Contents
Around Town
New Museum
A museum dedicated to the history of Crete in Rethymnon? Sounds like a good idea. So does the Association of Friends of the Museum of History of Crete. At the last council meeting they had a proposal tabled for the council to give them a couple of buildings within the grounds of the Fortezza. As the council is looking at ways how to extend and improve the use of the area, the proposal for the museum was cautiously and tentatively welcomed. At the moment there is very little information about what the museum might look like and what kind of exhibits it would host. So far, all we know is that it will be an audio-visual experience spread over two or possibly three buildings.
In a similar vein, the council has picked up the ball again with plans for the new archaeological museum. After initial excitement a couple of years ago the Ministry of Culture has been very quiet about this important boost for Rethymnon. Now contact with the new administration has been made to speed up the process. The planned location for the new museum is where the bus station is now. It is hoped that the museum will be built the museum in 2012, by which time a start should have been made on the renovation and re-development of the western coastline in Rethymnon, from the Sochoras football ground all the way to Koubes. Fingers crossed!
No New Police Station - Yet
For over three years now there has been talk about building a new police station. The current building is really not up to scratch as a base for modern police work. So the municipality looked for land and found a plot in Missiria. Urban planning regulations were updated to accommodate the change of land use. But guess what (you’re going to like this one!) after three years, people have just realised that the plot of land is not a big enough site for the proposed new police station. It is not clear why nobody seemed to have cottoned on to this problem much earlier. The previous minister clearly didn’t know about this, because he demanded that the municipality should speed up their land use changes so that building could start… The search for an alternative location is now on. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Read the plans and use a tape measure!
PS: If you’re wondering what relevance the shark has to this story, there is none whatsoever. We ran out of space to put the shark anywhere else, and an edition of the Bugle without a picture of the Headington shark would be absolutely unthinkable!
Sport: Kicking off the New Decade
We seem to say this every month, but once again the sporting scenario is a bit of a mixed bag.
ASTERAS The men’s football team is flying quite high – they haven’t lost since mid November and are sitting comfortably in 5th position in the league table. Promotion was not an aim this season, and is not looking likely with the team of Chania sitting at the top with 10 points more then Asteras, but it being almost a complete new team, the lads can be proud of themselves.
AGOR: Our basketball team is losing the plot a bit. They lost three games in December; they’d obviously either been eating too much Christmas cake or worrying what Ai Vasilis would bring them as a present. The players were given some time off to recharge the batteries in the hope that 2010 will be an improvement on 2009. If not, they will be playing in the same division, and not the one they claim they should be playing in.
OPER: The female volleyball team is certainly the surprise team of the season so far. Newly promoted they were expected to struggle, But this is not the case at all. They are ‘hot’! It took them a little time to find their feet (they started the season with three losses), but since then they’ve only lost the one game and are in fifth place in the table. They are enjoying a longish Christmas and New Year break, and are back in action on January 9th (4 pm at the Melina Mercouri Sports Hall).
KRISSES: The women’s football team is going through an interesting period. On the field, things didn’t go that well in December. They have not been able to add to their points tally as they lost all their games. Off the field, the team’s management has been completely overhauled with a new board of directors all committed to investing in and promoting women’s football in Rethymnon. The aim is for the team to survive in the top flight, and with the help of their new main sponsor – Superfast Ferries they will explore the transfer market to see if they can strengthen the team. However, they want to do this without moving too far away from their ethos that Krisses is a Rethymnon team with Rethymnon players.
Card Tricks
For quite a few years now in order to park legally in the street in Rethymnon has involved a ‘pay and display’ system using cards that can be purchased at the kiosks and some other outlets. However, this being the island it is, people who didn’t want to buy new cards each time they parked their car in town had worked out a system to re-use their old cards. This free parking scam has resulted in a serious revenue loss for the municipality, and they’ve had enough of all this malarkey. And the municipality is seriously broke at the moment. So it’s time for a change: soon the current cards will be replaced by scratch cards. Other options are being studied as well, including electronic payment for parking via sms messages. But you just know that whatever new measures get introduced it won’t take long for someone, somewhere to find a way to beat the system!
