We will be taking a short trip to the Low Lands as per tonight. I will (finally) attend a Zhineng Qigong workshop with Patricia van Walstijn in Nijkerk (The Netherlands). I’ve been looking forward to that for a long time. Back in 2003 I learned about Zhineng Qigong through a symposium that Yvonne had...
Read more →Bad news for the culture buffs amongst you tourists visiting Crete this season: the Archaeological Museum in Iráklio, Xanthoudidou Street, will remain closed until at least 2010. The second most important museum in Greece next to Athens, it hosts (or rather: will host when it is finished) the most magnificent collection of Minoan art...
Read more →When you come to Crete this year be prepared to be interrogated by friendly hosts and hostesses when you leave. Starting in May they’ll intercept you at airports and ferry ports and will question you on your experiences. Have any complaints? Not satisfied with your tour operator?
Read more →This from “Het Nieuwsblad”, a Belgian newspaper that I read online once in a while: Zeebeving schudt Kreta wakker ATHENE – Een zeebeving met de kracht van 5,7 op de schaal van Richter heeft donderdagnacht het eiland Kreta in de Middellandse Zee door elkaar geschud. Duizenden mensen werden uit hun slaap gerukt. De beving...
Read more →No, this is not an old sepia photograph that you’re looking at right now. This is how the world looked like here in Iraklio, Crete, yesterday in the afternoon. “Bloody rain”, that’s how Homer called it in the Iliad. It’s tons of African dust carried over from the Sahara through strong South winds, the...
Read more →Back in 2003 when I just arrived here in Crete, at a time where 64Kbps ISDN was called “broadband”, I couldn’t really afford to spend too much time hanging out on the internet. I just made short connections to download my e-mail and my newsgroup subscription (anybody remember newsgroups?) and uploaded my pre-written postings...
Read more →There is some controversy going on in Greece about the anonymity of bloggers. I noticed it first in the local newspaper Nea Kriti which ran an article under the title “Βάζει φρένο …” which is translated by Google as “It puts a damper..”. Since, as usual, I couldn’t make sense of the automatic Google...
Read more →Oh my, I’ve gone all philosophical an moralistic on you in my last post. Never mind, let’s blame it on the weather. Or something. The thing that brought this along was a memory flash that I had, from a period some 50 years ago. I was in my first year at primary school in...
Read more →Everybody’s been talking about snow on the Intahrnet today. A friend from Belgium even sent me an e-mail this morning inquiring about the situation. Quite frankly, I had no idea what they were all talking about. Here, about 1 kilometer north of the archaeological site of Knossós and some 4 kilometers south of the...
Read more →For weeks now this scandal has been capturing the Greek minds. It seemingly started out as a tabloid-worthy sex affair between aging high-ranking male employer and young female collaborator, something not likely to turn many Greek heads. Then it got uglier. Then more uglier, and morer uglier even. Now the international press has gotten...
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