Interesting thoughts on moving to Greece and Italy

Earliest Sample of Minoan Hieroglyphics Found in Western Crete

From the Greek Reporter – An excavation in western Crete has uncovered a sealstone engraved with Minoan hieroglyphics, the first time such evidence has ever been found in the area.

A four-sided red jasper sealstone is among the finds unearthed during this season’s excavation of the Minoan peak sanctuary at Vrysinas, located south of the city of Rethymnon.  The whole area was officially announced and included in the archaeological sites list by the Central Archaeological Council of Greece.

The sealstone, which is carved on all four surfaces with characters of the Minoan Hieroglyphic script, constitutes the sole evidence to date for the presence of this earliest Minoan style of writing in Western Crete.

The excavation, which began in 2004, is conducted by the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities under the supervision of the archaeologist Helena Papadopoulou in collaboration with Prof. Iris Tzachili from the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete.

For the full story click here.

Amid Greece’s challenges, Kalamata basks in the sun

From CNN: Amid all the news surrounding the European Debt Crisis, it is easy to lose sight of the positive news coming out of Greece, including an increase in tourism of 9.6% over last year.  Chris Kokenes returns to his ancestral home of Kalamata to see how it is faring.

After reading all the bad economic news coming out of Greece, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the Greek people are still carrying on their daily lives.

Greeks may be cutting back on their vacations, but the country has seen a rise in the number of tourists. The Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises expects more than 10.5 million visitors this year, a 9.6% increase from 2010.

On a recent trip to my mother’s hometown of Kalamata, I was curious to see how this seaside city on the southern part of the Peloponnese, best known for its luscious olives and as the birthplace of the New Age performer Yanni, was faring amid the country’s economic crisis.

Unlike Athens, which is home to more than 3 million Greeks, the images of protests and distress are nowhere to be visibly found in this sun-drenched town of just over 100,000. Here, the city seems to embrace the energy of the sun. Young people seem to outnumber the old.

The origins of the city’s name remain murky, but according to relatives, it’s probably derived from the Greek words “kala ommata,” which means “beautiful eyes.”

Kalamata is hardly a destination most tourists consider when they think of a vacation in Greece. The islands of Mykonos and Santorini are usually the headliners in that fantasy.

Kalamata, the 10th largest city in Greece and the capital of Messinia, is built on the foot of the Tavgetos and near Messinia Bay. It draws mostly Greek vacationers, as it’s a good home base close to other tourist sites in Messinia and ferries to some nearby islands, including the Ionian island of Kythira and Kissamos in Crete.

But for most people, the lure of Kalamata is the beaches, with their blue waters and free sun beds.

The tranquil beaches in Kalamata are more than 6 miles long, and elderly people taking a morning swim is a familiar sight.  Take a leisurely walk or bike ride along the promenade, and it’s hard not to stop into one the many tavernas for a cold Mythos beer and a Mikri Pikilia: a selection of sardines, meatballs, calamari, tomatoes and cucumbers.

For the full story click here.

New Video – Packing Fragile China and Glassware

We’ve just added another video in our series on “Packing For Your Removal”.  Many thanks to our Removals Manager, Rob Baldwin, for again starring in the video.  In this film we show you how to pack a box of fragile items such glassware, china and fragile ornaments.  This is an example of export packing to BAR standards, which is very important when you are transporting goods as far as Italy or one of the Greek Islands, for example.

Alternatively, if it all looks like too much work, just ask your Nomad International removal team to do it instead!  Please let us know in advance of course, then we will bring all of the materials with us.

The new video on Fragile Packing is in two parts.  You can find all of our packing videos here (just scroll to the bottom of the page).

Rhodes Town, Greece: A cultural guide

From the Telegraph: Robin Gauldie offers an essential cultural guide to Rhodes, a Greek city once ruled by the Knights of St John.

The old hammam on Plateia Arionos is a relic of Ottoman rule and part of a group of buildings that makes Rhodes’s medieval town unique. Dotted with the domes and minarets of more than a dozen mosques, within a ring of ramparts built by the Knights of St John, this is one of Europe’s great surviving walled towns.

The Knights ruled Rhodes with a mailed fist for more than two centuries until Suleiman the Magnificent turfed them out in 1521.

Modern residential suburbs sprawl on the outskirts, but farther in, the “New Town” is a grid of shopping and restaurant streets, behind an esplanade of Art Deco-meets-fake-Moorish buildings dating from the Italian occupation of 1912-43.

Walk up Odos Ippoton (the Street of the Knights) to the Palace of the Grand Masters, past the elegant stone inns where each of the “Tongues” of the Order – England, France, Germany, Italy, Auvergne, Aragon, Castile and Provence – had its headquarters. If these, and the palace, seem to be in suspiciously good shape, blame Mussolini, who ordered the rebuilding of the dilapidated relics in 1935. Today, the palace’s echoing halls house two permanent exhibitions (dedicated to medieval and ancient Rhodes), and it’s easy to imagine how imposing they must have been when the Knights were at the height of their power.

Fifty yards south of the palace, the Roloi towers above the grey domes, pink walls and cypress-shaded precinct of the Mosque of Suleiman, the Old Town’s most splendid Ottoman relic. If you have a head for heights (I don’t), make your way to the top of the clock tower (built after a mid-19th-century earthquake). From the top, red-tiled roofs, domes and minarets, palm-shaded squares and battlements are laid out below you.

Read the full story here.

