Greece on the ITB 2010 in Berlin

The ITB in Berlin, this year lasting from March 10th to 14th, is the worlds largest tourism and travel trade show.
11.127 exhibitors from 187 countries all over the world in 25 halls and approx. 180.000 visitors during the 5 days.

Some photographic impressions of the stand of Greece in hall 2.2. on the ITB 2010 in Berlin, Germany.

The stand of the prefectures of Lesbos and Chios, offering some nice red wine from Limnos.

Late Sunday afternoon, nobody anymore on the stand of Mykonos. Sunny islands inside the hall, while it is snowing heavily outside in Berlin!

If you wonder why there are no photos of the stand of the prefecture Samos-Ikaria-Fourni ......, well to my great disappointment I have to say that this year they didn't show up, they had no stand on the ITB. As I learned "...due to technical reasons". Let's hope that until next year those problems will be solved.

Nevertheless, most of the other greek exhibitors/prefectures from last year were there again with their stands. So, no need to worry! Though my impression was, that on the public days there were signifcant less visitors on the greek stand as compared to last year.

If you intend to come to Greece this year and you are the typical young and smart tourist (from this year on - according to new marketing strategy - you will be called "guest" instead), don't forget to take your Laptop to the beach then !
No more home computing, beach computing in Greece will become trendy;-)

Interview with Pavlos Geroulanos, Minister of Culture and Tourism of Greece on the ITB 2010 Berlin by Reuters.

More photographic impressions from stands of other countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Spain in other halls of the ITB 2010 in Berlin I will publish within the next weeks in a special set on flickr.

Some videos can be found in my video channel on YouTube:

Stories of Ireon at night (part 2) / MyWorld

Part 2: the good and delicious food



Over the years I came to know a couple of taverns on Samos I really like to go to and spend some time there with friends. The musician Dimos first took me to this place in Ireon two or three years ago. Since then I like to go there again everytime I'm on Samos: the fish tavern "Captain Miltos"! Fresh grilled fish at its best!
And I especially like the sword fish fillet and the calamari, together with the rosé wine!

Imho it's not a spectacular tavern, rather a place at a dark corner which many tourists won't even take notice of when passing by.



This year I was lucky to be there twice, here are some of my photographic memories of the visits to this tavern:



"Our" swordfish fillets on the grill. "Lecker" as we germans say!



Well this here is our table, my "farewell to Samos table" on that evening on October 12th, filled with many delicious things.
Dimos ordered all of these via cellular phone when we were on our "race" from Balos beach to Ireon:



Swordfish fillet



Squid (Calamari, Kalamares)



Greek Salad (χωριάτικη σαλάτα)



Fried Eggplants (Melitzanes, Aubergines)



Rosé wine



Swordfish portion for two people (on that other visit):



After we had finished our meal, captain Miltos showed us what he fished out of the sea, e.g. a big tuna fish, weighing approx. 20 kg. And a swordfish.
Not so easy for him to hold up this big tuna fish for a while to allow me to take a good photo! (Maybe that's why he doesn't smile here anymore!)




Of course, Dimos wanted to act as a fisherman too, so here he poses in his Superman outfit ;-):



All good things come to an end, so they say ... it's time to say goodbye: The "Blue(s) Brothers" ;-), Captain Miltos together with Dimos.



I get the blues ;-) Bye till next year!



We enter the car and hurry back to Pythagorio. Dimos has only little time left to be in time for starting his music show in a hotel. And I walk slowly - and a bit tipsy I must confess - down the main street of Pythagorio and then up a side street to my studio to take a rest to get rid of some alcohol.
2 hours relaxing time and a warm shower before I will head down to the harbour. At 10:30 p.m. I will meet with Mike in the harbour in another nice place, Manolis' ouzeri called "Karafaki". For some special photographers conversation enhanced by greek "Mythos"! :-)

MyWorld Tuesday

Stories of Ireon at night (part 1)

Part 1: the drinkable ingredients



Well, more bottles of samian wine ..... , Dryoussa, Psilés Korfés, Golden Samena, Samaina sec, Fokianos, ....
..... and some hard drinks. Don't forget to try the local Souma and Ouzo! ;-)
And more stories to be told ....




You ask, where is this place? The full story will be revealed in part 2 together with photos of the delicious food there! :-)
You wanna guess? Here is some hint!



Curious about the wines of Samos? If you are interested in these wines, either dry or sweet, red, rosé or white, and where you can get them in your country, please pay a visit to the website of the Union of Vinicultural Cooperatives of Samos (EOSS).
Of course, in many taverns, you will find that local wines are served too as house wines.

Here a short excursion to the history of samian wines can be found .

Cats of Kontakeika

Four out of nine cats which I met in Kontakeika while staying on the platia for a couple of hours!

New friends for old cars

Holidays on Samos? Looking for a photo of a car wreck? Well, no problem, Samos is rich in old car wrecks!
A wealth of these rotten and forgotten vehicles can be found along the roads, partially hidden in forests or stuck in fields, and in the gardens around the houses. Since many many years!

The photo above is from the year 2006, this was my favorite car wreck. But it had been removed already the next year I came back to this place.

Old and rusty too: the following two photos were taken end of June 2006.




(interested in photos documenting the later stages of this vehicle after a new colour had been applied? Look here (HDR) and here.
A shot in b&w from 2009 is depicted here!)

Lately, Rainer Kastl has started a Samos vehicle/car wreck collection using latest technology. He has taken a lot of photos in October 2009 and positioned the vehicle wrecks he found according to their GPS data on a map of Samos! Now they are so easy to find, nobody can miss them anymore!

He collected 44 vehicle wrecks within his two weeks stay on Samos. And, in time, more and more examples will be added as points of interest to this map of vehicle wrecks on Samos. Isn't it astonishing, what you can do with modern technologies?

Here is the link to the vehicle/car wreck map.

I could contribute quite a few more, but I don't have GPS data.

A visit to the area of the big forest fire

In July 2000, a several day lasting big forest fire eliminated at least 30 percent of the forests on Samos. The area around the village of Pirgos and north of Pirgos up to the top of Karvounis suffered especially. That was a big tragedy for the natural beauty of Samos and a life threatening experience for some owners of land and house properties.

After that fire at lot of initiatives were started to fight future forest fires on Samos. But sadly enough, this large area with beautiful forests in the center and south of Samos was gone. And everyone knew that it would take about 50 - 100 years before there will be real forests again.

During a Jeep tour through the Ambelos mountains in the center of Samos, from Pandroso up to the white chapel Profitis Ilias on top of Karvounis, I was interested to see how things might have changed in the meantime.

In many places, lots of fresh and incredibly green young trees can be seen, most of the newly grown trees (bushes) are approx. 1 to 1,5 meters high.

Here are some photos that show the situation in October 2009.


Some other areas still look devastated, like nothing has changed at all since July/August 2000.


Somewhere on the dirt road leading up to Profitis Ilias: The view to the west towards Kerkis mountain and the bare islands of Fourni


On top of Karvounis mountain (1153 meter high)


View to the northeast from top of Karvounis


The chapel Profitis Ilias on top of Karvounis :