http://www.stayinathens.com news, thoughts and absurdity from the StayInAthens team en-us Fri Oct 03 22:37:35 +0300 2008 custom ror generator http://www.stayinathens.com/rss/blog info@stayinathens.com panos@stayinathens.com http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/21 Hi everyone, most of you are already here ready to live an unforgivable experience. Maybe Athens is not so appealing at first site but it is really a vibrant city. So besides the Erasmus parties, tackling Greek bureaucrasy and settling in (we hope that we really help you in this) you can seize the opportunity to live as a citizen of Athens by attending some cool events. First of all (though it is ending now), the Athens International Film Festival. Every year in September the AIFF brings some of the latest and finest movies around the world. There are different sections in the festival as the competing one, documentaries, special tributes, music films and so on. Find more details at the official website. Like it or not the coming of MTV to Greece is a major event. MTV Greece wants to celebrate its opening in our country and organises a series of events and festival around the city. It culminates with a huge and free concert at Kallimarmaro stadium with Kaiser Chiefs and REM on October the 5th. Here is a brief outline of the events translated for you: Sunday 28/912.00 – 14.00 MTV Music Brunch @ T Palace (King George Hotel)DJ: Blend aka Mishkin16.00 – 20.00 MTV Goes South @ BALUX CAFΙ DJs: John-John & Chris Child20.00 – 23.30 Thisseio: GAD – CYANNA - MATISSE20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos: N.Τ.Π. (live), DJ Smartie breakers without fear, skaters, N.S.A. parkour, BMX, graffiti Monday 29/912.00 – 14.00 MTV Freestylin’ @ The Shop (Ermou) DJ: Nea TPermaik20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos: DJ FEEL K, DJ Theo breakers without fear, skaters, BMX, graffiti22.00 MTV Rocks@ Bourbon (Glyfada) DJ: Panayiotis Liras Tuesday 30/913.00 – 16.00 MTV City Noise @ Public DJ: Dimitris Lilis18.00 – 20.00 MTV Suburbia @ B.Bluz (Halandri)20.00 – 23.30 Thiseio:  Greek Hip - Hop20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos: cast-a-blast soundsystem (live) breakers without fear, skaters, BMX, graffiti Wednesday 1/1018.00 – 21.00 MTV Bohemia @ Circus, DJ: Dimitris Lilis20.00 – 23.30 Thiseio: Andriana Babali – Imam Baildiί  - Rallia Christidou20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos:  217 (live), MTV Search TOP 10 VJs Dead Prezz breakers, skaters, N.S.A. parkour, BMX, graffiti24.00 MTV presents Bootycall Encore by Magna @ Akrotiri Club, Special Guest DJs: Nikki Beatnik & Lauren Pope (London) Tuesday 2/1012.00 – 14.00 MTV Freestylin’@ The Shop (Ermou) DJ: Nea TPermaik18.00 – 20.00 MTV Street Buzz @ Starbucks (Korai) DJ: Playmen18.00 – 21.00 MTV Pulp Noir @ Tiki Athens (Makrigiannis) DJ: Blend aka Mishkin20.00 – 23.30 Thiseio: ABBIE GALE – RAINING PLEASURE20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos: WORMS (live), QB-MIX (DJ set), TAWFIQ (live), DJ STEVE (MAD G.Q.)Dead Prezz, skaters, N.S.A. parkour, BMX, graffiti24.00 MTV goes exclusive: VENUE pre-opening party (Peireos) SPECIAL GUEST DJ Friday 3/1018.00 – 20.00 MTV City Noise @ Public (Syntagma) DJ: Nea TPermaik20.00 – 23.30 Thiseion: PROFESSIONAL SINNERZ & Κomis Χ – Skies– STEREO MIKE & SHAYA20.00 – 23.30 Keramikos: DJ Vicky Bania, DJ Kagioulis, Battle of the Breakers, skaters, N.S.A. parkour, BMX, graffiti24.00 MTV presents Hoteling @ Galaxy (Hilton) by Alexandros Christopoulos Saturday 4/1012.00 – 14.00 MTV Music Brunch @ Eleftheroudakis (Panepistimiou 17) DJ: Blend aka Mishkin16.00 – 20.00 MTV Goes South @ BALUX CAFΙ THE HOUSE PROJECT DJs: John-John & Chris Child20.00 – 23.30 Thiseion: YOUR HAND IN MINE – MONIKA – DAVID FONSECA20.00 – 23.30 Κεραμεικός: DJs: Andrianos Papadeas, George Seragos, V-Sag, Dimi Phaze (live) skaters, BMX, graffiti24:00 MTV Final Call @ Soul (Evripidou) DJs: Kormoranos & Flying Lilis Brothers Sunday 5/10 Final BIG CONCERT at Kallimarmaron stadium with Kaiser Chiefs & REM     Another interesting festival going on bringing design based on ecological and environmental friendly art. Read more at the official website. Photos by George Veroglou Fri Oct 03 22:09:20 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/22 Fri Oct 03 22:07:14 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/20 Yeah, it is final! Would you like to live in an old art nouveau renovated building where only exhange students live? Plus being on top of the headquarters of StayInAthens where the coolest guys and girls work ? Would you like to be down town but next to the Park (which is being renovated and is going to be super! ) Well if this not tempting enough, our residence (owned and managed by StayInAthens) is just in next to some of the busiest students bars of Athens and very close to the Polytechnic and AUEB.   