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- 🌀Greece Teaches Weaving, Athens Marathon + Lefkada
🌀Greece Teaches Weaving, Athens Marathon + Lefkada
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Hi Greek Talkers!
A few years ago, the Greek Talk team ran the Athens 10K on marathon day. Not the full marathon—we are not delusional—just the 10K route that ends at the Panathenaic Stadium. If you've never finished a race inside a 2,300-year-old marble stadium where the first modern Olympics happened, it belongs in your top 10 lifetime experiences. We dare you to cross that finish line and not get goosebumps.
So here's a thought: Greek Talk 10K (or 5K) next year? Picture it: diaspora Greeks and Greece-lovers from across the world, running the route that defined endurance sports, finishing in that marble stadium, then immediately collapsing at a taverna to argue about whether the race was harder than our yiayias' childhoods. We’re not saying it's happening, but we are also not not saying it. Thoughts?
This week: Athens Marathon weekend, Greek students learning to weave like their ancestors, and Lefkada getting a marina upgrade (will it become the next Mykonos?noooo!)
Let’s dive in. ☕🤿🇬🇷
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🇬🇷 WHAT’S NEW IN GREECE
🏁 Panagiotis Karaiskos wins the Athens Marathon, a finish at Kallimarmaro that makes even spectators feel taller 🇬🇷 🇬🇷 👏 👏
ekathimerini
🌟 14-year-old Nikiforos, an artist on the autism spectrum, gets solo exhibition "Just Believe It." Proof that talent doesn't wait for adulthood.
naftemporiki.gr
More news from Greece
🏘️ Greece's property market sparks the eternal question: bubble or boom?
🆔 Greece automates personal ID number issuance and bureaucracy starts feeling empty inside.
⚓ Lefkada gets a £3 million marina upgrade, which means the "Caribbean of Greece" is about to get even more impossible to book in the summer.
🎬 Thessaloniki's White Tower joins Europe's cinematic landmarks. Every Instagram tourist was already treating it like one anyway.
🎥 Director Yorgos Tsemberopoulos receives Honorary Golden Alexander at Thessaloniki Film Festival. The city's having quite the month.
💡 Aphaia’s temple in Aegina gets lighting and landscape upgrades, antiquity refreshed the way good museums do it.
📱 Ancient Delos gets an AR revival.
🎵 Greece receives 264 Eurovision submissions for Ethnikós Telikós 2026. Um, good luck choosing a song.
🤖 University of Athens teams up with Google on AI and Greek students will be demonstrating Silicon Valley efficiency.
🧶 Greece puts weaving, pottery, and embroidery in schools, so the next startup founders should be able to code AND weave.
🎨 Mamidakis Foundation opens submissions for 2026 Art Prize. Greek artists, start your submissions and the group chats critiquing your work.
🎾 Novak Djokovic thanks Greece after winning Hellenic Championship. Even tennis legends know you always thank your Greek hosts.
🏀 Spanoulis to lead Greece through FIBA Basketball World Cup 2027. The legend returns to remind everyone why they feared Greek basketball.
💰 Hydration with an international resume - THEONI makes a record investment in Greece while scaling in the US.
🛢️ Exxon enters Greece with eastern Mediterranean gas deal and relationship status gets updated.
🌎️ WHAT’S NEW OUTSIDE OF GREECE
⚽ Greek-Australian Triantis earns first Greece national team call-up. The diaspora pipeline keeps delivering talent.
ekathimerini
More news from outside of Greece
👨🔬 US-based Greek professors sponsor next generation of scientists. Diaspora brain drain becomes brain gain circulation.
🎓 Food For Thought Network launches 2026 theme on Hellenism and identity. Academic Greeks getting philosophical about being Greek.
🏆 Greek Community Cup returns this November. Diaspora competition where everyone's team is somehow the underdog.
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
🏃 Athens Marathon
The Athens Marathon isn't just another 26.2-mile (42.195 km) course with corporate sponsors and finisher medals. It's the actual route—or close enough—where Pheidippides allegedly ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BCE to announce victory over the Persians. He delivered the message "Νενικήκαμεν" (We have won), then promptly collapsed and died (he had also ran from Athens to Sparta and back to Athens before the Marathon battle, because Athens had sent him to Sparta seeking help for the upcoming battle - that run is commemorated by the Spartathlon).
The distance wasn't even standardized at 42.195 km back then; Pheidippides just ran until Athens appeared and his body gave up. When the first modern Olympics launched in Athens in 1896, they created a race commemorating this legendary run, and the marathon as we know it was born. The route has been tweaked over the decades, but the core remains: start in the town of Marathon, end at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, suffer appropriately throughout.
