Πέμπτη 12 Νοεμβρίου 2015

Capulet’s & Montagues by Greek National Opera




The 'Megaron' Athens Concert Hall is to host a production of Vincenzo Bellini's classic opera "I Capuleti e i Montecchi" (The Capulets and the Montagues) for six nights, starting next week on November 13.

In his romantic bel-canto masterpiece, Vincenzo Bellini tells his version of the immortal story of Romeo and Juliet, Verona’s star crossed lovers.
This will be the first time that the opera, filled with Bellini’s wonderful, endless melodies, will be presented by the Greek National Opera in co-production with Arena di Verona and the celebrated Teatro La Fenice, where it premiered in 1830. Romeo’s part, which was initially written for a woman’s voice (breeches role), like it was still usual at the time, will be alternately performed by Irini Karaianni and Mary-Ellen Nesi.

Loukas Karytinos will conduct the Greek National Opera orchestra and chorus for six shows in the Athens Megaron on November 13, 14, 15, 18, 20 and 21.

Δευτέρα 2 Νοεμβρίου 2015

ΟΙ ΒΑΠΕ ΚΑΤΑΣΤΡΕΦΟΥΝ ΟΧΙ ΜΟΝΟ ΤΟΝ ΤΟΥΡΙΣΜΟ ΑΛΛΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΗΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΤΙΚΗ ΚΛΗΡΟΝΟΜΙΑ ΜΑΣ.




Εμείς οι Έλληνες ξεναγοί, λόγω της φύσης της εργασίας μας και των σπουδών που έχουμε κάνει, είμαστε σε θέση να αναγνωρίζουμε αλλά και να παρουσιάζουμε σε καθημερινή βάση, τα πνευματικά και υλικά επιτεύγματα του πολιτισμού μας.  Αυτού του πολιτισμού που σμίλευσε τον ελληνικό χώρο, με φόντο το ιδιαίτερο τοπίο που η φύση απλόχερα μας κληροδότησε.

Τα στοιχεία αυτά της πολιτιστικής μας κληρονομιάς σε αυτό το φυσικό περιβάλλον, αποτελούν σήμερα τον ακρογωνιαίο λίθο του τουρισμού μας και επιπλέον την προστιθέμενη αξία του, έναντι άλλων προορισμών που διαθέτουν επίσης τον ήλιο και τη θάλασσα.

Με μεγάλη μας αγωνία παρατηρούμε την προσπάθεια  μιας ευτυχώς πολύ μικρής μερίδας ανθρώπων, να καταστρέψει τις ισορροπίες μεταξύ φύσης και ανθρώπου, που τόσο καλά μας δίδαξαν οι πρόγονοι μας. 

Το μοντέλο της ανάπτυξης στην Ελλάδα του σήμερα, με τη δημιουργία Β.Α.Π.Ε. σε κάθε γωνιά της κρητικής γης και για χάρη του κοντόφθαλμου κέρδους και των προσωπικών εγωιστικών βλέψεων ορισμένων, τείνει να καταστρέψει ανεπίστρεπτη όχι μόνο το μέλλον μας αλλά ακόμη κι αυτών που κληρονομήσαμε.
Σήμερα, τα Φαραωνικά σχέδια ντόπιων και ξένων συμφερόντων θέλουν να καταστρέψουν το υπέροχο φυσικό τοπίο,  που με καμάρι παρουσιάζουμε στους επισκέπτες μας. 

Η εγκατάσταση αιολικών πάρκων θα υποβαθμίσει την ποιότητα του τουρισμού που έχουμε η επιθυμούμε να δημιουργήσουμε.

Και εδώ θα κάνουμε τις απλές ερωτήσεις.