Extra Vehicle in August

Due to high demand we will be having an additional departure in August.  We were fully-booked for August both for our Crete Express and premium door-to-door removal services to Greece and Italy, but now we have some capacity for both of these options on both of the vehicles departing next month.  The dates for these departures will be approximately 12th and 24th August.

For the most up-to-date guide to available capacity on our Crete Express services, please always remember to check our Crete Express page.

New Packing Video – Choosing the Right Packaging Materials for your Removal

We’ve just added a new video to our Removal Advice page.  This will be the first in a series of videos on packing for your removal.

Although we recommend using Nomad International’s team to do the packing and wrapping for your removal of course, we understand that some of our customers still prefer to do some or all of this themselves.  For those customers who would like to do this, these videos will teach you to pack and wrap for your removal according to principles recommended by the BAR for overseas removals.  The first video is on choosing the right packaging materials – it is embedded below and you can also find it with a full text explanation at the bottom of the Removal Advice page.

The voice-over and acting are a bit sketchy (!), but our main priority was getting the information across to our customers. We had fun creating it and we hope you enjoy it.

Antikythera Mechanism

Ancient Greek mechanical computer has a fascinating story.

If you’ve never heard of the Antikythera mechanism, prepare to be astonished. Built more than 2,000 years ago in Ancient Greece, this device is the world’s first mechanical computer, with a degree of sophistication and complexity assumed not to have been possible until 1,400 years later.

Found in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, it was shelved for half a century, its wonders concealed by millennia of rock formation and decay. It wasn’t until 1951 when British physicist Derek de Solla Price initiated a systematic investigation into the device that its complexity was revealed, astounding the scientific world. The device contained over 30 gears, with unusual numbers of teeth arranged in complex ratios, and most astonishingly, incorporating a system of epicyclic gearing (gears moving with their axes on other gears). This was a computer, designed for predicting solar and lunar eclipses, of the likes not seen until the 14th century.

Recent advances in x-ray technology have allowed the inscriptions on the cogs to be uncovered, revealing another astonishing fact about its original purpose: the device was used to track the four-yearly timing of the original Olympic Games.

It is likely that the device was built in Syracuse, in modern-day Sicily, Italy, which was once an important city in Ancient Greece and the home town of the scholar Archimedes. It is possible that the device is based on one originally built by Archimedes himself.

The mechanical sophistication of device is considered to be comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock, and it has been stated that its historic value and scarcity exceeds that of the Mona Lisa. The device is housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.

Archaeologists find new gems in ancient Roman waste

ANSA / LifeinItaly.com – Herculaneum, Campania – Archaeologists are discovering new insights into how the Romans lived in Herculaneum 2,000 years ago by what they left behind – in the ancient city’s sewers.

Herculaneum, which lies on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, Stabiae and other nearby towns in 79 AD.

Specialists involved in the Herculaneum Conservation Project have excavated the ancient sewers of the city and uncovered the largest deposit of organic material ever found in the Roman world.

Apart from 170 crates of artefacts including pottery,a lamp and 60 coins, the excavation team has recovered bone pins, necklace beads and a gold ring with a decorative gemstone from the sewers.

But it is the organic deposits that may provide the most innovative research – giving researchers an unprecedented insight into the diet and health of the Roman inhabitants.

Read the full story here.

Broken idols of Keros

From the Guardian: New evidence from Cambridge scientists on the mystery of the beautiful marble figurines broken then buried by Greeks 4,500 years ago

The Cycladic island Keros has long been home to one of Greece’s greatest archaeological mysteries: why are fragments of beautiful but deliberately smashed bronze age figurines buried in shallow pits on a small, rocky Greek island?

Today Cambridge University scientists will release findings that shed light on the 4,500 year old mystery.

For the full story go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jun/10/archaeology-mystery-keros-island-greece

New Web Site

Welcome to our new web site!  Fresh from a complete overhaul, the new Nomad International web site contains lots of useful new features.  Firstly, we’ve made some changes to the layout and appearance of the site to make it more user-friendly and more visually appealing, while still keeping the colour scheme and overall “feel” of the site in line with our familiar brand.  We’ve kept many of the classic photos of our older vehicles on the site, since the images capture what it is like to conduct removals in Greece and Italy, but we will be adding more photos of our newer vehicles soon.  Speaking of photos, you will see some photos included in some of our Testimonials now, as well as an interesting case study. 

You’ll also notice some extra navigation buttons throughout the site to make it easier to get to key pages.  We’ve updated the content of several pages in order to tweak minor details to better suit our customers’ needs, and to fix some minor bugs.  On the Crete Express page, you will notice that the pricing system is now all inclusive, so there is no additional handling fee to be paid in Vamos.  For Crete Express customers, don’t forget that the Crete Express page on our web site is always the best place to look for updates on our Crete Express schedule (scroll down to Step 6), and we will make sure this is kept up-to-date.  We have developed lower, standardised prices for deliveries / collections of small Crete Express consignments within Crete, so it will be much quicker for us to give you a quote for this if you need one.  At the moment you still need to call or email us for this, but soon we will add new functionality so that you can calculate this cost automatically (plus some exciting new features in the future including low-cost door-to-door pricing for small Crete Express consignments). 

Soon we will be adding some videos to the Removal Advice page to help you with things like packing and wrapping.  Plus there is our new blog of course!  Please subscribe to the blog via RSS by using the button at the top of this page.

We hope you like our new web site and our new blog.  We will be updating this regularly with interesting news about Greece and Italy, about removals and about Nomad International.