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- 🌀The Odyssey By Nolan, Winter Greece + The Greek Talk 5K IS Happening
🌀The Odyssey By Nolan, Winter Greece + The Greek Talk 5K IS Happening
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Hi Greek Talkers!
Last week we floated the idea of organizing a Greek Talk 5K/10K at next year's Athens Marathon, fully expecting maybe 12 of you to respond with polite interest and the rest to ignore us.
Instead, we got 76 votes, a flood of comments ranging from genuinely enthusiastic (“thank you for organizing!”, "I will even run a marathon!") to appropriately skeptical ("non-runners are kind of sick of hearing about running"). Twenty-three of you wisely chose "stay home and cheer with coffee," which is the most honest answer and probably the smartest. The rest of you said you're game for a 5K or 10K!
Here's where we land: We are game to walk/run a 5K or something in the Athens Marathon 2026. Not because we are athletes, but because finishing any distance in that marble stadium is worth the effort. So let's make this real: if you're serious about joining, stay tuned. We'll follow up in the next issue with sign up sheet and a zoom call to get to know all of us. This will be fuuun.
This week: Christopher Nolan is turning your school Homer text into a $250 million IMAX spectacle, Greece is quietly excellent at winter, and a spearfisherman found an ancient bust because apparently every Greek hobby eventually involves archaeology. Also, Matt Damon is Odysseus now, which feels correct somehow.
Let’s dive in. ☕🤿🇬🇷
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🇬🇷 WHAT’S NEW IN GREECE
🔬 The National Technical University of Athens just took 1st place in the 2025 H. Scott Fogler Chem-E-Car Competition®, because if you grow up dodging Athens traffic you can basically solve energy, safety and engineering in one go. BRAVO!👏 👏 🇬🇷 🇬🇷
Chenected.org
⚽ Christos Mouzakitis wins Golden Boy Web 2025 Award. Greek football talent is the closest thing we’ve had to a Marvel origin story since Giannis. BRAVO!👏 👏 🇬🇷 🇬🇷
sportingnews.com
More news from Greece
🇬🇷 Athens honors 1973 Polytechnic uprising.
🌳 Greek students engineer hope for Europe's dying plane trees. Saving iconic trees while their peers are just trying to pass finals.
⛵ NTUA students unveil Greece's first solar-powered boat 'Nereon'. Named after a sea god, powered by the sun, built by overachievers.
🎬 Christopher Nolan is making The Odyssey for IMAX. Hollywood remembering (again) that Greece has better stories than superhero franchises.
❄️ Greece grows as winter holiday destination. Turns out people will visit even when it's not beach season and 35°C, prob because it doesn’t get dark at 3 p.m.
📜 Nikos Kazantzakis Museum digitizes 1,000 letters, now free online. You can procrastinate by reading the literary legend's correspondence without leaving your couch (guilty as charged, we spent a few hours going down that rabbit hole).
🎭 Greek National Opera hosts International Opera Awards for the first time and Greece is handling high culture and high tourism simultaneously.
🎥 Greek films stand out at Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The annual reminder that Greek cinema is actually good at turning family trauma and awkward dinners into award-winning cinema.
🗿 Spearfisherman finds ancient bust on Crete seabed (your weekly reminder that every Greek hobby eventually involves discovering antiquities).
⚽ Greece beats Scotland in football, as the Greek national team remembered how to win right when everyone stopped expecting it.
🏒 Greek ice hockey on the upswing. Yes, Greece has hockey. No, we had no idea.
🏠 Greece rolls out new tax breaks for long-vacant and short-term rental homes. Economic incentives meet housing crisis meets tourism boom.
💰 Greece's shadow economy still thrives despite reforms. Least shocking news EVER.
📈 Fitch Ratings upgrades Greece to BBB with stable outlook. Credit agencies finally admitting Greece got its act together.
🏦 Euronext circling the Athens Exchange has big “global finance discovers your neighborhood kafeneio has prime real estate” energy.
⚡ Greece approves green hydrogen project at Motor Oil refinery. Energy transition happening one industrial facility at a time.
