The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

The Greek Project

Greek Study Tour Holidays with Intellectual Bite

Welcome to The Greek Project 2024

Passing, for the first time, through the castle gates of the old city of Ioannina, into Its Kale – the citadel – and from there onto a giant expanse of open, green space dominated by two magnificent mosques, I couldn’t help but think of the word, maidan. Was I really in modern, northern Greece or somewhere in the Ottoman or even Mughal world, about to review – along with the populace at large – some pasha’s grand parade?

Ioannina, more generally, has that feel about it. It is clearly Greece but an older Ottoman, Balkan world still somehow wafts its way along the shimmering lake shoreline and through the city’s maze of bazari and alleyways. In 2024 the Greek Project is delighted to be making its first forays here and so to the spectacular mountain fastnesses of Zagorochoria and Tzoumerka. We’ll be running our ever popular week-long, Adventures Greek language course for intermediate and more advanced learners in Ioannina at the end of May and into early June. And later, towards the end of September (and again in the following spring 2025), we’ll be exploring more fully the historical, cultural, culinary and linguistic highways and byways of Glorious Epirus, centred on Ioannina. After all, that’s what The Greek Project is about : combining the pleasures of Aegean sun, good food, wine and atmospheric surroundings with a more flavoursome, even pungent recipe: study-tour holidays with intellectual bite.

That certainly means a return too, in mid-September, to Ellie’s home town of Xanthi in Thrace. Our Thracian Homecoming offers immersion into a vibrant multicultural Greece no longer present outside Thrace. Wander up into the lovely old town of Xanthi itself and the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer harmonises evocatively with the bells from countless Orthodox churches. From Xanthi too, we’ll be able to retread our explorations of the dramatic Rhodope mountains, avian-rich Vistonida delta, classical Philippi and equally historic Kavala.

If Xanthi offers the feel of an intimate provincial city, off the beaten track for most visitors to Greece, our final mid-October destination, by contrast, is to the big city where The Greek Project began. Salonika, –  our first and constant love – may today be an irrepressibly  bustling metropolis, but scratch beneath the surface and one can find layer upon layer of the city that once was: the Jewish ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans’; an Ottoman city full of sacred Muslim sites; a truly great Byzantine co-capital to Constantinople, full of resplendent, including paleo-Christian churches. Salonika : History, Culture and Cuisine is our pocket way of celebrating this great multicultural and not least culinary cross roads, quite often involving extravaganzas of hands-on cooking, eating and market wanderings. Our tour invariably also takes in among other places, Vergina, one of Greece’s archaeological sites par excellence.

We conceived our first not-for-profit study-tours to express solidarity with a country in adversity. That intention has not diminished. Each tour throws up aspects of a country – and peoples – whose physical beauty, cultural depth and exuberance for life have to be set against an often troubled recent past and austere present. But instead of shying away from these realities our head-on engagement with the histories, languages, cultures, cuisines and precious yet extremely fragile environment of the region has paid dividends in the rewards to our participants. 

Our featured tours for 2024 are yours for the viewing. And don’t forget too to have a look at our tailor-made tours aimed at realising your own  educational, recreational or fact-finding passions and agendas.

You can also follow us on facebook and Instagram.

 

We look forward to your company!

Ellie and Mark

 

Thanks are also due to Ilias Michailidis at Riverland for the kayaking pic in the title caption as to Andrew Kerr for the pic of Eugenia’s band also in the title captions, and for the Nestos river pic  in the Thracian Journey caption. Visit andrewkerrphotography.org

ps Covid remains with us so we ask potential participants to please read here before committing to travel with us.

2024 Programme

What makes us different?

The Greek Project began as a conversation between friends. Partly that was about the economic crisis, and how we might do something small to promote ordinary Greek people in their hour of need to an audience that already knew that there was something more to Greece than its negative press.

But that proposition raised a more general question about the nature of modern travel. How does one get to know any country in a more than a skin-deep way? Why is it, for instance, that when one goes on a guided visit of some really stunning place, what one invariably gets to hear is banal, the resulting impression being that ‘tourism’ nearly always plays safe, shying away from the difficult, problematic – but often most seriously interesting things about a country’s past? And why is it always so difficult to genuinely encounter its living people other than in a superficial manner?

Read more…

Tailor-made Tours

If you have an idea for a study-tour tailor-made to your group, circle or college department, why not get in touch with us by clicking on the enquiry form below? We will scope your idea on request and while we can organise a bespoke tour for any number of people however small, prices become comparable with our featured tours with a minimum of ten guaranteed participants. Tailor-made tours can be organised as a long-weekend, a short or full week, or longer.

Read more…

Telephone: +44 1544 350313

Or send us an email

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