November rain

November 18. & 19. have been rainy days.
Check out what means a rainy night on Samos island...

Video taken on November 19. 1:06am

Rain on Samos Island, Greece

Drive-In café on Platia Pythagoras

Seen in October 2008: looks like a market in Samos-Town for the sale of motorcycles and motorscooters. But it isn't!
After most of the tourists have gone, there is room enough for all those fancy vehicles on the Platia Pythagoras again. Quite a challenge, the "real art" is to place your vehicle in a such way that nobody can overlook it!


To me it seems that Samians don't want to walk too much, they need instant access to the cafés on Platia Pythagoras and their scene. Not more than a couple of meters walk and then they want to sit down, take their mobile phones and "communicate". The café Iraion is one of the noisiest places I know on the island! ;-)

Photographers and their habbits

I think every photographer, like all humans, has his habbits....
And some things will never change :)

First picture taken August 2005

Second picture taken October 2008

Well, if i where nasty i could also say: he is not a pro if it takes him that long to get the shot right hahaha... ;)

Sunny outlook on life

For several days we had rain, dark clouds, grey skies, relatively low temperatures. But yesterday the weather was nice and the air clear with good visibility. On my way to Samos-town I stopped and took this photo!
These people from Holland had just arrived on Samos the day before and they sat down on this bench to enjoy the breathtaking view over the gulf of Samos with Samos-town and its harbour in a distance and the old houses of Ano Vathi on the slopes of the hill in the front.

Alyki Wetlands

First snow on Samos for this year after the end of August?
No, not really, though it looks like it at first sight. It's salt!

Driving on the road along Mykali beach to Psili Ammos beach in the south-east of the island, you will pass by a shallow lake with salty water, sort of a lagoon, the Alyki wetlands. Well known for flamingos who stay there for a while in winter/spring.

But now the wetlands are completely dried out, a layer of salt covers the ground and the salt crystals shimmer in the sun.
Here are some impressions of how it looked like in the late afternoon of September 1st.

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.

Dirty main street or mainly dirty looking street?

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.