🔋 Greece advances $4.2 billion carbon capture and pipeline project. Going big on climate infrastructure while still arguing about recycling.
⛽ Regional chess, anyone? MOL, Hellenic Petroleum & Carlyle eye Lukoil Romania assets.
🌎️ WHAT’S NEW OUTSIDE OF GREECE
🎬 39th Munich Greek Film Week showcases award-winning films Nov 14-23. Germany's annual Greek cinema appreciation continues.
ekathimerini.com
More news from outside of Greece
✨ Glamour and Hellenic heritage shine at 2025 HACCI Excellence Awards. Diaspora Greeks celebrating achievement like a high-end panigyri with more formal wear and less klarino.
📚 The diaspora that reads together stays together. Greek Book Fair '25 in Australia celebrates Greek and Greek-Australian publications.
🎉 Hellenic Center of Washington D.C. marks 50 years at Golden Jubilee Gala.
🌏️ Greek National Tourism Organization opens Melbourne branch. Australia gets official recognition as basically Greece's eighth region.
👁️🗨️ READER QUESTION
Our reader N.L. wanted to ask fellow Greek Talkers about resources for Greek ancestry research.
We at The Greek Talk have heard of FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, and Greek Ancestry. There's also the time-honored tradition of interrogating your oldest living relatives and recording everything before the family story becomes "your great-grandfather definitely met Venizelos" with zero supporting evidence.
Have any tried and tested resources? Email us at [email protected] or vote below and leave a comment.
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
🚣♂️ Christopher Nolan Takes On The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan is making The Odyssey, and the collective Greek response oscillates between "finally, someone who understands stakes" and "please don't make Odysseus a time-traveling vigilante." The thing you once underlined with a blue Bic pen in school (and memorized, and over-analyzed) is now a $250 million IMAX spectacle with Matt Damon as Odysseus instead of "the guy we have to rescue."
Nolan’s filming took place in Messenia at Pylos, Methoni Castle, and Voidokilia, so when you watch the Cyclops sequence you're basically looking at a very expensive version of your summer in Kalamata. He spent months shooting on actual open sea to make Odysseus’s terror feel less computer generated and more “we’re actually seasick”.
The Odyssey has survived 2,800 years of retellings, translations, and adaptations ranging from OMG amazing to deeply embarrassing, and it still works. Homer's epic has been reinterpreted by everyone from James Joyce to the Coen Brothers. its enduring power comes not just from monsters and gods; it's the deeply human story underneath. Odysseus is clever, flawed, occasionally terrible at decision-making, and desperate to get back to the life he left behind. That's not mythology. That's everyone.
What most people forget (or don’t know) is that Homer wrote (?) The Odyssey by relying heavily on older oral versions of it. The oral tradition means the story was refined through thousands of live performances before anyone wrote it down. This explains why the Odyssey is so structurally tight and why certain phrases repeat (they're mnemonic devices for the performer).
The written version we have is essentially the greatest hits compilation of centuries of rhapsodes workshopping the same material. Nolan shooting it for IMAX is just the 2025 version of a Bronze Age rhapsode adjusting the story for a particular audience. The medium changes, but the core remains: a man trying to get home, the people who love him waiting, and the universe making that harder than it needs to be.
**Interested in skimming/reading/re-reading the Odyssey? We knew you were. “Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero…”
📆 BEST OF GREEK CALENDAR
🎤 November 21, 2025, Lana Del Ray, Athens
🖼️ December 2025 - Janurary 18, 2026, Τα Μέσα και η Παγκόσμια Πόλη: Marshall McLuhan και Κωνσταντίνος Δοξιάδης, Benaki museum, Athens
🖼️ —> January 25, 2026, Dimitris Pikionis: An aesthetic topography, Benaki Museum, Athens
💬 25 November, 2025, Hellenic Tech Network | Anchoring Innovation – Greece as a Global Hub for Maritime Tech, The Hellenic Centre, London
🎵 December 7, 2025, Lights and Shadows: A New Musical Adaptation of Dickens’ The Christmas Carol, singer and actress Elena Hadjiafxendi and pianist Christos Fountos, The Hellenic Centre, London
🧳 TRAVEL NEWS
❄️ Winter Greece - Where Snow Meets Souvlaki and Nobody Expects It.
