No Flies on Me: Dirty Corner

https://youtu.be/Mf2QBo00EEw?si=FM5JcukfUWB3oB9y
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No Flies on Me: Dirty Corner

Chernobyl Special

I found this old photo taken in the Bahia bar. My silly way of lightening the Chernobyl crisis. At the...
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Chernobyl Special

Donkeys Uber Alles

Happy to be back in Greece after my first trip to the States since 2016. On Thanksgiving my sister in-law...
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Donkeys Uber Alles

Hydra finishes the season on a high note!

Credit due, quite literally! When the world is facing an unprecedented energy crisis as 2022 draws to a close, our...
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Hydra finishes the season on a high note!

Inkaminicado!

Roger Green came up with a classic to describe the Rock's permanent inmates when the summer swarms drive local denizens...
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Inkaminicado!

A Lovely Tribute to Kamini’s Tassia

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A Lovely Tribute to Kamini’s Tassia

Kamini April Fool?

Who wants to go for a walk? Unanimous yes. Quandary in the port: left to Vichos, right to Hydra town,...
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Romantic August Kamini Sunset

  But the flip side of our photographic flags a fluttering in the breeze is that with temperatures in the...
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Romantic August Kamini Sunset

Hydra Revisited

Honoured to be included.
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Hydra Revisited

Okay who’s next ???

So that is August in Kamini is almost done and dusted, who's up for September? We are going to win...
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Okay who’s next ???

Happy Memories

Michael in "tux" with Captian Brian munching on a prawn 1998

Michael in designer T shirt at Capt. George

“E-mail? Internet? What a gimmick! We have fax machines! What more does one need?” This not from a local but an ex-patriot who spent a substantial part of the year living abroad in the first world. And as recently as 1996, a time on the island when the drachma was an almost nonexchangeable currency and the euro a coin not yet on the horizon.

I was not to be deterred, insisting that one day in the not-too-distant future, e-mail and the Internet would effect a global communications revolution. I had this idea of opening the first cybercafé and website about the Rock. Much like the old telegraph office used to be. The only two people at the time who were able to share this vision were our mayor, Kostas Anastopoulou, and a semiretired Swedish friend who had come to live on the island, Michael Giese.

A business before its time

We were so optimistic about the future of the internet.

When we launched the Hydranet website, it was bigger than all the cyberspace occupied by Crete and Corfu combined. As joint lunatics, appreciated by the one-off tourist and a paltry few who knew of other folk with an @ address, we had a lot of fun braving the  huge learning curve of a new technology. Only in 1997, after a house was sold as a result of communications via our system, were we even taken seriously.

Michael (in window) of our office.

In days gone, when hair was dark and long.

Recently a regular Comet visitor pointed out that our cheerful little website was becoming something of an obituary list. So we chose not to introduce Michael’s passing as a simple MIA name but to highlight a bit of his and our pioneering experience on the island. My partner in crime passed suddenly in his home, Uppsala, Sweden, on October 26. He will be much missed by all who knew him.

David Fagan
David Fagan is CEO, president, managing director, author, publisher, and chief bottlewasher of DavidFagan.org. On his first visit to Hydra back in 1983, David decided that owning a bar in this exotic location was an ideal way not to spend the rest of his life in the fast-lane of corporate advertising and journalism. It was an idea spawned by the Honorable Bill Cunliffe of Bill’s Bar, renowned wateringhole for anyone who knew this part of the world at the time. He and a couple of old-timers, Anthony Kingsmill and Leonard Bernstein, planted the seed: Come!

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