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🤽‍♀ Greece stuns Italy and crashes the semi-finals like they own the bracket.

🌟 Greece collected Tripadvisor trophies like souvenirs and Piraeus made the group photo

🏠 Airbnb adds five more Greek areas to the “not so fast” list.

🎭 Thessaloniki unveils new cultural tourism vision, promising to change how you see it, which requires you to visit it first.

🥾 Lakeside legwork here it comes: Prespes launches 32km hiking trail network.

🎓 New TNE law, new era: Greece is quietly turning into the study-abroad kid’s latest obsession.

🔬 Columbia-NTUA initiative bridges Greek research and American commercialization, attempting to turn discoveries into actual products.

📄 Greece ends paper invoices, e-invoicing mandatory from Feb 2, whether small businesses are ready or not. They are not.

🚕 Athens taxi drivers strike over electric vehicle transition - guess transitions are never just “plug and play.”

✈️ Seven-year air traffic delay exposed after recent blackout, shocking nobody who's paid attention the past few decades.

🛢️2026 is booked: Chevron and HelleniqEnergy are heading out for seismic surveys.

🌊 Greece plans to widen territorial waters and add a second Aegean marine park, and Turkey is not exactly sending flowers.

💧 Environment ministry approves 42 water projects (€75M), though summer will reveal if it's enough.

👔 Andrew Liveris appointed chair of American Australian Association and diaspora success stories continue.

📅 Melbourne hosting International Greek Language Day event Australian Greeks celebrating the language, making their kids who skipped Saturday school feel guilty.

🎨 🎨 Lower Manhattan’s newest mural is here, courtesy of a Greek-American artist with great taste.

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

Greek Language Day is your annual reminder that Greek isn’t just a way to communicate, it’s a way to do personality. It’s a language that comes with built-in posture, facial expressions, and the confidence to turn a simple “no” into a five-syllable philosophy. English can be wonderfully efficient, but Greek is expressive in a more dangerous way: it can make you sound like you’re delivering a verdict even when you’re asking where the bathroom is. Which is why diaspora Greeks slip into it the moment emotion enters the room: joy, outrage, nostalgia, hunger, family logistics, a suspiciously loud silence.

The fun part is how much of modern life is still running on ancient Greek code. Medicine, science, law, and academia have been happily borrowing Greek building blocks for centuries, assembling new words like LEGO sets with a classical education. And then there are the “untranslatables” that aren’t really untranslatable—just inconvenient for cultures that prefer their feelings in smaller containers. Meraki (doing something with care and soul), kefi (that sudden inner volume knob turned up), and yes, filotimo (the famously slippery one) aren’t vocabulary so much as social technology. The real flex isn’t knowing the words—it’s knowing when to use them… and when to say nothing at all, which Greek also handles beautifully, with one look that can end an entire conversation without spilling a single vowel.

📖 Jan. 23- Feb. 15, Athens Book Bazaar, Athens

🎵 February 6, 2026, Greek Music Anthology, Rutgers University Elytis Chair, New Brunswick, NJ

🎭 February 7, 2025, "Nick the Greek", Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles

Piraeus just won a Tripadvisor award, shocking everyone who treats it as a ferry terminal with anxiety. For decades, travelers used Piraeus like an airport (arrive, board, leave) while the city operated as Greece's largest port. Recent additions include the underwater archaeology museum (shipwrecks finally displayed properly), waterfront upgrades, and acknowledgment that rebetiko music history matters. The award validates what locals knew: if you look around instead of panic-checking ferry schedules, there's culture here, just not the Instagrammable kind.

The underwater museum showcases maritime artifacts spanning millennia. Mikrolimano harbor offers waterfront seafood where yacht owners and port workers eat at adjacent tables—expensive but excellent. Kastella neighborhood has neoclassical architecture and Saronic Gulf views. The Archaeological Museum holds bronze statues pulled from the harbor, including a famous kouros. Pasalimani (Marina Zea) is where wealthy Athenians dock boats. The port operates 24/7 with organized chaos—ferries, cargo, cruise ships, and travelers discovering their boat leaves from somewhere else entirely. Rebetiko was born in Piraeus tavernas where 1920s refugees sang about hardship, creating Greece's blues.

Piraeus has been Athens' economic engine since Themistocles fortified it in the 5th century BC. The city's identity is working-class, maritime, functional. The Tripadvisor award won't make it a tourist magnet (most visitors will keep using it as a gateway to islands), but Piraeus will keep not caring.

🐟 Margaro in Mikrolimano - No menu, just fried fish. Locals pack it, tourists stumble in accidentally.

🏛️ Long Walls remains on random streets - Ancient Themistocles fortifications visible between buildings. Free, ignored, historically significant.

☕ Pasalimani cafés Sunday mornings - Watch boat owners pretend casual wealth. Anthropological study in overpriced coffee form.

🎭 Veakeio Theater, Kastella - Greek plays and concerts, locals attend, better atmosphere than tourist amphitheaters.

🛳️ Take the earliest ferry when you are traveling; watching the port wake up is very cinematic.

Custard filling wrapped in phyllo, drenched in syrup—the (best?) Greek dessert engineered to induce immediate sugar comas and prove that "too sweet" is not a concept Greeks recognize. Making it requires patience, phyllo skills, and acceptance that you'll eat half the pan, because stopping after one piece is theoretically possible but functionally impossible.

Trusted specialty outdoor retailer, REI Co-op, has teamed up with the world’s largest adventure travel company, Intrepid Travel, to create a collection of active trips. From farm stays in Costa Rica to sunrise summits on Kilimanjaro, each trip is led by a local expert with small group sizes capped at 16.

Find your next adventure

_{For T&Cs and to view the full collection of trips in 85+ destinations, visit rei.com/travel.}

That’s it for now: winning water polo matches, expanding AirBnB bans while winning tourism awards, and proving contradictions are a cultural feature not a bug.

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