But enough with the words! Just take a look by yourself and book now!Apartment 1Apartment 2Apartment 3Apartment 4Apartment 5Apartment 6Apartment 7  We are pretty excited by the new Erasmus residence and we look forward to host the first tenants and of course we still try out best to decorate it and make it as comfortable as possible! Sat Jul 19 17:48:04 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/19 Dear Erasmus Students, we are more than excited to announce that the ERASMUS POP ART Residence is hot and ready here in Athens!!This Residence is not like any other you have seen or you imagined...POP ART is everywhere!!!! The Residence building will start making new Erasmus History by the new Academic year 2008-2009.In a few days pictures will be uploaded and you will have the chance to "visit" the whole Residence within the STAYINATHENS site. In order to perform a booking you shall follow exactly the same procedure applying for the rest of the Erasmus Appartments.  Nice to have you here in Athens with us!!! You will have an amazing Erasmus period...maybe the best of your life...For me still remains the best..10 years after the end :-)   See you all soon,   On behalf of Stayinathens Team Cleopatra Wed Jul 16 14:51:00 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/18 Well yes you are in Athens and you cannot say you are overall impressed with the beauty of this city. But as it is often said Athens looks ugly but has a charming character. If you just look behind the walls, the upper class neighbours and the touristic spots and just walk around the city you can find some extraordinary pieces of art. Ladies and gentlemen this is Athens Street Art !   You can locate them on the map here! Thu May 15 09:43:09 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/17 Wow it seems like a century since the last time I posted on this blog but please put the blame on the Cypriot Army that keeps me away from my "duties". The new academic year will bring many exciting features to StayInAthens that although seems like hibernating a lot of things are undergoing such as new exciting apartments, many new features on our web application. new services, new offers and so on. But for the time being I want to start informing you for some of the many amazing events that happens in Athens from now until summer. Traditionally May and June are the best months to spend in Athens the weather is awesome and the city is vibrating with cool events. One of them is one that makes the fans of electronic music, video, image arts and in general new media art, proud. It is called Synch Festival and you can learn more here. This year it will take place on 13-14-15 June in Technopolis area at Gazi easily reachable by metro (Keramikos station). The festival spawns over Technopolis, Benaki museum and famous bars and clubs of this sophisticated and artistic area. The best way to experience the festival is to sign up for volunteer thus having access for free to most of the venues. More on volunteers... And here is the excellent teaser of the festival   Mon Apr 14 10:50:54 +0300 2008 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/16 Silently over the last weeks we have made quite a lot of upgrades on the core of StayInAthens. Most of them though are in the admin part of the system which may not be visible to you but it will mean a lot the service we offer you. Let 's see some of the them On the client sideOpenID login and registration. Though not popular as of time being we think OpenID is the best solution towards a unified login so we came early to support itSearch available apartments without registration. You can see in our front page a new widget called Seach Vacancies that let you find available apartments at a glanceShort term search. Are you coming to Athens for a few days or weeks? Now we have included the short stay option to let you find your house in AthensImproved personal tools. See your balance, your roomates, discover your neighborhoodLive communication thanks to the new embeded MSN messenger, find it here House owner sideWe have new tools for the management of your property and you can find more here. Admin sideNew event scheduling moduleSearch Vacancies moduleData warehouseStatistics module There have been also a lot of small usability and scalability issues solved and we hope for a new release of StayInAthens