Ποιος θα ήθελε να κάνει μαθήματα κρητικής κουζίνας και διατροφής υπό τον ήχο μας ανεμογεννήτριας; 
 
Πόσοι θα επιθυμούσαν να πεζοπορήσουν κάτω από πυλώνες 180 μέτρων και αντί να περπατήσουν  αρχέγονα μονοπάτια,  να χαθούν σε χωματόδρομους πλάτους 12 μέτρων; 
 
Ποιος θα φωτογράφιζε την Κρήτη και τα υπέροχα ενδημικά φυτά της, με φόντο τις βάσεις πυλώνων μπετόν διαστάσεων γηπέδου;

Ποια θα είναι η πληρότητα των χιλιάδων Βιλλών που ήδη έχουμε χτίσει στην ενδοχώρα, υπό την σκιά και τον βόμβο των Β.Α.Π.Ε. και ποια θα είναι πλέον η επενδυτική τους αξία;

Κι αν θέλουμε να διεκδικήσουμε τα πολυπόθητα «γαμήλια ταξίδια» από την ρομαντική Σαντορίνη, πόσοι Ασιάτες η άλλοι νιόπαντροι θα διαλέξουν ένα τέτοιο ειδυλλιακό (μάλλον βιομηχανικό) τοπίο;

Πόσοι γνωρίζουν ότι υπάρχουν  πάμπολλα μινωικά ιερά κορυφής που δεν έχουμε προλάβει να ανασκάψουμε και να αναδείξουμε και τα οποία θα εξαφανιστούν κάτω από τις ερπύστριες των εκσκαφέων;

Οι εκατοντάδες ανεμογεννήτριες θα  αλλοιώσουν ανεπανόρθωτα  τα υπέροχα κρητικά βουνά που οι ξένοι επισκέπτες μας θαυμάζουν για την αρμονία τους και την ποικιλομορφία των τοπίων που προσφέρουν. Τοπίων της δικής μας «Ηπείρου Κρήτης» όπως την ονόμασε ο Όμηρος .

Δεν ξέρω αν για πολλούς από τους νεοέλληνες υπάρχει ακόμη ο «Όμηρος» αλλά για μας τους Έλληνες ξεναγούς και ευτυχώς και για πάρα πολλούς ξένους υπάρχει. Πρέπει λοιπόν να τον κρατήσουμε ζωντανό….όπως και το απαράμιλλο κρητικό τοπίο.

Γιάννης Κοτζιάνογλου

Οργανωτής Ειδικών Μορφών Τουρισμού – Επαγγελματίας Ξεναγός

Κυριακή 1 Νοεμβρίου 2015

Un guerrier mycénien se réveille





Une fois n’est pas coutume, on revient aux grandes découvertes archéologiques de l’année 2015 en Grèce, parce que le passé est loin d’avoir révélé tous ses mystères.  Et heureusement on aura dans les années à venir beaucoup d’autres articles sur l’histoire ancienne, sur la vie des rois et des gens d’antan, qui ressort de la terre, parce l’aventure archéologique continue intensivement. Dans la plupart même des cas c’est la mort qui nous apprend la vie, toutes ces tombes qui cachent --et ont protégé pendant des siècles- les objets qui caractérisaient et accompagnaient la personne enterrée.

Cette fois il s’agit de la découverte de la tombe d’un guerrier, vielle de 3500 ans et pleine d’armes et de bijoux, située près du palais de Nestor (un des héros de la guerre de Troie) à Pylos, dans le Péloponnèse, la deuxième ville la plus importante de la civilisation mycénienne après Mycènes. Le plus extraordinaire est que la plupart des objets a un style minoen, une civilisation qui s'est développée sur les îles de Crète et de Santorin entre 2700 et 1200 avant notre ère, et qui a influencé la civilisation mycénienne.

L’équipe des archéologues, venus des plusieurs pays et universités, sous la coordination et la responsabilité de Jack L. Davis et Sharon R. Stocker de l’Université américaine de Cincinnati, a découvert  la tombe de cette personnalité importante.  Outre le squelette du guerrier, son cercueil, en bois, contenait en effet des centaines d'objets précieux. Parmi ceux-ci, une chaine en or ornée de perles, plusieurs bagues, des vases en argent et des peignes en ivoire. Les archéologues ont également découvert une épée de bronze, au pommeau d'or et d'ivoire, conformément à la tradition antique qui imposait d'enterrer les soldats avec leurs armes.

La tombe échappant au pillage peut donner des réponses sur la période cruciale de la décadence de la civilisation minoenne et l’ascension de la civilisation mycénienne. Le ministère grec de la Culture a salué la trouvaille archéologique, l’une des plus importantes qu'a connue la Grèce continentale depuis 65 ans.

Grèce Hebdo (une édition hebdomadaire du Secrétariat Général pour lInformation et la Communication)

Παρασκευή 30 Οκτωβρίου 2015

Athens Marathon. The Authentic.





