main street in Pythagorio.

First, almost eye-blinding white, now, 2,5 month after it has been finished, it looks awfully dirty, not only the main street but the pedestrian side walks too.
I mean the main road is as dirty as in all the years before, nothing really changed with regards to the blackening effect the tyres of many vehicles leave behind on the main street. But something has been significantly improved: before it was just dark asphalt like in any other villages too, but now it really looks dirty. Everywhere!

Some people in Pythagorio are still wondering why there was a need to remove most of the trees and renew the main road (again after three years) and spend so much money to achieve such an effect.
But tourists will get used to stumbling down the new uneven main street and will enjoy that "dirty walking" feeling in Pythagorio.

The effect is best seen in the evening, when the sun is low and floods the main street with its light. This is the time when many tourists come to town and walk down the main street to reach the harbour.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Wine festival 2008 in Samos-town


Every year in July and/or August, the Samos wine festival takes place in several villages of the Vathy district. The final festivities are held in Samos-town, a five days event on a site near the harbour with lots of things to eat, drink and listen to.

If you happen to be one of those lucky tourists who like to come to Samos and already uses the intenet, don't try to find information on this years event in advance in the internet! Google doesn't help and on the site of Vathy (http://www.vathi.gr/european_version/index_eng.htm) you will only find last years programme!!!
If you are lucky enough to be already on the island and discover one of the advertisings or even find a printed programme, you will be really positively surprised, because they set up a lot of events and all events are described in greek and english!

This year the Samos wine festival in Samos-town lasted from Saturday, August 16th to Wednesday, August 20th. Different dance groups and bands/musicians were dancig/playing there on a big stage.
I visited the festival on two consecutive days and here are some of my photos and impressions from Monday, August 18th and Tuesday, August 19th.

Monday, August 18th:
first there was a program for children with a clown, the children were fascinated by what was going on on the stage, mouth and eyes wide open ...


then there were traditonal dances performed by "The Kavalla Lykeio Ellinidon Group"





and then the greek "C-Real" rock band with powerful lead singer Irini Douka took over the stage. (website: www.c-real.gr/)
They started with many greek songs but later changed to songs sung in english. Nice to hear they had songs like "Zombie" of the Cranberries in their programme too. After the concert I had the pleasure to talk to Irini Douka for a couple of minutes.










Some critical remarks:
unfortunately, the PA equipment supplied for the Samos Wine festival seems to be designed for a series of hard rock concerts and not taking into account that there are tradtional folk dancers appearing too. So the music for the dancing group sounded absolutely terrible on Monday night. Absolutely imbalanced bass and highs, extremely loud and shattering bass. What a pity for the beautifully dressed dancers.
Already in the last two years I wondered why they set up such huge amounts of equipment there only to achive such poor sound in most instances! The main focus seems to be on pushing up the volume to earsplitting levels. Because the sound engineers do know that, they build up their sound controlling platform at least 50 meters away from the main stage with the loudspeakers. ;-)



I went to the people who control the mixing consoles and amplifiers worth thousands of euros and asked them to change something about it, but they just said: "we cannot do anything, it's the CD they gave us". Listen to the following band, it will be a better sound!
Very professional attitude indeed.
Or pure ignorance for the heritage of Greece?

I'm pretty sure it took hours to set up the right sound for the following rock band "C-Real" using the mighty mixing consoles! And they don't have 5 minutes time left to adjust the sound for the dancing group in advance? Come on ....

My suggestion: why not try a different attitude next year? And focus on the sound quality of acoustic music in the first place?

A very good example for superb sound quality achieving an incredibly beautiful atmosphere was given on the occaison of the concert of "Café de l'art" (Notis Mavroudis, Panagiotis Margaris together with Anastasia Moutsatsou) at the Hera temple on the night of the full moon on August, 16th!

There is something else I noticed. One third of the greeks at the concert on Monday night didn't bother anyway for the sound of the music. Their life style seems to be: mobile phone pressed to one ear, the other ear they shelter with their hand to not hear the music and they make it an olympic discipline to communicate most of the time via mobile phones directly in front of the huge loudspeakers at the stage.

Tuesday, August 19th:
(to be added soon!)

Friday, August 1, 2008

Chapel discovery tour on Samos

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Everywhere on the island of Samos you will find beautiful chapels. So many, it is not easily possible to count them all or even visit them all. And still nowadays, more chapels are built! When located on top of a hill their name often is: Profitis Elias.

There is the story of this photographer who came to the island and decided, that he wanted to take a photo of every chapel and church on the island of Samos. Pretty soon he found out that this would be a never ending job!

The following photos will give you an idea with a small selection of chapels found all over Samos. I will not let you know by first glance where I found them. I feel it is better when you yourself discover your own favorite chapels by walking or driving around on the beautiful green island in the east eagean sea. So, when visiting the island of Samos, start your own chapel discovery tour! And be prepared to encounter an enormous variety of stiles and sizes!

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