Carnival Gallery

No doubt about it, Rethymnon Carnival 2008 was a resounding success — the best ever! Around 9,000 people from 33 Carnival teams participated in the Grand Parade, with an estimated 70,000 spectators. Here we bring you just a few of the images that captured our attention during the festive season. You will find many, many more in the Carnival photo galleries on the www.rethymnon.biz website.

Click the photo below to view the gallery

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Aussie Liz’s Sentimental Journey

The Bugle staff are happy to announce that our dear friend Australian Elizabeth (who lived in Rethymnon for many years up until 1993) will be returning for a visit in April! Here, Elizabeth looks back on the time she spent here during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s:
‘My diary entry for Tuesday April 27, 1982 begins “I am now in Rethymnon. This seems like a nice place so I might stay here a while”. I wonder how many other long-term residents of this town just happened across it while on a Greek or Cretan holiday and decided to stay. The existence of the Rethymnon Coffee Morning Bugle suggests that there might be quite a few so let me introduce myself to old friends and new.
In 1982 and 1983, I lived in Rethymnon with the intervening winter months spent travelling through Europe up to Sweden then back to Athens. After several months working as a nanny-housekeeper, I headed back to Rethymnon for Easter. Living in some ‘interesting’ accommodation (e.g. plumbing consisted of one cold water tap inside and one cold water tap outside and toilets that were never quite attached to the floor) and working at a range of jobs (e.g. tourist shop assistant, taverna kitchen hand, language teacher), I spent some of the most enjoyable years of my life living and working in this town until I returned to Australia in mid-1993.

A two and a half week visit in 2001 was not long enough to relive some wonderful times and rejuvenate friendships so I am returning to spend most of April 2008 in Rethymnon. If you remember when Rethymnon stopped at Delfini and beyond were fields with goats and sheep, if you remember the aftermath of a Zak-attack at Roulis, if you ever slept in the Doom Room at the youth hostel, if I taught you or your children to speak English with an Australian accent, if I cooked you a three-course meal on a single burner camping gas stove, or we shared a bottle of retsina (well, several bottles of retsina) over a meal at a harbour-side taverna, I will be happy to make your acquaintance again. Currently, I am employed as a social researcher at Charles Darwin University in the tropical north of Australia and investigating population mobility: why people come to a place, stay, leave and return. As you can see, I adopt a very practical approach to my work! So if you see a familiar-looking stranger wandering around town during April, it will probably be me. I’m very interested to meet new and old Rethymniotes and hear about the joys and frustrations of living on Crete in the 21st century.’