v2.0 in summer which will be Rails 2.0 compatible and will sport many new features. Please leave a comment with the features you would like to see in our new version. We will experiment on a new layout of the frontpage. P.S. Not to forget that besides the webpage we try to impove our product! So in cooperation with our house owners we try to upgrade our listed houses and try to find new great apartments (not so easy task in the center of Athens but we do try! :) ) Fri Dec 28 15:53:53 +0200 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/15 What is more important  for  me while traveling is to explore the place I am and I am not referring to sites and touristical places but people, traditions and culture. Although Night On Earth is not a traditional group is a group that makes me proud of modern greek culture which I am afraid we do not have much. As most of modern greek pop music is a bad mixture of oriental rhythms and stupid lyrics there are still composers and musicians that amaze me. Of course if you just a tourist in Greece it will be difficult to discover them but if you spend a significant time in Athens and if you network with the right people you can always find the niche you fit in! So if you like trip hop, blues, stone and some bits of greek music I am happy to present you Night On Earth. If further more you would like to be introduced to some more greek like music but with a western view then just wait until February when Night on Earth will have a news album with the songs of one of the best modern greek composers named Thanasis Papakostantinou (a great song of him) but played in their own special way. You can view a teaser here: Fri Dec 28 15:11:44 +0200 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/13 Sometimes we forget the beauty there is in this world and sometimes we do everything to destoy it. Well those times I agree with Agent Smith from the Matrix saying that humans are not like mammals because they live in balance with the environment although men to consume all resources, like viruses. When we were making StayInAthens, our lovely country was burning... Sometime ago I went on an excursion with a german friend. He was Erasmus student back in 2004 here and we still have very good communication. So he came to visit and made a trip to the north. The photo is from Vikos Gorge near Ioannina. I highly recommend you to go there and see the real Greece behind the business suits, the cement and the rush of Athens. To meet genuine people and an amazing land. Tue Nov 20 12:46:57 +0200 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/12 Hi everyone,Though a rainy weekend it was a time of cycling action. On Saturday there was the big demonstration of cyclists asking for our rights (I am a cyclist myself) something taken for granted in most European countries. As we all see Athens is a city where car drivers rule. They are dangerous, the cars make noise, occupy space and of course pollute. The thing is that most movements are not longer than 3 kms so bikes could be used.The last years we see a rise of cyclists in Athens but the Mayor and the Ministry of Transporation do not take us seriously. One of our reactions are the big cycling demonsration with participation of over 2.000 cyclists every time. So far we have achieved to let us in the green line of metro. So on Saturday we also asked to be free to enter at every metro line and we also asked for cycle ways. There has been a study where and how to make cycle ways but the Mayor neglects to apply it. So we took paint and made them on our own.On Sunday there was the cycling tour or Athens organised by the Mayor. It is nothing more than a communication tric. The motto of the tour was "We make space for bicycles, the environmental friendly vehicle" and so on but 3 days back Mr. Kaklamanis said that is dangerous to make cycle ways in Athens. So most of us participated on Saturday and snobbed the official event on Sunday. Instead, personally I took a long and extreme ride on Ymittos, the paradise of the athenian mountain biker.Hope that some time we have more cycle ways and better attitude towards cyclists so that you can also bring your bike Mon Oct 22 14:58:15 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/10 Just some stats I Found at Technorati. Posts that contain Blog Action Day per day for the last 30 days. But please note that in the above results only the blogs monitored by Technorati appear and of course if the phrase Blog Action Day is translated it is not counted and also some people may opted for a different title. Anyway the intresting part is that we see a king