Kaimaktsalan
Greece in winter reveals a side that many miss. The country has mountains, not just beaches, and those mountains are covered in snow for months. Forget the Greece of Instagram reels and turquoise water. Think of stone villages under frost, ski resorts that locals use, and cozy fireplaces in centuries-old inns.
The quiet season comes when tourism season ends. The Pindus mountain range runs down Greece's spine - a geographic reminder that Greece has always been more than sun and sea. Winter feels like a secret and, honestly, Greeks are fine with that. Fewer crowds, better prices, and the kind of cozy mountain-town vibe that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with the Alps.
Skiing is popular and the ski resorts are surprisingly good. Arachova, near Delphi, transforms into a ski-town hybrid every winter—boutique hotels, après-ski tavernas, and the Parnassos Ski Center just up the road. Skiing in Crete with a view of the sea. Metsovo in Epirus is all stone architecture, local cheese, and mountain passes. Pelion offers the rare combination of skiing in the morning and seaside villages by afternoon, which is very confusing but also very Greek. Zagori's stone bridges and villages feel frozen in time, literally and figuratively, with trails through Vikos Gorge that are stunning under a layer of snow.
Vasilitsa
Winter is when Greece feels the most…Greek. Skiing and taking a break for a hot chocolate or a souvlaki. Cafés filling with backgammon, local gossip, strong greek coffees and people in thick sweaters arguing about everything; later, tsipouro appears in small glasses and large quantities. Greeks have been skiing since the 1930s, which surprises people who assume the country is all beaches and ancient ruins. The reality is more layered—Greece does winter well, it just doesn't market it aggressively because summer pays the bills.
❄️ Kalavrita Ski Center - Smaller than Parnassos, cheaper, and locals outnumber tourists 10-to-1. Plus the rack railway up is half the experience.
🍷 Metsovo's Katogi Averoff Winery in January - Wine tastings when it's freezing outside, nobody's there, and the staff actually has time to talk. They'll also sell you aged cheese that pairs dangerously well.
🏔️ Zagori's stone bridges at dawn in winter - Photographers know, but most tourists don't: winter fog makes these Ottoman-era bridges look like portals to another dimension. Kokkoris Bridge especially.
🔥 Any taverna in Arachova with a fireplace on a weeknight - Weeknights means locals, better service, and the owner's mother might actually be cooking.
🚗 Do the “sea-and-snow” flex in one day: In Pelion, Kalamata, Crete or Arcadia, you can literally take a morning walk on the beach and end up skiing in a mountain village by lunch.
Kalavrita Helmos Ski center |  Olympus ski center |
 Pelion |  Vitsi Ski, Kastoria |
🆕 OBSESSIONS
Tsagarada, Pilio, ekathimerini
🏙️ The 17 Gems of Kypseli: An Insider’s Guide to Athens’ Most Electric Neighborhood
🧑🍳 RECIPE OF THE WEEK
FASOLADA
argiro.gr
Fasolada is Greece's official national dish—a humble white bean soup with tomatoes, olive oil, and vegetables that's been feeding Greeks through winters since ancient times.
It's the kind of meal that looks unimpressive until you taste it and realize why poor villagers and wealthy Athenians have been eating the same recipe for 2,500 years. Winter in Greece means fasolada on the stove, crusty bread for dipping, and the realization that beans deserve more respect.
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💡 INSPIRATION
The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.
😎 GREEK FYI
🇬🇷 Greek law says any antiquities you find—on land or seabed—belong to the state, so that Cretan spearfisherman gets zero euros for his ancient bust discovery. But he does get official recognition and café bragging rights for life, which most Greeks consider a fair trade.
😂 MYTHIC MEMES
@internets.gr
@internets.gr
That’s it for now. Turning ancient epics into IMAX spectacles, proving winter exists with actual snow, and casually finding antiquities while spearfishing—because even Greek hobbies involve archaeology.
Catch you next week for more news, drama and deep dives. 🧿 Stay Greek. [email protected]
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