Tickets for Champions League final go on sale February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Basketball.comments closed
Tickets for the Champions League final went on sale Monday, with prices ranging from 80 to 200 euros
Only 9,000 tickets will be available to the general public, who will have to enter an Internet lottery for a spot at Athens’ 63,800-seat Olympic Stadium on May 23. Entries for the lottery will end February 19.
Another 34,000 tickets will be distributed to supporters of the two finalists through their clubs, with the remainder going to soccer officials, event organizers, sponsors and the media.
Athens last hosted the final in 1994, when AC Milan beat FC Barcelona 4-0. The stadium later underwent a massive renovation for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
“This new infrastructure at the stadium and the modern transport networks, built for the Olympics such as the new metro and tram networks, are very important for an event like this to be successful,” Maroussi Mayor George Patoulis said. “It’s an honor for us to host the final.”
The Champions League trophy will arrive in Greece on March 9 and will visit a number of Greek cities and towns in April, UEFA officials said.
Greece is proud to host such an esteemed event. Greece is delighted to welcome you in Athens. So does the HomeboyMediaNews’ Editor! If we can add a bit in making your stay in Athens a little more pleasant, do feel free to contact us. We shall be more than pleased to assist you in finalizing your plans or just give an insider’s hints and tips.
Come, rush to secure your tickets and let us extend you our traditional Greek hospitality! Athens and Greece Welcomes you!
All eyes on Athens > 2007 UEFA Champions League final tickets on sale February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Basketball.comments closed
Tickets have gone on sale today for the 2007 UEFA Champions League final, to be played at the Olympic Stadium in Athens on 23 May.
Ballot needed
With 9,000 seats available exclusively to the general public via uefa.com, applicants will be able to apply for up to two tickets until the 12.00CET deadline on 19 February. The allocation of tickets will be decided by lottery and every valid application will enter the ballot, regardless of the time of submission.
Finalists favoured
The Olympic Stadium’s capacity will be 63,800 for the showpiece. More than 50 per cent of the seats will be reserved for the supporters of the two finalists; with each club able to take up to 17,000 tickets and distribute these directly to its supporters. The remaining tickets will be allocated to the European football family, comprising UEFA, the local organising committee, national associations, commercial partners and broadcasters.
There are three price categories for the general public:
Category 1 – €200
Category 2 – €140
Category 3 – €80
The following administration charges (including postal charges) will apply per ticket order:
€10 – per ticket order within Greece
€20 – per ticket order within Europe
€40 – per ticket order outside Europe
Payment is by credit card only, and applicants will be informed by email from 10 March if they have been successful in the lottery. Tickets will be dispatched from the beginning of May by secure express courier.
Any requests for information should be addressed to the local organising committee:
• by email: uefachampionsleaguefinal@tickethour.com
• by phone: +30 210 81 08 007
• by fax: +30 210 96 70 642
All applicants are bound by the ticketing terms and conditions. Action will be taken in cases of infringement. Online applications will be checked to ensure that anyone banned from attending football matches is unsuccessful in any attempt to purchase tickets. UEFA underlines that no tickets are being distributed via agencies or brokers. UEFA also encourages fans not to be lured into deals with touts who not only demand exorbitant prices but are often not in possession of the tickets they purport to have for sale. Terms and Conditions are available on uefa.com.
Related Links > http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/news/kind=1/newsid=503059.html
Source and Copyright: uefa.com
Art examines the link between space and time February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Arts Events Greece.comments closed
‘This is a journey that creates a code of communication between sound, form, and color,’ said Dimitris Maragopoulos of the audiovisual project that will be presented at the Athens Concert Hall this week as well as at the Digital Planetarium in a few months’ time.
An innovative audiovisual project with music by composer Dimitris Maragopoulos that examines links between science and art, “In Search of Space-time” will be presented at the Athens Concert Hall on Thursday and Friday.
A resulting recording will be used as the soundtrack for a project on simulated reality at the Digital Planetarium in Athens, beginning next autumn. Tickets for the first of the two upcoming performances, to feature the venue’s string ensemble, La Camerata, have already sold out.