of reflection on world blogs. How so many people from different countries synchronize on same day. But blogs are good but real action is the question. As Ghandi said Hands that help are holier than lips that pray Wed Oct 17 13:32:51 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/8 Although usually I am very sceptical about world action day that are usually inspired by Bono :) for the reason that they are usually exploited by people or corporation in order to disguise the reality or some other times we are active for a day and then think we have done what we had to do and we do not take real action.Yesterday I want mountain biking at Ymittos mountain. The mountain in the east of Athens. There is a beautiful forest there that run the danger to be burnt twice this summer. Two fires on its foothills. But the proximity to Athens brought all the fire brigade mechanism here to put the fire down. I was also there as a volunteer. What I saw was the tragic lack or organisation by the greek state and immense quantity of garbage on the sides of the highway.It is no just matter of state organisation. We all know that there is not such a thing but we just admit it. But the biggest problem is the majority of the citizens. Indifferent, self-centerted and without culture. Just throwing whatever everywhere, do not care for people with mobility problems, parking everywhere and building on burned land. Last year 1,700 houses were built illegally on forest land but the greek state does not take measure against them and nobody talks.Ymittos was safe but unfortunately beautiful Parnitha did not have the same chance. It was a protected National Park. Around 60% became ashes. After that a big movement of citizens asked from the governement to take care of environment. The result was not any great as after the destruction of Parnitha around 1,700 square kilometers burnt most of them in the Peloponese.So we only blame the state? After the Peloponese fire I went a trip to my hometown. On the way on one side there was a burnt forest on the other someone had just threw the leftovers of a house along with windows with the glass, he just prepared the next fire! The glass is still there!So what I want to say is that our indifference destroys the world. Are we too busy with pursuing profits? Are we damn by watching TV? Whatever the case we should wake up because "The roof is on fire!" Mon Oct 15 10:42:06 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/7 Yesterday I presented StayInAthens at OpenCoffee meeting. Open Coffee is an informal meeting of entrepreuners, people who want to start or are intrested in start up, looking for new cool projects or just want to be networked with intresting people.This kind of meetings are quite usual in other European countries and given the fact that that was the fourth one and the participation was approximately 70 people it seems that it is getting more dynamic. Of course in not comparable with relative actions abroad where there can be 2000 participants and some of the projects that are presented there are just enormous like Digg.com or Facebook.StayInAthens got a lot of fair reviews and some raves about the design of the website which me very happy and look forward to achieve even more.For everyone who is intrested in new hot business idea Open Coffee is the place to be, unfortunately there is the linguistic barrier but few presentations are in english (just the slideshow) and of course you can me good connections. Wed Oct 03 10:57:31 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/6 After a long stressing period and accommodating the Erasmus students of the fall semester it is the time for us to sit down, relax a bit and reflect on what went wrong and what was OK.For sure it was not perfect as we have not fully organised yet, biggest problem being the lack of organisation of our proper office but that would happen in coming days. But we are sure we gave 101% of ourselves by waiting day and night, making agreements such as the one with WIND, providing you free connections and trying to hear and solve your problems. The coming days we are going to organise our office, finalise the website and integrate an electronic payment system for your ease and try to solve all the small problems that came up so that we can be more effective. In Greece we have a saying "The start is the half of everything", maybe sounds a little bit bizarre in English but I guess you get the meaning. Please give us your feedback, it is very important for us as it was a big boost when we were hearing so many nice things from you during all these days of arrivals.