Blog Review Ikaria 2008-2011 # 3

I am very interested in reading personal accounts about my island. To keep in touch with the place, media is good but there’s nothing like reading actual people’s impressions and looking at their photos.

This is the second part of the list of blog entries about Ikaria that I like. As I said in the forenote of the first part, my ambition was to review, not just blogroll, so I wrote a few words about each blog entry and I picked out pictures and quotes. These quotes I sometimes hid “behind the pictures”.  Move your mouse over to read them.

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The first selected entry of this part is by an American again, Lauren Carpenter (aka “Carpe Diem” in WordPress or “Magnis Libris” in Flickr) from San Francisco, a Pilgrim & Raconteur to her own words, who in 2007  embarked on grand adventure which was inspired by reading the Great Books. She began with an attempt to learn Greek on a little island in the Aegean Sea…

I like Lauren because she focuses on language as well as photography, also because she has a great sense of humor, not that “tourist sense of humor” which is so often ironic but a genuine traveller’s wit, so necessary when someone hits the road for knowledge. Many people think that Greek is a gate to it, so Lauren headed to Ikaria and followed a four-week course of Greek at the Ikarian Centre in the village of Arethousa.

The photos above are from  her Flickr stream. They also appear in her blog illustrating several Ikaria related entries of which I select:

A Brief History of Ikaria (read about the old Ikarian sense of habitation)

Hiking Raches  (read the story of the hiking accident!)

The Hijinx & Hilarity of Learning Greek (Good morning. Yadda yadda yadda yadda! )

Perilous Pronunciations (This is my favourite. Very hilarious! Must read. I can tell you, gaffes like these happen to Greek language beginners all the time!)

Thank you Lauren. Come again!  

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How could I go past blog entries about Ikaria in German? After all it was the Germans who first discovered Ikaria in the 1970s. There must be something of romanticism of Goethe  in the island, it can’t be explained otherwise. I can read German but if you can’t you may still admire the photos.

  Among hundreds of pages about Greece Theo dedicates three blog entries to Ikaria. He writes about roads, landscape, politics, dogs, goats, development, under-developement, dancing, music… to leave out the numerous subjects discussed in the comments! It’s Theopedia alright.

So lesen sie,

Ikaria – 1

Ikaria – 2

 

Ikaria – 3

Auf wiedersehen Theo und viel dank.  May the spirit of Inselreisender Ludvig Ross -with his hat, glasses and long pipe- guide you to travel and share.

(By the way, readers, Ross was the imminent acheologist and traveller who, if luck had helped when he visited Ikaria in 1842, he might have saved the Temple of Artemis in Nas from being demolished.)

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For final of this part of reviews I chose a subject that some would say it doesn’t fit. But I am the reviewer and I think it does. After all my best friend likes it. That subject is surfing!

Waterwalls magazine dedicates several entries to Ikaria.

Dedalos would be proud!

   

Good vibes, good times.

   

Summer breeze

“I stood up man!!” about the local watersport school “Nalu Boys“ (why only boys?..)

 

I couldn’t help copying a few photos from that  local site. They are so good!..

 

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Have a safe rest of winter. They told me it was snowing on my island today…

Thank you

See you next month or sooner.

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