🇬🇷 WHAT’S NEW IN GREECE

🚣 Ntouskos wins gold at World Rowing Championships. Somehow Greeks and boats are born to dominate.

🎬 Greece selects 'Arcadia' as Oscar entry. Hollywood, prepare for philosophical cinematography and paradise flex.

More news from Greece

🏥 Greece wins first-ever UN/WHO award for public health prevention. Wait, what?  We got health policy right?

🌋 Moving magma under Santorini actually lifted the island and caused thousands of earthquakes - locals are still like “ But the view!”

🚁 Greece establishes new drone school in Tripoli, so we can progress from kites on “Clean Monday” to “flying robots”.

🦅 Court halts wind farms threatening bird sanctuaries. Environmental protection wins over renewable energy ambition.

🛏 Airbnb landlords in Greece just felt a chill down their spine that wasn’t from the A/C, as new restrictions hit October 1.

🛂 Passport stamps become nostalgic relics, as EU Digital Entry/Exit System starts October 12.

💡 Greece ranks 42nd globally in innovation. 42nd? But didn’t Greeks invent everything?

🚀 NASA Space Apps Challenge returns to Thessaloniki and space+bougatsa=love4ever.

⚓ Greece invests $680 million in port upgrades. Infrastructure spending that might actually finish this decade.

🌎️ WHAT’S NEW OUTSIDE OF GREECE

🎨 Compost chic anyone? The portrait of Costa Georgiadis (Australian TV's favorite Greek gardener) was selected for the National Portrait Gallery.

More news from outside of Greece

🎤 Greek singer Areti Ketime says diaspora audiences bring nostalgia, emotion, and longing to concerts (also guilt about not visiting more often).

☕ Uppercuts + exfoliation = coffee? Sure! Rumble Boxing and Auraskin, two Greek-owned brands, partner for National Coffee Day.

🏈 Forget Tom Brady - the New England Patriots have a new legend. Dean Metropoulos buys 5% of the New England Patriots.

Got a burning question about Greek culture, diaspora life, or that family tradition nobody can explain?

💌 Send it to [email protected] - your question might become next week's featured Q&A.

💎 CULTURAL GEMS

🏔️ Arcadia beyond the postcard

Arcadia isn’t just Greece’s Oscar hopeful this year — it’s a word that’s been taken, repackaged, and romanticized for two thousand years. When you hear “Arcadia,” you probably imagine flute-playing shepherds, nymphs in tasteful chiffon, and some vague promise of “pastoral bliss.” That’s because Roman poets, led by Virgil, decided to invent a paradise on paper — even though none of them had actually set foot in the real Arcadia.

The truth is more rugged. Actual Arcadia is a mountainous region in the Peloponnese. It is known for its tough terrain, remote villages, and shepherd culture that had more to do with survival than sipping wine by a brook or playing the flute while gazing at rolling hills. Virgil’s Eclogues painted it as a land of rustic harmony. Renaissance painters reinforced this, creating the myth of Arcadia as eternal Eden. By the 17th century, it was shorthand for pastoral paradise. Meanwhile, locals were busy hauling wood, fighting off invaders, and trying not to freeze in stone villages at 1,000 meters altitude.

The irony is hilarious: a region that was never easy living became the ultimate symbol for simple living. “Et in Arcadia ego,” the famous phrase scribbled into European art, reminds us that even in paradise, death tags along. This makes Greece’s Oscar entry brilliant — naming a film Arcadia isn’t just about geography. It touches on one of the deepest cultural myths in Western thought. And who better than Greece, the country that gave the world both the goat-footed god Pan and the shepherds he terrified, to remind Hollywood that “paradise” was always a little complicated?

🧳 TRAVEL NEWS

⛰️ Arcadia’s Double Life: Mythic Dreamland, Modern Getaway

Arcadia has lived rent-free in the Western imagination for centuries as the definition of pastoral paradise — all flutes, nymphs, and eternal meadows. The reality? It’s a dramatic, mountainous region in the Peloponnese where cliffs and canyons dominate, villages cling to ridges, and goats have better balance than you. Arcadia is the Greece of slow drives, strong coffee in stone squares, and hikes that make you feel you’ve accidentally wandered into a Renaissance painting — one with mud on your shoes.

Tripoli, the regional capital, is Arcadia’s anchor — not glamorous, but indispensable. What makes Tripoli worth visiting is precisely its mix: a functioning modern city where you can sleep in a real hotel, eat at restaurants serving actual locals, and then set off on day trips to mountain gems like Dimitsana and Stemnitsa, or ancient sites like Tegea. Think of it as your Arcadian base camp — modern Greece in the middle of myth. Even the new drone school feels poetic: a futuristic training hub rising in the same landscape that once inspired the world’s greatest pastoral fantasy.

The highlights spread out in every direction: the Lousios Gorge, where monasteries perch on cliffs like architectural daredevils; the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, a lonely masterpiece by Iktinos (who co-designed the Parthenon); and war-scarred Dimitsana, where water-powered mills once churned out the gunpowder that fueled independence. Arcadia is less “lazy shepherd’s paradise” and more “rugged beauty, serious history, and metaphors everywhere” — which, frankly, makes it even better.

🔍 Hidden Local Gems

🥘 Kapsia Cave & Lunch Nearby — a surreal underground wonder followed by rustic meat pies at a taverna only locals know.

🛶 Rafting the Lousios River — yes, you can white-water raft in Arcadia; the river is as moody as its mythology.

🍯 Dimitsana’s Gunpowder Museum — housed in a restored water-powered mill, where locals once turned out the gunpowder that fueled the War of Independence.

🏔 Mainalon Trail — a 75 km hiking route threading through forests, rivers, and villages; it’s basically the Arcadian version of the Camino, minus the crowds.

🥾 Alfeios Springs — bubbling out beneath a plane tree near Karytaina, once dedicated to river gods, now a picnic spot for those in the know.

🕍 Philosophou Monastery — hidden in the gorge, known as the “Secret School,” where monks taught kids during Ottoman rule.

🆕 OBSESSIONS 

🫒 Where to Eat in Athens Now: 26 Critic-Crowned Restaurants

🌊 An Evening in Edipsos, the Spa Town of Northern Evia

✨ TRENDING GREEK SOCIAL MEDIA

🧑‍🍳 RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Hilopites with chicken (Κοτόπουλο κοκκινιστό με χυλοπίτες)

Hilopites — a square-cut noodle traditional to Arcadia — usually made by hand and dried for winter. In Arcadia, they are simmered with village chicken in a tomato broth. This is Arcadian cuisine at its core: hearty, practical, and engineered by people who understood that food needed to fuel physical work in cold mountain conditions without requiring a culinary degree to execute.

💡 INSPIRATION

😎 GREEK FYI

🇬🇷 The Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, tucked high in Arcadia’s mountains, was the first Greek site ever listed as UNESCO World Heritage — beating out the Parthenon.

😂 MYTHIC MEMES

That’s a wrap for this week - where Arcadia turned out to be more than flutes and meadows, but at least Tripoli keeps it real. When that poll hits your inbox later this week, don’t ghost us — your answers will decide what makes the cut (yes, even the memes). Until then, keep your passports ready and your coffee grounds swirling — Greece never runs out of stories.

Catch you next week for more news, drama and deep dives. 🧿 Stay Greek. [email protected]

🛑 Disclaimer

This newsletter contains humor, satire, and opinions that may not represent all Greeks or that one relative who argues at every family gathering. We aim for accuracy, but verify important details before starting WhatsApp drama. Unsubscribe anytime (but we'll miss you).