<br><br>We really thank and hope you will have an exciting timePS We are synched @ sync.gr Mon Oct 01 20:44:17 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/5 There are really two hot months in Athens, not in terms of temperature but in term of cultural events. These are June and September! Many of you are already here so why not enjoy some of the events and parties while we still have nice weather.I am going to concentrate more on two of the events the Athens International Film Festival and Biennale of Athens.Athens International Film Festival OPENING NIGHTSThe Athens International Film Festival OPENING NIGHTS, was founded by the Athens Film Society (A Non-Profit Organisation) with the intention of: Ι) highlighting lesser-known aspects/genres of independent cinema ΙΙ) introducing audiences to some of the best productions of the year ΙΙΙ) establishing itself as the ideal opening of the coming movie season. The Festival was launched in September 1995 and continues successfully until now. The movie theatres accommodating the Festival are: ΑΤΤΙΚΟΝ CINEMAX CLASS / Dolby Digital SR / Capacity: 850 19 Stadiou Street,Athens 105 61 - Metro: Panepistimio (Red Line)LOCATION: CITY CENTERTel: +30 210 3228821 - Fax: +30 210 3821394E-mail: cinemax1@otenet.gr - www.cinemax.gr   APOLLON FILMCENTER CINEMAX CLASS / Dolby Digital SR / Capacity: 55019 Stadiou Street,Athens 105 61 - Metro: Panepistimio (Red Line)LOCATION: CITY CENTERTel: +30 210 3228821 - Fax: +30 210 3821394E-mail: cinemax1@otenet.gr - www.cinemax.gr     DANAOS I / Dobly Stereo SR / Capacity: 600 109 Kifisias Avenue & Panormou StreetAthens 115 24 - Metro: Panormou (Blue Line)LOCATION: ABELOKIPOITel: +30 210 6922655www.danaoscinema.gr     DANAOS II / Dobly Stereo SR / Capacity: 110109 Kifisias Avenue & Panormou StreetAthens 115 24 - Metro: Panormou (Blue Line)LOCATION: ABELOKIPOITel: +30 210 6922655www.danaoscinema.gr You can find the detailed program at the website of the festival http://en.aiff.gr/summary.asp?catid=11793Notice: The program of parties at the english section of the website is not updated and you still see the program of parties of 2006Athens BienalleThis year 's bienalle has the provocative and maybe promising :) title Destroy Athens.From the website:1st Athens Biennial 2007 Destroy Athens 10 September - 18 November Destroy Athens tells a story. The story emerged from a completely empirical observation. We, each one of us, the subject of every action and every conscience is built through the eyes of others. What is important here is that it is not being constructed by others – it is all an internal affair: the subject builds its own self, but its building material is the perception of others. And this fact is the precondition of any recognition, collectivity, connection, participation, sense of community..........If there is something that Destroy Athens is not, then it is not a survey. It does not aim at being a barometer of artistic production at this moment nor teach anybody what is significant today in contemporary art or in the geopolitical circumstances. It does not want to express an opinion about what is important, poignant, interventional or new, it does not wish to argue in favour of a practice or against another, it does not wish to predict where things are heading right now or where they will be tomorrow. It is a story. We do hope that as a story it has meaning between the moment it begins and the moment it ends. X Y Z (Excerpt from the curators' text for the exhibition catalogue)Find more details at the website of the bienalle The venue of the bienalle is the wonderful Technopolis or Gazi Thu Sep 20 14:51:54 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/4 Just returned from an amazing trip to Iceland... meeting old friends and making new ones... I wanted to share with you some photos of this amazing country... I hope you will meet some Icelanders in Greece, so that you have a chance to visit them after, as I did :) And after that so needed break (you remember the failure of our server when we launched the website and that I did not sleep for 2 days) I am back to work, improving and fixing the website while Teo and Cleo and Thodoris are handling all your accommodation issues...Though they did not get a break...aoutsssss We look forward to see you in here and this September is really intresting with many events going on... But more details in a new post Fri Sep 14 01:23:51 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/3 Hello from rainy and cold Iceland. I ve reached one of my dream destinations but... with a bad timing. Firstly after a summer of no rain the