✈️ Greek tourism hit record numbers in 2025, surprising no one except the people who spent the summer complaining about too many tourists while demanding a stronger economy.

🎵 Greek National Opera takes Kazantzakis to Carnegie Hall, which is exactly the kind of international cultural validation that makes every Greek forward an article they won't read to everyone they know.

🛰️ "Eratosthenes" signs MoU with the Hellenic Association of Space Industry. Greece's space program keeps growing and people keep being shocked.

🎭️ Pallas Theatre's new production "Astoria" dramatizes Greek migration to New York, a story every Greek family already performs unprompted at holiday gatherings.

🎤 Akylas will represent Greece at Eurovision 2026 (Ferto!, anyone?), activating the annual tradition where 10 million Greeks become expert vocal coaches overnight.

🇪🇺 Gov.gr now has a guide for navigating Greek bureaucracy, which is like publishing a hiking map for Everest: helpful but the terrain will still surprise you.

🌋 Greece publishes a list of geothermal energy sites, revealing potential that's been sitting underground roughly as long as the paperwork to access it.

🎓 6th NextGen Innovators Student Competition is open with applications due March 26, a deadline Greek students will somehow treat with more urgency than their actual degree.

🍦 First authentic Greek ice cream shop "Yala" opens in the US, removing one more item from the diaspora complaint list about what you can't find outside of Greece.

🎉 Greek Glendi lights up Canberra's Multicultural Festival with the energy of a people who have never once entered a room quietly.

📖 Melbourne celebrates UNESCO World Greek Language Day, continuing Australia's habit of honoring Greek culture more loudly than most of Greece.

A Greek Talk reader wants to know: what are the wedding traditions and customs in Greece: the mainstream ones, the regional ones, and the ones your family swears are universal but nobody else has heard of?

We're compiling the ultimate guide next issue. Reply with your favorite, weirdest, or most unexplainable Greek wedding tradition and we'll feature the best ones.

Nikos Kazantzakis wrote Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, and roughly everything else that made international readers think Greeks are passionate, philosophical, and slightly unhinged — all accurate. Born in Heraklion, Crete in 1883, he spent most of his adult life outside Greece writing about Greece with the obsessive intensity of someone who couldn't stop thinking about home but also couldn't stand being there long enough to renew a lease. He studied in Athens and Paris, traveled compulsively through Europe, Asia, and the Soviet Union, ran briefly for political office, and produced novels, plays, travel writing, philosophy, and an epic 33,333-line poem sequel to The Odyssey because apparently Homer's version left things unfinished. The Greek Orthodox Church threatened him with excommunication over The Last Temptation of Christ. The Vatican actually banned it. Kazantzakis responded by putting "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free" on his gravestone in Heraklion, which is the most Cretan response to institutional disapproval ever recorded.

The part that gets lost under the Zorba dancing stereotype is how seriously restless and intellectually greedy Kazantzakis was. He studied under Henri Bergson in Paris, translated Dante and Homer into modern Greek, flirted with communism then abandoned it, embraced Nietzsche then moved past him, and kept rewriting his own philosophical framework like someone perpetually unsatisfied with their last answer. Zorba became his most famous work precisely because it simplified his obsession into one character — the man who stops overthinking and just lives — which is ironic given that Kazantzakis himself was constitutionally incapable of not overthinking anything, ever. Now the Greek National Opera is bringing "Nikos Kazantzakis: An Odyssey in Music" to Carnegie Hall, which fits the pattern perfectly: a writer Greece nearly rejected getting celebrated in New York, performed by Greek artists, for an audience that probably includes diaspora Greeks who've never read him but feel strongly about him anyway.

🫒 Feb 21-22, 2026 St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church Festival, Sarasota, FL

🫒 Feb 21-22, 2026, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church Festival, Fort Myers, FL

🎵 March 6, 2026, DJ Dimitri Vegas, Universe Multivenue, Athens

🎼 October 15, 2026, Nikos Kazantzakis, An Odyssey in Music, Carnegie Hall, NYC

Rhodes is what happens when a medieval fortress, an ancient civilization graveyard, and a Northern European package holiday collide on the same island and somehow nobody complains. The fourth-largest Greek island sits close enough to Turkey to see it on a clear day and far enough from Athens to feel like its own country. The Old Town is a UNESCO-listed 200-hectare maze built by the Knights of Saint John where you will get lost, find a Byzantine church you weren't looking for, stumble into an Ottoman fountain, and eventually emerge near a shop selling magnets of the Colossus that hasn't existed since 226 BC. Outside the walls, the northern and eastern coasts have committed fully to organized beach tourism — hotels, clubs, umbrellas in precise rows. But Rhodes is 1,400 square kilometers, which means the mass tourism stays politely in its corner while the rest of the island pretends it doesn't exist.

Lindos is the headline act — whitewashed village on a cliff, ancient Acropolis on top, turquoise bay below, responsible for roughly 70% of every Rhodes photo you've ever seen. Go before 10am or after 4pm unless you enjoy climbing ancient steps while pressed against strangers in matching cruise ship lanyards. Rhodes Old Town needs a full day: the Palace of the Grand Master that the Italians reconstructed in the 1930s with debatable accuracy but undeniable drama, the Street of the Knights that looks like a film set except it's real, and the kind of random wandering where every wrong turn reveals something 600 years old. On the west coast, Siana village produces honey and souma — a grape spirit that pairs well with poor decisions and generous hosts who won't let you leave sober.

Rhodes has been Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, and Italian, and each one left buildings behind like tenants who never fully moved out. The Colossus once stood at the harbor as one of the Seven Wonders until an earthquake ended that conversation in 226 BC. What makes Rhodes rare is that it figured out mass tourism without losing itself — 120,000 people live here year-round, the economy functions beyond hotel season, and the Old Town is still a neighborhood where people hang laundry between 600-year-old walls. Most islands either resist tourism or surrender to it. Rhodes just absorbed it and kept going.

🏰 Old Town at 7am — medieval streets empty, cats claiming cobblestones, bakeries just opening. The two hours before cruise ship passengers arrive is a completely different city.

🏖️ Anthony Quinn Bay — tiny turquoise cove named after the actor who bought land here while filming Guns of Navarone.

🏔️ Monolithos Castle at sunset — medieval fortress on a 240-meter rock on the west coast, 70km from Rhodes Town, which is exactly far enough to filter out anyone without a rental car.

🍯 Siana village souma tasting — mountain village, family operations, zero tourist infrastructure, aggressive generosity. Bring cash, clear your afternoon, accept that you're not driving home for a while.

Taramosalata (Fish Roe Dip) - pink/yellow fish roe dip served during Lent when meat is forbidden but apparently fish eggs are theologically acceptable. Greeks eat it with lagana bread, olives, and the understanding that Lenten fasting involves numerous creative loopholes.

That’s it for now: excommunicated writers getting Carnegie Hall tributes andsatellites orbiting while building permits don't. Catch you next week for more news, drama and deep dives. 🧿 Stay Greek. [email protected]