The Planetarium’s Director, Dionysis Simopoulos, explained that the concept of space and time could be better understood in terms of emotion, or art, rather than logic, or science.
“Paraphrasing what Dimitris Maragopoulos was saying approximately five years ago, I also believe that science and art have the innate capability to sense each other and produce fabulous results,” said Simopoulos. “I also believe that this audiovisual project will provide an opportunity for a wider audience to become acquainted with new artistic horizons whose concepts are scientifically based, offering both food for thought on the universe and artistic creativity.”
The audiovisual project was compiled by Ilias Maglinis, with visual material created by Panayiotis Simopoulos, a longtime associate of the composer.
The project includes two previously published compositions by Maragopoulos, “Iros Angelos” (Angel Hero) a piece based on excerpts of poems by the ancient poet Sappho, and “Samothraki”, a three-part suite for strings. The two are followed by “In Search of Space-time”.
“The idea, at its core, was simple and conventional and entailed the search for relativity between music and multicolored, three-dimensional imagery in motion,” noted Maragopoulos. “This is a journey that creates a code of communication between sound, form, and color. At the depth of this pursuit, however, there was also the need to connect it all with certain concepts and thoughts, both overt and covert,” he added.
La Camerata and conductor Miltos Logiadis, will be joined by mezzo-soprano Anna Pangalou, a Vienna-based artist currently pursuing her musical studies on a scholarship granted by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation.
At The Athens Concert Hall, 1 Kokkali Street and Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, Athens, tel 210 7282333.
Baroque revival with “Giustino” February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Ballet Dance Opera.comments closed
Conductor Giorgos Petrou welcomes the Europe-wide revival of baroque
Chief conductor Giorgos Petrou likes to see a happy ending, and Antonio Vivaldi’s opera “Giustino,” a baroque fairy tale which will be performed for the first time ever at the Athens Concert Hall, Friends of Music Hall, on Tuesday, ends in joy.
There are a lot of paradoxes in this production, the first of which is the fact this is the first time the opera will have ever been performed in Greece, following Vivaldi’s other operas “Orlando Furioso” by the Greek National Opera and “L’Olympiade” by the Volos Center for Musical Theater. The other paradox is that many neglect that the composer of the famed “Four Seasons” was also one of the forerunners of the Viennese opera scene in the first half of the 18th century, gaining fame both as an opera composer and as an impresario.
“Giustino” a dramma per musica in three acts, was written during this time and will be presented in Greece in concert form with Greek supertitles. The opera takes historical figures and facts from classical sources and casts them in a fictional context, which unfolds in AD 518. In Vivaldi’s world, Giustino, who is based on the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, is a lowly peasant who dreams of a life of glory and inadvertently succeeds in becoming the savior of the Byzantine Empire.
“The plot may seem simplistic, but it represents an entire world that survives to this day in fairy tales about princes, knights and dragons,” said Petrou, who will be conducting the Patras Symphony Orchestra in the Athens production. “I am one of those people who grew up watching cartoons, so it is easy for me to see high art in things that some may not consider so grand. The story may not have the same emotional charge and intensity as, say ‘La Traviata’ but, trust me, it is glorious and as entertaining as ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. As odd as it may sound, ‘Giustino’ was very much a West End-like production in its time.”
The Athens premiere of the opera coincides with a revived interest in baroque music and opera throughout Europe. Petrou explains this revival: “It is truly the only innovation on the international stage. Last year, the most popular opera being played by European radio stations was by Handel. And then there’s also the fact that we keep discovering new and wonderful things from the era that we can now hear in the proper historical context.”
The Athens production of “Giustino” features Nikos Spanos (counter-tenor) in the title role, Mary-Ellen Nezi (mezzo-soprano) in the role of Emperor Anastasio, Marousa Xyni (soprano) as Arianna, Mata Katsouli (soprano) as Leocasta and Irene Karayianni (soprano) as Amanzio. The musical preparation was done by Markellos Chrysikopoulos, while the Patras Symphony Orchestra will be performing the orchestral parts on historical instruments.
At The Athens Concert Hall, 1 Kokkali Street and Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, Athens, tel 210 7282333.
