IF *I am tourist promoter*, so …

So now that *I am tourist promoter*…
let me get busy ! The island’s economy is at stake (Ω Θεέ μου !)

SO…
Ikaria is mostly known for and associated with the myth of Icarus and to some extent for its medicinal (just *warm* if you like) springs most of them located in the village of Therma very near Agios Kirikos, the capital of the island.

But …  “Life is What is Happening, While We are Thinking of Something Else.”

(J. Lennon?)

Here is an extract fromPr A. Papalas “Rebels and Radicals” -Icaria 1600-2000″
(Chapter 7, Widening Horizons, Tourism, pp.317, 318) and it is about the very first beginning of tourism in Ikaria in the mid-1970s.

“The class and the number of visitors to Therma did not produce the revenues that other islands were enjoying from tourism in the 1970s. Icarians continued to promote Therma and began to consider ways to attract visitors to other parts of the island. There were proposals to spruce up the interior villages for sightseeing tours, to advertise the forests or what was left of them and to renovate the monuments of the island.
….
While Icarians were devising various inept schemes to cash in on the obsession that well-heeled Europeans were displaying for the Aegean, backpackers were discovering Livadi beach between Armenistis and Gialiskari. The locals never held this area in high esteem for they did not regard sunbathing or swimming as a leisure activity. The sandy shore was deserted except for the occasional native following a doctor’s advice to take the sun or sea fro therapy. Bohemian types began to infiltrate a region without hotels or restaurants. They put up tents on the seaside …
… Gradually cafe owners, who had hitherto catered to fishermen, began to build small family-operated pensions. Nudists established a summer community on the Livadi beaches much to the opposition of the locals. In the summer of 1982, an alliance of farmers, Orthodox priests, and Communist officials attacked the nudists with anti-American slogans and threats. There were no casualties, and a compromise was eventually reached. The nudists retreated to the less visible beach of Nas, and the more conventional tourists settled in the Armenisti-Gialiskari where small lodgings by the late 1980s grew into modern hotels… “

You will say that was a typical story. Since the 1970s “a lot of water ran in the ditch” or to be more accurate“a lot of waves crashed on the sand”.
Ikaria is being rediscovered again. It’s not about the beach this time.

__

To say more: the island is being *retrieved*

Still clubing and panigiria are on and will be on with rough loud music as usual, because we are Greeks, that’s all…

Tags: ikaria, ιστορία, utopia, panigiria, clubbing, our-own-ikaria, nudists, gruvaloi, communism, retrieved, papalas, rebels, radicals, history, tourism, ικαρία | Edit Tags Sunday June 4, 2006 – 01:49pm (PDT) Edit | Delete

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Comments

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• vixen
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Hey, “tourist promoter” !
How can you inter-connect all that? I wonder how? *good weaver*
Where did you find the link to the photo behind “infiltrated a region” ? That was very good. There is no other to explain what a “gruvalos” is. And I don’t think it’s something bad necessarily. The flower pot in the foreground says it all …
(btw, open this link in a new window and then click “refresh”)

Another thing I wanted to tell you is that I’m growing a like for your BETA “360″.
All of my friends blogs and stuff, though with many more special effects, icons, images and the lights of Las Vegas, do not download ! I have to wait long for a page to appear just to read 2 lines of a new message. Whereas, your blog, “click-click” and I have it in 2″. So bravo for your BETA.
The cover photo for this entry… mmm… 2004 what a summer -:- while everybody else was “Olympic Games”.

Monday June 5, 2006 – 09:31pm (EEST) Remove Comment

• AKK
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-> thank you for quoting from that book !
It’s so sober, so well grounded, well tuned and well tempered. At the same time it is a very “crazy Ikarian” book : so much hard and good work for a place with a lot of history and drama but which hardly anyone knows. . .
Do you get what I mean?
-> when “all that” happened in the mid-1970s, I was there and saw it. We spend our summers in Armenistis. It was a clash of cultures and one of my best memories of youth is that I took part in it. My future wife, her sisters and her brothers were among those “Bohemians”. They were very respectful though. They made a difference, so I chose the prettiest and I believe I made a difference too, so she chose me as well, etc. etc.
-> wow ! the links !…
-> wow ! most of the links work !

Tuesday June 6, 2006 – 10:15pm (EEST)

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