weather became typically icelandic and bad timing for stayinathens... Well not exactly because for the weather i cannot do anything but for stayinathens i do some bug fixing everyday and we have managed to solve some serious ones.I stay at some friends who used to be Erasmus in Athens 3 years back, so as you can see you will make friends for a lifetime here (I mean there in Athens) which is the most important thing.Well in the process some of you faced some problems and I apologise personally but this is Software Engineering there will always be bugs not discovered by the developer but the user and you were just unlucky to be the first users, so the ones to discover the bugs...I really wonder now what I am doing here now because the weather seems really bad and I have no idea if there gonna be some breaks specially after tomorrow when we move to the wilderness... For the time I am going to meet with some people that are coming to Athens and you will meet them soon as well. Here is a musical greeting from this amazing country See you in Athens! Wed Aug 29 12:33:48 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/2 We are official on air!Just 2 lines in our code that changed everything and now we are fully operational!I am revealed but not happy...Most of the area near my hometown is ashes now :( Sun Aug 26 17:31:57 +0300 2007 http://www.stayinathens.com/blog/1 Well this is not the boat we used to cruise the Aegean during summer for the simple reason we did not have so much vacation this year. The reason ? We were after a dream... A dream we had long ago and it is what you see now in your screens...The whole adventure started 3 years back when I returned from my Erasmus time in Madrid. I had met Cleo before leaving and when I come back she asked me if I want to join as IT specialist an ongoing project about accommodation of Erasmus students in AUEB. It really sounded great so we just used some forms in our old website in order to receive the reservation of that years' students. We grouped along with Theo and Despina (you will meet here later on). Everything was done on voluntary basis. We had almost no resources, an ESN group hardly existing but we managed to accommodate almost 120 students per year.As years passed some of us graduated and had to deal with their lives. In the meantime, we had tried to promote our accommodation system with some IT system as a project of the EU but we were not so lucky. We were always thinking that we had something useful and it was something we created and we were sad to leave cause no one wanted to take full responsibility of it.In our exchange periods we had seen many similar services abroad like www.alunit.net in Madrid. So we came up with the idea... Why not put our system on more professional basis and do what we really like for a living? We were always passionate about exchange and we still are, then we targeted and went for what you see today. We are far from being perfect but perfection is where we aim to go cause we simply like what we do.We had to overcome an aweful lot of problems in the meantime. Even today we are striggling, it is 01.00am and as you can see we are still at the office. First of all fighting bureaucrasy in August in Greece is a real pain. Bureaucrasy is our enemy and specially in  August everyone becomes more lazy (specially public officers) than ever, if they are not on holidays as 95% of greek people are. So we tackled that. Today our server died out.  S### (our previous web host) seems that sucks after all so we could not serve the 35-40 connections we had. The stress for me, being the geek, of StayInAthens is huge and it seems I will have to watch out for many days to come...You see this is the first time that we organised the modest ESN accommodation team into something more professional. We had to start and design everything from the scratch in practically 3 months (when of them being greek august) and i had to quit my previous job back in June in order to build the StayInAthens website.Ok so you chose Athens and unforunately you faced what a delayed service is, this is usually the rule here but we hoped to be exceptions, well at least we will be for the next semester :) Please accept our apologies and show compatience specially to the poor geek who has to have our display window (meaning our website) ready and functional...So please pack some positive energy and be prepared for a life time experience in Κλεινόν Άστυ so be it Glorious City (ok, it was once glorious...) of AthensBest Regards !Γεία σας!Kalo Taxidi (Καλό Ταξίδι) Have a nice trip StayInAthens ! Sun Aug 26 12:29:16 +0300 2007