Winter colors

A little escape

Two hours drive out of Athens lies this beautiful artificial lake in Feneos, Korinth. The church was constructed there to commemorate the former position of a monastery which was forced to move upper in the mountain when the waters raised.
See the place in Wikimapia (you can zoom out to see where exactly in Greece it is)

Rime and mist

I guess the friends from the north are very familiar with scenes like this. But in Greece it's not something you see every day. This is what happens when the early morning mist freezes on the little branches when the temperatures gets below zero. Of course, this is a on a mountain.

Build it Up

For the past seven years, Athens is being rebuilt. No, they don't demolish the monstrous buildings in order to make new modern ones. They tear down beautiful old houses and villas in areas that were countryside but now they' re totally urban in order to build blocks of flats. The land now costs more that the old buildings themselves so the development companies take action. Of course, people who move into these new flats are borrowing the money from the banks. Millions of homes are already built in the greater Athens area and almost all of them are on heavy mortgage deals for 30 years or more.

At local market

Once a week, in almost every neighborhood in Athens a local market is being set up in 5 o'clock in the morning. They sell mostly vegetables and fruits but also fish, various small home objects and some clothing.
The basic idea behind these nomadic markets is that the farmers themselves can sell directly to the consumer, without anyone reselling in the middle. Therefore, the prices here are lower that those in super markets or the grocery's.
The market occupies an entire street. Motorcars can cross through the market and scenes like this are common.

At 13:00 in the afternoon, everyone packs everything and they go. Tomorrow they will sell somewhere else.

Athens DP is back

After what ended up as a small adventure with DSL access and my ISP, everything is up and running now and Athens DP is fully back online. Thanks everyone for the nice comments during that short break. Let's blog!