Athens at the heart of the Marathon


Eliud Kipchoge, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, Gladys Cherono and Mare Dibaba are the candidates for the 2015 AIMS Best Marathon Runner Awards


Athens, the birthplace of the Marathon, will be the focus of attention for the international running scene for three days from November 6 to 8. 

Firstly the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (AIMS) will honour the best marathon runners of the year with the 2015 AIMS Best Marathon Runner (BMR) Awards, at an international Gala to be held in the evening of Friday, November 6. The next day will be marked by the Opening Ceremony for the “Athens Marathon. The Authentic”. This is followed by the high point of the Athens Marathon itself, on Sunday, where the organisers expect more than 16,000 runners to participate.

Τετάρτη 28 Οκτωβρίου 2015

Grave of ‘Griffin Warrior’ at Pylos Could Be a Gateway to Civilizations





He lies with a yardlong bronze sword and a remarkable collection of gold rings, precious jewels and beautifully carved seals. Archaeologists expressed astonishment at the richness of the find and its potential for shedding light on the emergence of the Mycenaean civilization, the lost world of Agamemnon, Nestor, Odysseus and other heroes described in the epics of Homer.

“Probably not since the 1950s have we found such a rich tomb,” said James C. Wright, the director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Seeing the tomb “was a real highlight of my archaeological career,” said Thomas M. Brogan, the director of the Institute for Aegean Prehistory Study Centre for East Crete, noting that “you can count on one hand the number of tombs as wealthy as this one.”

The warrior’s grave belongs to a time and place that give it special significance. He was buried around 1500 B.C., next to the site on Pylos on which, many years later, arose the palace of Nestor, a large administrative centre that was destroyed in 1180 B.C., about the same time as Homer’s Troy. The palace was part of the Mycenaean civilization; from its ashes, classical Greek culture arose several centuries later.

The palaces found at Mycene, Pylos and elsewhere on the Greek mainland have a common inspiration: All borrowed heavily from the Minoan civilization that arose on the large island of Crete, southeast of Pylos. The Minoans were culturally dominant to the Mycenaeans but were later overrun by them.
How, then, did Minoan culture pass to the Mycenaeans? The warrior’s grave may hold many answers. He died before the palaces began to be built, and his grave is full of artifacts made in Crete. “This is a transformative moment in the Bronze Age,” Dr. Brogan said.
The grave, in Dr. Wright’s view, lies “at the date at the heart of the relationship of the mainland culture to the higher culture of Crete” and will help scholars understand how the state cultures that developed in Crete were adopted into what became the Mycenaean palace culture on the mainland.
Warriors probably competed for status as stratified societies formed on the mainland. This developing warrior society liked to show off its power through high-quality goods, like Cretan seal stones and gold cups — “lots of bling,” as Dr. Wright put it. “Perhaps we can theorize that this site was that of a rising chiefdom,” he said.

The grave was discovered this spring, on May 18, by Jack L. Davis and Sharon R. Stocker, a husband-and-wife team at the University of Cincinnati who have been excavating at Pylos for 25 years.

The top of the warrior’s shaft grave lies at ground level, seemingly so easy to find that it is quite surprising the tomb lay intact for 35 centuries.
“It is indeed mind boggling that we were first,” Dr. Davis wrote in an email. “I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. So many walked over it so many times, including our own team.”

The palace at Pylos was first excavated by Carl Blegen, also of the University of Cincinnati, who on his first day of digging in 1939 discovered a large cache of tablets written in the script known as Linear B, later deciphered as the earliest written form of Greek.

Whether or not Blegen’s luck was on their mind, Dr. Davis and Dr. Stocker started this season to excavate outside the palace in hope of hitting the dwellings that may have surrounded it and learning how ordinary citizens lived. On their first day of digging, they struck two walls at right angles. First they assumed the structure was a house, then a room, and finally a grave.
“I was very pessimistic about this,” Dr. Davis said, thinking that the grave was probably some medieval construction, or that even if it was prehistoric it would almost certainly have been robbed. But a few days later, he received a text message from the supervising archaeologist saying, “I hit bronze.”
What he and Dr. Stocker had stumbled on was a very rare shaft grave, 5 feet deep, 4 feet wide and 8 long. Remarkably, the burial was intact apart from a one-ton stone, probably once the lid of the grave, which had fallen in and crushed the wooden coffin beneath.

