Dear Ikaria friends and those interested in the island,
Like Ursula, I belong to the small “German-speaking community” on the island and would like to support them in setting up and maintaining this Ikaria portal in the future. So that the interested readers know who they are dealing with here, I would like to briefly introduce myself.
For six years I have spent a large part of the year in Agios Iannis with Christos Raches, but had never heard of Ikaria until 1999. Although I had spent several weeks on the Greek mainland and various islands almost every summer since 1977, Ikaria…I have no idea! It wasn’t until my friend Dimitris asked me that summer if I wanted to go to Ikaria with him to visit his grandma that I looked for and found the island for the first time on my map of Greece.
Looking back: My first vacation to Greece in 1977 – I arrived on the road in an old, self-constructed VW bus – was actually only supposed to last four weeks, but the semester break lasted until mid-October, I couldn’t be reached by phone, I had drachmas We still had enough, and so it became two months…
Three years later, after completing my history and journalism studies, the Greek friends I met that summer also helped me get an internship in Athens at “Athens News,” which was still published as a daily newspaper at the time. So I lived in a shared apartment with Greek friends in Athens for 15 months, and because the internship only lasted 20 hours per week, there was enough time for other activities
…
In 1982 we went back to Germany, to a city that, contrary to a well-known conspiracy theory, actually exists. I worked in various press offices there (German Youth Hostel Association, Bielefeld Environmental Center, Lippe University of Applied Sciences) before I became self-employed in 2000. Since then I have been working as a freelance editor and proofreader for various German and international publishers and agencies. Three years ago I also took over the website www.pure-places.de from a friend, through which travelers to Greece can search for and book “accommodation off the beaten tourist path”.
The first visit to Ikaria in 1999 left lasting impressions, and not just because of… my first panigiri on August 6th… I started thinking about buying an old house here and restoring it, later I found a small plot of land. The possibilities of working more or less location-independent with the help of the Internet really appealed to me, so today I’m happy to be able to spend a large part of the year here.
www.reinerjuring.de (Text & Editing & Correction)
www.pure-places.de (Accommodation in Greece)