This week has been all about the Odyssey, of course. I went to see it at the θερινό (more like ended up seeing it because it was really hard to find something else), not at the IMAX, and I’m sure a bunch of Nolan fans have lost their wings (or something?).
(Did you know there are over 60 of them in Athens? Summer cinemas. Not Nolan fans.)
In any case, I wrote about it in PressOne - and I promise, it’s just like this newsletter: not a movie review, but a two-page rant on society and public discourse, with links to a lot of sources where you can find actual movie reviews:
If Nolan imagined that Greeks would be watching The Odyssey in IMAX at the height of July, then he clearly hasn’t spent much time in Athens. It’s almost impossible to get a seat at an open-air cinema, but the IMAX tells a different story. Some days it has scheduled as many as 20 screenings, yet only a handful are sold out. For most showings, tickets are still easy to come by.
Nolan’s Odyssey is best savored on a lazy Athenian summer evening with a beer in hand, surrounded by curls of cigarette smoke. On the balconies overlooking the courtyard, neighbors hang out their laundry, raise the shutters that stayed closed against the daytime heat, and water their plants. Lazy cats wander along the walls. Layered over the film’s intricate, much-praised score you hear the relentless chorus of cicadas and the car horns from one of the city’s main avenues.
(It’s in Romanian, unfortunately, so just hit that auto-translate button in your browser of choice.)
The point? Nobody threw molotovs at the screen. The “culture wars” sparked by this movie are just on Instagram, in newspaper headlines and in political discourse.
***
In other news, The Lost Expat Digest turned two years old this week. They grow up so fast, right?
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I’ve embarrassed myself enough, on to the news.
A few months ago, cement was flowing through the streets of the Kypseli (actually, “a special foam with chemicals”, as the metro company reassured us).
Since then, some of my research interlocutors in Kypseli, people who own bars, shops and other small businesses, have told me that every once in a while they are left without electricity or water. The authorities mumble vague official explanations, while, unofficially, the engineers and workers who come to inspect the damage shrug and say it’s the metro.
It is one of those things everyone seems to know and no one officially says.
Now, the residents of Kypseli are reporting cracks in walls, doors and windows that no longer open, and water seeping into basements, again attributing the damage to the excavation works for Metro Line 4, especially in the area between Kypseli Square and Evelpidon.
And boy, that house collapsing in Petralona is not making anyone feel better.
More than three years after the Tempi train disaster, questions about the safety of Greece’s rail network are back in the spotlight. Hellenic Railways CEO Christos Palios has admitted that the European Train Control System (ETCS) — often described as the trains’ “digital brake” — still isn’t working, despite being installed and technically ready to operate.
I hope you filed your tax declarations, and I really hope you did it with the help of a good accountant, because from July 24, AADE will start audits for inaccuracies. Here’s some info on potential fines.
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Greece’s Ministry of Environment and Energy is rolling out a new initiative to breathe life back into abandoned villages. Through special urban planning schemes, the government hopes to revitalize small settlements that have been left behind by years of population decline.
Elections won’t take place in autumn, says the PM, due to, ahem, “fiscal restraint”. Surely not recent polls, nope.
Athens’ “small ring” (“daktylios”) traffic restriction system will be suspended Friday for the summer, ending alternating vehicle access to the city center based on license plate numbers (temporarily).
How clean is the air in Greece’s cities, and what will summers look like in 20 years? A meteorology professor explains.
Greece is introducing a new credit scoring system that combines data from both the public and private sectors to create a single creditworthiness rating for individuals and businesses. To receive a score, applicants will have to give their explicit consent through a dedicated gov.gr app. The rating will be generated using machine-learning algorithms that analyze financial consistency and repayment behavior over a two-year period.
The Greek government is expanding the eligibility criteria for its €500 million “Residential Renovation” programme, part of the 2021–2027 NSRF, allowing more people to renovate vacant homes and carry out basic energy-efficiency upgrades.
Pedion tou Areos: a park almost two centuries old, that people have constantly fought for, is now being transformed, gradually, into a space for consumerist events that strip it of its purpose for the people. From noisy Christmas villages to luxury car shows, these days, not a weekend goes by without a huge part of the park being occupied by some sort of happening. People aren’t too happy about that. (Me included, to be honest.)
Is a blue flag beach a guarantee that you are swimming in clear waters?
