Many skilled and dedicated individuals contributed to the development of this website. Ten people, however, were the primary content providers.
The website was initiated by Anthony Radich and Sonja Foss, who have owned a home in the historic center of Gavalochori since 2003. They were prompted to create the website because they found that Gavalochori had a weak and incomplete online presence that did not do justice to this special village. Many of the websites devoted to Gavalochori are primarily commercial and are designed to help visitors book accommodations in the village. These sites typically contain “cut-and-paste” information about the village that is often either inaccurate or lacking in detail. Anthony and Sonja wanted to create a website centered on history and culture that provides visitors and residents with more comprehensive and accurate information about the village. To that end, they did research on the village, aggregating information from a wide variety of sources, including historic documents translated into English and interviews with long-time Gavalochori residents. After they wrote the text for the website, it was reviewed by several leaders, historians, and residents of Gavalochori.
Anthony and Sonja bring knowledge and skills in the areas of culture and communication to their work on the website. Anthony is a retired arts administrator with degrees in anthropology, art education, and public administration whose expertise lies in the management of cultural institutions and the development of software to support arts organizations and artists. Sonja’s degrees are in Romance languages, rhetoric, and communication, and she is a retired professor of communication who has written or edited 20 books and numerous articles on various aspects of communication. When they are not in Gavalochori, Anthony and Sonja live in Denver, Colorado.
Anna-Chrysa Rutter, who is a resident of Douliana, a village adjacent to Gavalochori, helped design the webiste. She also translated one of the major books used for the content of this website from Greek into English. A Greek-Canadian, Chrysa lived for some years in Vancouver, B.C., but she and her husband Luka chose to return to Greece to raise their son and are building a house in Douliana. Chrysa has many talents and has pursued a number of occupations, including working at the Vamos Tourist Office, but she found a lasting passion in programming, and she is committed to learning all she can about web development. She is also a musician and sometimes sings with local bands in and around Gavalochori.
Arsenios Lazarou served as the senior technical advisor on this website. He is a dual citizen of Greece and the United States and currently works in the United States as a programmer/analyst for medical studies. He also has been involved in the development of PublicArtArchive.org, an interactive website that allows users to retrieve information about various aspects of public art across the United States. Arsenios studied computer science at the University of Essex. He now lives in Florida and enjoys reading about history, particularly ancient Greek history.
Anastasia Rutter was the “jill-of-all-trades” for the website. She translated one of the major books used for the content of this website from Greek into English and interviewed the business owners in Gavalochori to produce information about the local establishments. She also reviewed all of the content for the site in English and answered innumerable questions about various aspects of life in Gavalochori and on Crete for Sonja and Anthony. Anastasia lived for some years in Vancouver, B.C., and Athens, but she and her husband Vasileios chose to move to the Gavalochori area to raise their son. Anastasia has degrees in mathematics and special education, and she currently teaches English to Chinese children online. She is also the coordinator of the emerging light festival in Gavalochori, which lights up the village between mid-December and mid-January.
To generate content for this website, Marianne Multhaupt conducted interviews with long-time residents and elders in Gavalochori, who shared valuable information about the historical sites of the village. She also translated the text of the website into German. Marianne is a fluent Greek speaker who has long-time connections and commitments to Greece. She lived in Athens for 10 years and now resides for over half of the year in the village of Tsivaras, not far from Gavalochori. She is a dedicated volunteer at many music events in the area. When she is not on Crete, she can be found working as a home health-care nurse in Berlin, Germany. When asked if she considers herself more German or Greek, she is likely to answer “Greek!,” and her friends would agree.
The website was designed and built primarily by Luka Tica, who also served as the major photographer for the website, and his photographs enhanced its content in significant ways. A native of Slovenia, Luka was traveling around Europe when he came across the Gavalochori area and really liked it. Meeting his future wife here certainly contributed to his decision to stay. Luka studied philosophy but decided that photography and creating worlds through images were more important to him and much more fun. He also teaches English to Spanish speakers online and, we are told, has latent comedic talents that are just waiting to emerge.
Vasileios Kallimoukos was born and raised in Athens, but he now lives in the Gavalochori area, where he and his wife Anastasia have chosen to raise their son. Vasileios studied mass media and communication at the University of Athens, thinking he would become a journalist, but he quickly found his true passion in cooking. He received his diploma in culinary arts in Athens in 2005 and since then has been working as a private chef on luxury yachts and in private homes in Greece. Vasileios’s keen interest in and expertise with the Greek language served us well on this website. He helped create the policy we are using for translation and transliteration of English into other languages and translated all of the names of places and people on this website into Greek from the English. He also had a significant role to play in securing and polishing the interviews with the owners of establishments in Gavalochori.
Fotini Arapi supported this website by editing the texts in the Greek language. She is a Greek language teacher and text editor as well as a non-formal education trainer in the field of youth and adult education and an expert in intercultural learning and communication. She holds a bachelor’s degree on Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki and an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Although she currently lives in Kalamata and has never visited Gavalochori, this is certainly in her future plans, especially after having read all the interesting information offered in this website!
Yufang Zhang participated in this website by translating the texts from English into Chinese. She is an assistant professor who teaches English language and culture, rhetoric, and discourse analysis at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in Shanghai, China. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English education and a master’s degree in English Language and Literature from Fujian Normal University in Fuzhou, China, and a PhD in Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Shanghai International Studies University. She studied rhetoric and communication with Sonja Foss when she was a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado Denver in the United States. She is particularly interested in rhetoric derived from ancient Greece and admires the Greek culture. She is looking forward to visiting Gavalochori and experiencing the special culture in person after reading all the Information on this website.
The following people made key contributions to the website in other ways, helping to make it as accurate, informative, and beautiful as possible.
Androulla Agapiou
Evangelio Bakatsaki
Katerina Bakatsaki
Molly Beach
JoRene Byers
Fábio Castel Garcia
Nancy Crockett
Art Davis
Anastasia (Tasoula) Voutsina Diamant
Steven Diamant
Terry Dorvinen
Karen Foss
Anastasia Fronimaki
Dimitris Fronimakis
Manolis Fronimakis
Charalambos Gasparis
Laura Hahn
Wenbin He
Kathryn Hochstetler
Bill Jackson
Paul King
Antonis Ledakis
Ke Li
Stephen Littlejohn
Sofia-Raphailia Mandi
Holly Morris
Leilani Norman
Tony Pestonatto
Vaso Proestaki
Giorgos Proestakis
John Radich
Ilektra Remoundou
Joanna Rutter
Ann Skinner-Jones
Aggeliki Soumala
Anestis Stais
Sheila Teasdale
Siobhan Timpson
Robert Trapp
Apostolis Vouyioukas
Barbara Walkosz
William Waters
Daniel Wildeson
Mary Rose Williams
Huan Xiao
Leyang Zhu
