SOCIAL PROGRAM
Conference Diner
The conference diner will take place on the
first day of the 7th WRQ (17 July 2008) at 20:30
at a beautiful restaurant in Plaka. A meeting
point for the diner will be given to all participants
upon their arrival at the workshop.
Excursion-Official meal
The main event of the social program of the
7th WRQ will take place the last day of the
workshop (19 July 2008). More concretely, an
excursion to the archaeological site of 'Delphi'
is scheduled. The official meal of the 7th WRQ
will take place in a nearby picturesque village
during the excursion.
Delphi is a magical place with glorious history.
Delphi combines spectacular ancient remains,
a superb museum, and a heartbreakingly beautiful
location on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Look
up and you see the cliffs and crags of Parnassus;
look down, and Greece's most beautiful plain
of olive trees stretches as far as your eyes
can see, toward the town of Itea on the Gulf
of Corinth.
The legend speaks for Delphi, the most important
shrine of Greece, that it was the center of
the world, because it was in this place that
the two eagles met, when Zeus let them free,
one from the east and the other from the west.
The oracle at first belonged to the goddess of
earth Gaia and it was after Apollo slew her
child, the serpent Python, that it became his
shrine. Another legend tell us that Apollo transformed
into a dolphin and guided a Cretan ship at the
place, ordering the sailors to build there his
shrine (the Greek word for dolphin is delphis,
from which the shrine took its name - Delphi).
Pilgrims came to Delphi from throughout the
Greek world to ask Apollo's advice on affairs
of state as well as small, personal matters.
Unfortunately, the god's words were famously
hard to interpret. "Invade and you will destroy
a great empire," the oracle told Lydian King
Croesus when he asked whether he should go to
war with his Persian neighbours. Croesus invaded
and destroyed a great empire: his own.
Delphi was also the site of the Pythian Games, the most famous festival in Greece after the Olympics. The Games commemorated Apollo's triumph over his oracular predecessor here, the snaky Python. Because Apollo was the god of music, the Pythian Games had more artistic contests than the Olympic Games. When you sit in the theatre, you can imagine the flute and lyre contests and the dances and plays staged every 4 years throughout antiquity to honor Apollo.
