New Palaeontology Museum for Rethymnon

The recently restored Mastabas Mosque (Beli Pasha Mosque) will be the location of the newly created Palaeontology Museum in Rethymnon. This museum will form a Cretan annexe of the Goulandris Natural History Museum. The museum will have three sections: an indoor exhibition area, a research and accommodation wing, and a park. Visitors will have the opportunity to view some of the more important findings from caves in the region. Up until now, many of the artefacts to be displayed were housed in the Natural Museum in Athens. Items of particular interest include the bones of pre-historic Cretan animals, for example, dwarf elephants, dwarf hippopotamuses and polymorphous Cretan deer. The artefacts will be accompanied by displays showing life-sized representations of endemic mammals, with background information about these fascinating animals. There will also be exhibits giving historical information about Crete, including accounts of Cretan mythology. Students and researchers from all over the world will be able to stay in the accommodation wing whilst carrying out important research work into this aspect of Cretan history. The grounds of the Mosque complex are being developed as a park. The park is being landscaped in order to ‘showcase’ Cretan endemic flowers, shrubs and trees — only indigenous plants will be used. This will enable the park to demonstrate the true diversity of Crete’s ecology. The museum plans to open to the public in Spring 2008. You can find out more about the Goulandris Foundation on the www.gnhm.gr website.

Sport Scenes: Hits and Misses

Once again, we have lots to report about sport in Rethymnon. Firstly we have to apologise to those who turned out for the 5th Cretan Marathon in Rethymnon on 7th October. As we found out at the last minute, the event was cancelled ‘due to technical problems’. Unfortunately, no further details were given on their website, - www.cretamarathon.gr –save for the information that they hoped to run the event (!) in Heraklion next year, so we can’t tell you what these technical problems might have been…. However, the other two distance runs we mentioned last month are still on the cards (mixed metaphors are us): The Athens Marathon takes place on Sunday 4th November, and the Arkadi fun-run will take place on Thursday, 8th November.
The Bugle has a vested (?!) interest in the Athens marathon, as some of the crew will be in the big city that weekend, hopefully cheering on one of our very own ‘enterprising locals’. More about this in our December issue!
As to the rest of the sport? Well, things are looking pretty bright here at the moment (rose-tinted spectacles?). AGO Rethymnon — the basketball team — are holding their own when it comes to playing with the big boys. It is true that they did not make it to the quarter finals of the Greek Cup. It is also true that they lost their first away game of the season. But they were playing Panathinaikos, and THEY LOST BY A VERY NARROW MARGIN. And, they won their first home game last weekend against Marousi (71—60)!!!!
Our football team Asteras have nothing to be ashamed of either, considering that this is the first season that they are playing at professional level. So far, out of six games, they have won three, drawn one and lost two. This places them comfortably in the middle of their division, which is no more than we can really expect right now. As long as they keep winning more games than they lose, we’ll be (relatively) happy!
As we reported last month, the Men’s Volleyball season starts on Saturday, 3rd November. The Bugle Crew are sure that there will be a dramatic improvement in fortunes this year (the only way to go is up!). Please, everyone, keep your fingers crossed….