Apparently, a new “interactive map allows pedestrians in central Athens to find shaded and cooler routes by sharing locations with shade, water and other heat-relief features”. However, as with many articles of this kind in the Greek media, there’s absolutely no explanation as to how you access it. Is it a website? Is it an app? Is it a flying pigeon that just shows you the way?
After further digging, we find out that “the project is currently being tested in Athens” (where?) and that “work on a full version of the platform (what platform?) is expected to begin this autumn, with a broader rollout planned for summer 2027”.
Links are lavaaa!
Anyway, if you figure it out, drop me a comment, I’d love to know. At least they put that dreadful ParkOut on the AppStore.
By the way, not sure if you tried it, but aside from the fact that it literally does nothing (absolutely no spots available from Patisia to Neos Kosmos), I tried to put one spot on the map myself, to see how it works. If you want to mark it down, you can’t leave the spot, unless the app finds someone to replace you. Otherwise, the app doesn’t save it.
This is the very definition of πεταμένα λεφτά. How about, instead, we put air conditioning on the trains? Eh? Oh, sorry, unfortunately that’s not possible until 2028: “Commuters will have to be patient for a few more years until some of the first-generation trains of the Athens metro acquire air-conditioning.”
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A storm erupted on social media after a video appeared from a well-known beach in Paros, showing a waiter serving drinks to customers in the water.
Of course, it reminded everyone of the similar images recorded in Rhodes, two years ago, of a waiter chest-deep in water, delivering an order to customers lying on suspended loungers (is that what they’re called?).
(I put this meme in the very first edition of The Lost Expat Digest.)
The homeless people of Athens are thrown onto the street again: the only transitional shelter in Athens that hosted them has closed. Many of the people it housed will return to the streets. What exactly happened and why?
What do tour guides hear when they’re leading tourists around Athens? A very, very interesting read:
“The vast majority also show enormous interest in modern Greece. As a tour guide, it is common to receive a barrage of questions about politics, the economy, salaries, our habits, and even personal questions. Often the tour guide himself becomes an object of interest for the visitor,” continues Yochalas.
(...)
“A visitor can’t stay focused for more than five minutes. In five minutes, they’ll reach for their cell phone,” she says. “Instead of focusing on facts, dates, and names, which in the past the other person expected to hear from you, now you try to make the stories as entertaining as possible. Use more visuals, talk with your hands, use more unique words, incorporate more mythology, which is more enjoyable.”
After 12,500 plantings, the city remains without shade. Why?
And this, ahem, smelly story on the issue of the toilets up at the Acropolis - or, more specifically, on the lack thereof, as the ones that actually exist within the archaeological site are closed. Tour guides talk about people (especially older people or people with health issues) relieving themselves on the marbles or just soiling themselves, because for some reason, nobody imagines that this can happen in one of the most famous sites in the world, that millions of people visit every year.
This is such beautiful reportage about a group of old men who get together every day on a beach in Flisvos, and it has a beautiful name: “The veteran swimmers in Flisvos are only afraid of running out of tsipouro”
How much more expensive have the ferry tickets become in the last years? And, just as important: why?
This summer, a family of four will need at least €526 to travel with their car by ferry from Piraeus to Naxos, while depending on the routes and the choice of ships (conventional or high-speed), their ferry tickets can exceed €750 – a little less than a basic salary.
(...)
“I remember a few years ago I traveled from Piraeus to Syros for €32.50. This year the same route with the same company costs about €60,” says George, who last visited the island in 2021 and showed us his ticket, confirming what he told us.
Full Moon August 2026: Museums and monuments in the moonlight. See more info here about the free events and free admission to 126 museums, monuments and archaeological sites throughout Greece
Movies will be screened for free at the Municipal Market in Kypseli, from July 29 all the way into September
I’ve been reading a lot about Athens’ “supper clubs” and they sound like an interesting experience:
“It’s something between a dinner party and a restaurant. It can be set up in an apartment, in a courtyard that is not often open to the public, in an art space, even in nature or in a completely unexpected place. The menu varies, but the interest lies not only in what you will eat, but also in who you will share it with.”
A Guide to Leros, Greece’s Island of Castles, Coves and Modernism
Here’s an imaginary trip through the Odyssey’s gorgeous shooting locations.
That’s it. Have a great summer and do write back. Even if it’s just to complain.
Ioana
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