The coffin has long since decayed, but still remaining are the bones of a man about 30 to 35 years old and lying on his back. Placed to his left were weapons, including a long bronze sword with an ivory hilt clad in gold and a gold-hilted dagger. On his right side were four gold rings with fine Minoan carvings and some 50 Minoan seal stones carved with imagery of goddesses and bull jumpers. “I was just stunned by the quality of the carving,” Dr. Wright said, noting that the objects “must have come out of the best workshops of the palaces of Crete.”

An ivory plaque carved with a griffin, a mythical animal that protected goddesses and kings, lay between the warrior’s legs. The grave contained gold, silver and bronze cups.

The warrior seems to have been something of a dandy. Among the objects accompanying him to the netherworld were a bronze mirror with an ivory handle and six ivory combs.

Because of the griffins depicted in the grave, Dr. Davis and Dr. Stocker refer to the man informally as the “griffin warrior.” He was certainly a prominent leader in his community, they say, maybe the pre-eminent one. The palace at Pylos had a king or “wanax,” a title mentioned in the Linear B tablets, but it’s not known if this position existed in the griffin warrior’s society.

Ancient Greek graves can be dated by their pottery, but the griffin warrior’s grave had none: His vessels are made of silver or gold, not humble clay. From shards found above and below the grave, however, Dr. Davis believes it was dug in the period known as Late Helladic II, a pottery-related chronology that corresponds to 1600 B.C. to 1400 B.C., in the view of some authorities, or 1550 B.C. to 1420 B.C., in the view of others.

If the earliest European civilization is that of Crete, the first on the European mainland is the Mycenaean culture to which the griffin warrior belongs. It is not entirely clear why civilization began on Crete, but the island’s population size and favorable position for sea trade between Egypt and Greece may have been factors. “Crete is ideally situated between mainland Greece and the east, and it had enough of a population to resist raids,” said Malcolm H. Wiener, an investment manager and expert on Aegean prehistory.
The Minoan culture on Crete exerted a strong influence on the people of southern Greece. Copying and adapting Minoan technologies, they developed the palace cultures such as those of Pylos and Mycene. But as the Mycenaeans grew in strength and confidence, they were eventually able to invade the land of their tutors. Notably, they then adapted Linear A, the script in which the Cretans wrote their own language, into Linear B, a script for writing Greek.
Linear B tablets, were preserved in the fiery destruction of palaces when the soft clay on which they were written was baked into permanent form, Caches of tablets have been found in Knossos, the main palace of Crete, and in Pylos and other mainland palaces. Linear B, a script in which each symbol stands for a syllable, was later succeeded by the familiar Greek alphabet in which each symbol represents a single vowel or consonant.

The griffin warrior, whose grave objects are culturally Minoan but whose place of burial is Mycenaean, lies at the center of this cultural transfer. The palace of Pylos had yet to arise, and he could have been part of the cultural transition that made it possible. The transfer was not entirely peaceful: At some point, the Mycenaeans invaded Crete, and in 1450 B.C., the palace of Knossos was burned, perhaps by Mycenaeans. It is not yet clear whether the objects in the griffin warrior’s tomb were significant in his own culture or just plunder.

“I think these objects were not just loot but had a meaning already for the guy buried in this grave,” Dr. Davis said. “This is the critical period when religious ideas were being transferred from Crete to the mainland.”
The Mycenaeans used the Minoan sacred symbol of bull’s horns on their buildings and frescoes, and their religious practices seem to have been a mix of Minoan concepts with those of mainland Greece.

Archaeologists are looking forward to studying a major unlooted tomb with modern techniques like DNA analysis, which may shed light on the warrior’s origin. DNA, if extractable from the warrior’s teeth, may tell where in Greece he was born. Suitable plant material, if found in the tomb, could yield a radiocarbon date for the burial.

This and other techniques allow far more information to be extracted from a rich grave site than was possible with the picks and shovels used by earlier excavators. “We’ve come a long way from Heinrich Schliemann,” said Mr. Wiener, referring to the efforts of the 19th-century German businessman who excavated Troy and Mycene to support his view that the events described by Homer were based on historical fact.

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