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- 🌀Peloponnese on bucket lists + Kastoria
🌀Peloponnese on bucket lists + Kastoria
Hi Greek Talkers!
Short on headlines this week, which either means Greece is on vacation mode or everyone's still recovering from New Year's celebrations. Either way, we'll take what we've got.
This week: Three international magazines put the Peloponnese on bucket lists (finally), Athens Riviera getting major investments (property prices preparing for liftoff), and Symi honoring Greece's first female diver because small islands remember their pioneers.
Let’s dive in. ☕🤿🇬🇷
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🇬🇷 WHAT’S NEW IN GREECE
🔥 Monumental novel, modern obsession: ERTFLIX’s Μεγάλη Χίμαιρα just set a fresh viewership record.
More news from Greece
🧊 Cold start Down Under: Sakkari gets iced in her Adelaide match.
📰 Peloponnese finally getting recognition for being more than "that hand-shaped thing below Athens", as 3 international magazines put Peloponnese on bucket lists
🏖️ Big money is flowing into Vari–Voula–Vouliagmeni, because the Riviera apparently wasn’t iconic enough already.
🤿 Legend energy, saltwater edition. Symi honors Greece’s first female diver.
🧠 Smart overhaul for Thessaloniki water: fewer leaks, more “why wasn’t this done in 2007?”
🧩 A potential gas export breakthrough for Greece—one step closer to being energy-relevant in a very loud neighborhood.
🧾 The comeback tour continues, now in fixed income, as Greece plans a new 10-year bond issue.
🤝 US-Greece ties get reinforced by energy deals—nothing says “strategic partnership” like mutually assured infrastructure.
🌎️ WHAT’S NEW OUTSIDE OF GREECE
🪴 Inspired by yiayia’s garden, these plantable kids’ books are here to grow literacy and basil (iconic if you ask us).
ekathimerini
More news from outside of Greece
🕺 Two days of Balkan music, dance, and food hit Astoria and your diet plans have left the chat.
🏅 Golden Pen goes to Harry Psaros for autism advocacy at Literary Week 2025—ink, empathy, impact.
🏆 Registration is open for the 2026 Greek Community Cup Women’s Tournament—time to bring cleats and main-character energy.
Peloponnese is trending in international travel mags—meanwhile, have you actually been? |
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❓️ READERS’ QUESTIONS
A Greek Talk reader is looking to sell property on a Greek island and needs real estate agent recommendations. If you've worked with agents for island property sales (or are one), reply with your recommendations - location, agent name, and why they're good. Community wisdom requested.
💎 CULTURAL GEMS
🏛️ The Greek Artist Who Made Mirrors, Boxes, and Self-Portraits His Entire Personality
artic.edu
Lucas Samaras (his work being exhibited in Chicago Jan 31-July 20 2026) is what happens when a kid from Kastoria grows up and decides the real medium isn’t paint or film—it’s the self, under pressure, with the lights turned up. He landed in the U.S. as a teenager, studied at Rutgers in the same orbit as early performance-art troublemakers, and spent the rest of his career refusing to pick one lane: photography, sculpture, installations, objects, “rooms,” mirrors—anything that could hold a person’s presence and then politely distort it. If your idea of a self-portrait is “nice lighting and a neutral expression,” Samaras would like a word. And then he’d probably scratch the word into the surface.
The odd part is how hands-on (almost mischievous) his process was. In his Photo-Transformations, he didn’t just take Polaroids—he attacked them while they developed, dragging a stylus or fingertips through the still-soft emulsion so the image buckled into something painterly, warped, and slightly haunted. He also made box-based works that functioned like secret biographies—encrusted with uncanny materials—plus mirrored installations that turn you into the artwork the moment you step inside. Samaras was doing “filters” decades before your phone did—except his version didn’t make you prettier; it made you truer, and a little harder to look away from.
Samaras never made "Greek art" in the folklore sense (no bouzoukis, no island landscapes), but his work has that Greek intensity—autobiographical, confessional, ornate. He represented Greece at major exhibitions while living in America, embodying diaspora identity: Greek enough to represent the homeland, American enough to thrive in New York's art world, belonging fully to neither. Extra fact: Samaras was the subject of several portraits by Chuck Close
📆 BEST OF GREEK CALENDAR
🖼️ Jan 31 - July 20, 2026, Lucas Samaras: Sitting, Standing, Walking, Looking, Art Institute of Chicago
🎤 June 13, 2026, Chris Isaak, Lycabettus Theatre, Athens
🎶 July 1, 2026, Moby, Athens
🧳 TRAVEL NEWS
🌄 Kastoria - The Lake Town Greece Forgets About Until Winter
Kastoria is the kind of place that makes you slow down without asking permission. It sits on a narrow peninsula that leans into Lake Orestiada, so you’re basically never more than a few minutes from water, a view, or a moment where you start narrating your life like a tasteful European film.
Do the classics with intention: start at the Byzantine Museum of Kastoria, which is packed with portable icons spanning roughly the 12th to 18th centuries (yes, it’s that kind of serious). Then work your way through the town’s web of Byzantine churches (Kastoria is famous for having a lot of them) before leaning into a little theatrical scenery at Dragon’s Cave, a visitor-friendly route through chambers and underground lakes that feels like nature showing off.
Under the pretty lake-and-churches exterior, Kastoria has layers: its Doltso and Apozari neighborhoods still show off grand mansions tied to the city’s historic prosperity, and the wider region is long associated with the fur trade, which helped connect Kastorians to international networks (and, inevitably, diaspora stories). And then there’s the deep-time flex: just outside town is Dispilio, the oldest Neolithic settlement in Europe; because Kastoria doesn’t just do “old,” it does “prehistoric, accidentally discovered, and still fascinating.”
🏠 Doltso + Apozari at golden hour: cobbled lanes + mansion facades = your camera roll suddenly developing “taste.”
🛶 Dispilio detour: tell people you “popped by a Neolithic settlement” like it’s normal weekend behavior.
⛪ Church of Panagia Koumbelidiki - 9th-century church shaped like a dome (koumbes = dome). Usually locked but caretaker lives next door and will open it if you ask nicely.
🏚️ Nerantzopoulos Mansion on weekday mornings - 17th-century archontiko preserved with original frescoes, elaborate ceiling work. Empty before 11am, €3 entry, staff will give private tour if you're the only visitor.
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🆕 OBSESSIONS
worldofinteriors.com
🛍️ Athens’ 30 Best Vintage Stores: The Best Gift You Can Buy Yourself
🧑🍳 RECIPE OF THE WEEK
Prasopita (Greek Leek Pie)
Prasopita (leeks, feta and phyllo baked into a savory pie) is winter’s comfort food that somehow makes leeks exciting, which is a minor culinary miracle.
One Scoop Ahead
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💡 INSPIRATION
When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success.
😎 GREEK FYI
🇬🇷 Kastoria has 72 Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches!
😂 MYTHIC MEMES
@internets
That’s it for now: bucket list validation for places we've been recommending forever, and small towns honoring pioneers who broke barriers before anyone was paying attention. Catch you next week for more news, drama and deep dives. 🧿 Stay Greek. [email protected]
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