Contents
Around Town |
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Goodbye Lavyrinthos! |
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It’s official. The Lavyrinthos has finally been demolished and they’ve all moved to the Delfini. Our roving reporters visited both the GNTO tourist office and the Rethymnon Prefecture Tourism Committee Office (located in the street opposite the town hall) to see what type of information is on offer for the visitor. We were given a stack of leaflets and staff were polite in both places. The quality of the material varied widely, though. On the plus side, many of the leaflets were glossy, were highly professional in terms of graphics and layout, had great photographs and sought to give the reader plenty of historical, cultural and geographical information about the region. Unfortunately, most of them were let down by poor use of English. This seems extraordinary given the large number of literate bilingual Greek / English speakers in the region. We found a couple of other glitches that we thought were rather naughty. One leaflet had a photo of Plakias as it was 20 years ago and described the beach at Damnoni as ‘unspoilt’. In one place we were given an extremely badly photocopied sheet of ‘Museums in Crete’ listing out of date telephone dialling codes for Hania, Heraklion and Agios Nikolaos. We also found a couple of crass gender stereotyping errors which set one of the reporters off on a Germaine Greer style rant. The ‘Conference participant’ was identified as ‘he’ in one hotel’s advertisement. The symbol used in one leaflet for ‘cleaning service in room’ was the generic symbol for female that one sees on public toilet doors. Sorry, but this really isn’t good enough in the 21st century. For one thing it is counter-productive if trying to dispel the popular image of Crete as a ‘macho culture’! |
Sweet Soccer Success - Congratulations Asteras
Great
celebrations all round and contrary to what we said last month, it was
all over before the final whistle went. Asteras were confirmed as being
top of their division ahead of their final match and have consequently
been promoted from ‘Δ Crete’ to ‘Γ’ Division. Our boys now have a
well-earned summer break. We hope the success story continues and look
forward to watching (or hearing even, given that our house is round the
corner from the local football ground) some exciting matches in the
autumn. Unfortunately our basketball dream team AGOR failed to win
promotion, finishing in third place in the A2 division. And the only
volleyball we’re prepared to mention right now is the game people play
on the beach for fun.
Free Bicycle Loan? |
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According to Rethimniotika Nea (our local newspaper)
a free bicycle loan scheme is being introduced in the town. We
haven’t checked this out for ourselves yet, but as we understand it
the scheme works (or will work) as follows. On production of ID you
will be able to ‘borrow’ a bicycle from one of three pick-up and
drop-off points. These are the marina, the car park by the municipal
gardens and the Melina Mercouri Sports Hall near the bus station.
Apparently the first 17 bicycles are already in place. |
Blue Flag Beaches
The
number of beaches awarded the Blue Flag (standard for
cleanliness and safety) in 2007 in Greece has increased by 20 on
last year to 428. Greece came second out of 49 countries, Spain
being top with 499 Blue Flag beaches. Crete has 97 Blue Flag
beaches, of which 17 are in the Rethymnon prefecture. This is
really good news - not least because tourists are becoming
increasingly conscious of Blue Flag status - and represents a
dramatic improvement in the last 20 years. In 1988 there were
only 7 Blue Flag beaches in the whole of Greece. Elsewhere, a
report by the EU cites Cyprus as having the cleanest beaches in
Europe, demonstrating 99% compliance with health and safety
regulations, here too, Greece came second, achieving 96%.
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