Running the Athens Marathon today means something different than running Chicago or New York. Sure, those races are faster, flatter, better organized—but they don't have 2,500 years of history baked into the pavement. You're not just chasing a personal best; you're retracing a story every Greek kid learns in school, running through the hills where ancient armies clashed, and finishing in a marble stadium built in 330 BCE - enough to make even the most jaded runners and spectators tear up, whether they admit it or not.
Half serious half joking - would you join The Greek Talk for a 5K or 10K in Athens next year? |
📆 BEST OF GREEK CALENDAR
🤝 December 5, 2025, Greeking Out, Endeavor Greece, London
🤝 December 8, 2025, 27th Annual Capital Link Invest in Greece Forum, NYC
🧸 October 30, 2025 - January 11, 2026, Playgrounds & Toys, Benaki Museum, Athens
🧳 TRAVEL NEWS
🏖️ Mainland Drive, Island Attitude, Impossible Blues.
Egremni beach
Lefkada is that friend who shows up effortlessly well-dressed: an incredible island that mainland-accessible via a little swing bridge, which means you get island swagger without the ferry drama. The water here is so absurdly turquoise that first-time visitors assume the photos are edited—they're not, it's just that the limestone seabed reflects light like nature's Photoshop. The palette is all clean lines—chalk-white cliffs, teal-to-ink seas, pine ridges—plus a harbor scene that adds to the charm. It’s laid-back without being sleepy, chic without trying, and absolutely merciless on anyone who said they’re “over beach holidays.”
Start with the show-off beaches. Porto Katsiki is a postcard you walk into: dramatic white cliffs, crystalline water, Instagram saturation levels off the charts; Egremni stretches forever, rewarding those steps with ridiculous water clarity; Kathisma balances big-sky sunsets with an easy beach-bar grin. Nydri is a cute town, full of waterfront tavernas, and boat rentals if you want to visit nearby islands like Skorpios (where Aristotle Onassis is buried and you absolutely cannot land); Cape Lefkatas (a.k.a. Cape Doukato) caps it all with a sheer, cinematic drop into cobalt. The interior mountains around Karya village offer a completely different vibe - stone houses and lace-making workshops (karsaniko embroidery).
Porto Katsiki
Under the gloss, Lefkada is stubbornly local. This island birthed the inky Vertzami grape and the cult-famous Eglouvi lentils (one pot, infinite arguments over “the right way”). Faneromeni Monastery peacocks act like they own the view—because, honestly, they do. Locals here have a distinct Ionian identity that's slightly different from mainland Greece or the Aegean islands: more Italian-influenced cuisine, different music traditions, and a laid-back attitude that comes from living somewhere this beautiful. History here is part Venetian ledger, part quake resilience, part Onassis-era gossip, stitched together by people who always find time for a proper coffee.
🫘 Skip the taverna flex—ask for Eglouvi lentils “σκέτες” with lemon and pepper, then watch locals nod in approval.
🧵 Drop into Karya’s embroidery workshops and commission a tiny karsaniko motif; it’s heritage you can pack.
⛵ From Nidri, hire a small boat and slip to Meganisi’s Papanikolis Cave before noon.
🌊 Melissa Gorge waterfall hike - Twenty-minute walk from Nydri to a waterfall most tourists don't know exists because it's not on the beach. Bring water shoes; the rocks are unforgiving.
🏖️ Kathisma Beach at sunset, not midday - Everyone floods here during the day, but late afternoon gives you the same turquoise water with half the umbrellas and actual parking spots.
 Kathisma beach |  Milos beach |
 Karya embroidery |  Agios Nikitas |
🆕 OBSESSIONS
🧑🍳 RECIPE OF THE WEEK
Fakes Englouvis
fakesenglouvis.gr
Englouvi lentils come from the mountain village of Englouvi in Lefkada and they're PDO-protected because Greece takes its legumes as seriously as its olive oil. These small, greenish lentils cook faster than regular lentils, hold their shape, and taste nutty enough that even lentil skeptics admit they're worth the hype.
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💡 INSPIRATION
Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.
😎 GREEK FYI
Cape Lefkatas, at Lefkada's southernmost tip, was where ancient Greeks believed you could cure unrequited love—by jumping off the cliffs into the sea. The poet Sappho allegedly took the leap (literally) after falling for a ferryman who didn't love her back.
😂 MYTHIC MEMES
That’s it for now. Winning marathons on home turf, teaching kids to weave like their yiayias, and reminding everyone that the island you can drive to is somehow more stunning than the ones requiring three ferries and a prayer. And a 10K (ok 5K?) to think about. 🏃🇬🇷
Catch you next week for more news, drama and deep dives. 🧿 Stay Greek. [email protected]
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