Wind Parks Limited (or restricted, depends how you read it) February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Energy.comments closed
The Greek islands have a great potential to produce energy from wind sources, but restrictions on wind parks will limit energy production to 4,000 MW.
The Environment and Public Works Ministry is in favor of developing wind parks on Greek islands but wants to place strict restrictions on such development.
The Greek islands, buffeted by winds for most of the year, have great potential as wind park locations. Ministry officials estimate that as many as 7,000 turbines could be installed, producing about 14,000 megawatts of energy annually. Private investors are fighting over prime locations.
The islands also happen to be among Greece’s major tourist attractions. An overdevelopment of wind parks would create both aesthetic conflicts and great noise pollution, as anyone who has visited a wind park can confirm. Thus, the new land use plan for renewable energy sources being prepared by the Environment and Public Works Ministry would limit wind parks to 4 percent of a municipality’s area, versus 8 percent on the mainland and on the island of Evia, which should limit the number of wind turbines to 2,000, producing some 4,000 MW of energy.
This means a wind turbine per 2 square kilometers or, more precisely, 0.53 turbines per sq.km, irrespective of the island’s wind energy potential. For example, on the island of Sifnos, which has an area of 74 square kilometers, up to 39 wind turbines will be allowed.
Another limit to be placed is on the quantity of energy produced on islands that are not connected to the countrywide electricity grid but produce electricity for their own needs. In this case, the cap on electricity production from renewable energy sources is set at 30 percent of an island’s electricity capacity. This limitation is to ensure the stability of the local grid, ministry officials say.
Compared to mainland locations, there are also stricter limits as to how close to villages wind parks can be, 1.5 kilometers from a “traditional settlement” or archaeological site and 1 kilometer from small settlements and tourist locations. In a provision that is likely to prove controversial, wind parks can be located within 300 meters of the “core” of a national park or an area protected by the Natura 2000 treaty. The land use plan also calls for the change of land use in some areas, especially on the islands of Samos, Tinos and Lesvos.
In the meantime, Greece’s Public Power Corporation and the local company Rokas sealed a Memorandum of Understanding on a project to build 44 wind power parks on the Aegean Sea islands. A study will establish the feasibility of constructing the power plants with a total capacity of 1,636 megawatts. The agreement also calls for a feasibility study regarding the installation of an undersea electric cable connecting the islands and the continental parts of the country.
Greek women feel more unhappy than men February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Living.comments closed
Four in 10 Greek women feel trapped and unhappy in their everyday lives, according to the results of a study published yesterday which also showed that females suffer from higher rates of depression than males.
The study results found that 42 percent of the women polled replied that they felt sad or unhappy in the last month and could do nothing about it. The respective figure for men stood at 29 percent.
“The international health policy does not just focus on adding years to our lives,” said Professor Yiannis Kiriopoulos from the National School of Public Health which took the survey. “We need to to add years to our lives and life to our years,” he added.
Based on the questionnaire, conducted on 4,000 households, 71 percent of female respondents said they felt stressed over the last month versus 60 percent of men.
Getting married? Then Greece and Cyprus are your choice! February 5, 2007
Posted by grhomeboy in Cyprus, Greece.comments closed
Libra Holidays introduces weddings in Greece
Specialist UK tour operator Libra Holidays, will be expanding their weddings and honeymoons programme to include Greece.
The tour operator has been offering weddings to Cyprus for five years and has now introduced weddings in Greece. The programme will feature wedding ceremonies on the islands of Crete, Corfu, Rhodes, Skiathos, Zakynthos and Santorini.
The company said in a statement: After specialising in weddings in Cyprus, we felt it was time to add Greece. More and more couples are looking to get married abroad and combine their wedding and honeymoon together. Advantages of getting married in Greece include a short flight duration, the destination is easily accessible, therefore making it convenient for family and guests to attend and not forgetting that the actual wedding costs work out far more reasonable than here in the UK. Similar to Cyprus, Greece is also up and coming in its hotels, particularly the five star hotels offering excellent spa facilities, ideal for honeymooners craving luxury and relaxation.
Related Links > http://www.libraholidays.co.uk
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