It’s only gradually that I realize the power and reach of this website! It is my most useful tool and my strongest weapon in a crisis.

It all started quite harmlessly. Since 1986 I lived in Ikaria, in a 300-year-old stone house, without electricity and without running water. A room for the whole family, this is where people lived and slept, there were toilets behind the house, and cooking was done by the fireplace. It was the childhood home of my husband Pantelis’ family. For them everything was completely normal, that’s how Pantelis grew up, his parents and all generations before. This was new territory for me.

How it all began…

I come from Eastern Switzerland, St. Gallen, city, born and raised, Swiss parents. I was young and in love, I felt like Robinson Crusoe, everything was new to me, strange and fascinating.

After 11 years in Ikaria without electricity or running water in our home, I was asked to submit a 200-page thesis in 1997 for further training as a life companion, today we call it a coach. So on one of my visits to St. Gallen I went into a shop and asked for a typewriter. The salesman looked at me skeptically and said, “Typewriter? Young woman, what century do you live in? Nowadays you buy a laptop!” Me: “Yes, but there is no electricity where I live.” “For God’s sake, where do you live?!?”

So the seller convinced me and I traveled back to Ikaria with a brand new, then still huge, heavy tow top. I had no idea. All I knew was which button to turn it on and off again. Back in Ikaria, in Raches, there was only one young man who had a computer, Michalis, he was my whole hope! He had promised to explain the laptop to me. So I drove to him. He opened the box. “Wow! Great! From Switzerland, expensive thing!” Read it to start up, pressed the keys a little. Closed the lid “Sorry, it’s all in German, you’ll have to see for yourself how you get along!”

So I sat there and spent nights trying to figure out how my laptop worked in the village where there was electricity. There was no internet anyway. So I just used it as a typewriter.

2011 My online debut

When Ursula’s Ikaria went online for the first time in 2011, everything was still very modest and simple. Back then I received a lot of emails from friends and acquaintances always asking the same questions. Martin was a programmer in Zurich and so I asked him to set up a blog for me so that everyone could read everything. Since I always like to take the shortest route, this seemed like the easiest solution to me. Of course I had no idea!

The idea: Martin in Switzerland builds a scaffolding, I in Ikaria fill it with content. I was an absolute greenhorn! I had never managed a website in my life! I had no idea how time-consuming and labor-intensive it all would be. Without Martin’s help this website would never have been created! I had to work hard for everything. How to set up a page, how to incorporate photos, how to link the pages and so on and so forth. It took me an endless amount of time to do everything and it was quite a bit of tinkering.

But nonetheless, I slowly started to develop a taste for it. Suddenly I could reach a lot of people at once. How many? I didn’t notice that until later. Back then, I wrote primarily for my family and friends. To tell them how I live here and how I’m doing. And to make their journey to me easier. There was nothing in German about this on the internet. I was soon surprised to see that more and more visitors were reading my blog, from all German-speaking countries. So there seemed to be an obvious need! Readers started emailing me asking for more travel information. So I always got new input for new topics.

A useful tool in a crisis

When the crisis broke out, I received countless questions: How can we help? I suddenly realized that a blog like this could also be a helpful tool! We could raise money and support families in need! Said and done! But very soon I realized that it wasn’t that easy. Back then, no one wanted to admit that they were in financial trouble. Nobody really wanted to admit it. So how could we support families in need without losing face and hurting their pride?

I was desperately looking for solutions because there was no shortage of willing donors! (A big evharisto to everyone!). At that time, my daughter Selina was just finishing high school. As she said goodbye, a teacher jokingly said to her: “You’re doing well, you can go to university now.” For the young people, university means emigrating from Ikaria, as there is no university here. “Because next year we and the students will have to bring heating oil from home if we don’t want to sit in frozen classrooms. The state is bankrupt!” When Selina told me this, I had found my first donation project!

My first fundraiser in 2012

In 2012, less than a year since the blog was born, we launched the first call for donations for heating oil for the schools in Raches! Why only Raches? Because on Ikaria they are the only schools in the mountains; all the others are near the coast and therefore in a milder climate.

One thing led to another. Everything started moving. I had unsuspectingly thrown a stone into the water, and the concentric circles grew larger and larger and reached more and more people. That’s when I really became aware of the power of the Internet and networking.

My readership grew larger and larger. And the website became more and more extensive. Soon I was faced with a new problem: more and more readers came via tablets or smartphones. However, my website ran on an old system and was simply unusable on the new media. Oh the technology!

Martin and I were pregnant for a long time. But we both work full time and so we try our best in our free time. Martin is a programmer, I am an absolute technical buff and only provide the content. I had no money and he had no time to seriously tackle the urgent new construction, the redesign and all the trimmings. We tinkered around, looked for cheap solutions, tinkered again. A professional redesign like this costs upwards of €5,000 in Greece and we didn’t have that money. I urgently had to think of something!

2015 redesign & relaunch

That’s where Theodore Kargas, my neighbor, came into play. If you saw the film “Little Land” on Arte and always wondered what happened to the main actor? This is him, my neighbor. A former programming professional from Athens. He lives happily in Ikaria. Nowadays he is completely dedicated to nature and produces high-quality essential oils from wild medicinal plants.

Of course he softened. Like all of us, he is affected by the crisis and needs the money. He only takes computer jobs out of financial necessity. And so he rebuilt my entire website over the last few weeks for really little money. It’s more of a friendship service than a job! It’s unbelievable how many hours and nights he sat on it and patiently responded to my wishes and Martin’s layout tips. He made everything possible. For me a magician!

Once again I struggled with the technology for days and nights, trying to apply the new elements, find a nice form, and make everything clear and reader-friendly. What came out of it fills me with great joy and pride! I hope that I can now shed more light on my goals and pursue them even better!

My goals

Since 2011 I have been compiling all the information and stories about Ikaria and continue to write continuously and with a lot of passion. More and more readers are now finding their way here. I’m glad you’re one of them too!