About us

We are a german-greek family and live all year round in Azalás on Naxos. We have four children, by now adults. Since the year 2000 we rent four holiday homes that we built ourselves.

I am German and have studied biology with a special passion for bird watching and botany. I am in charge of our cottages and everything connected to that. I most love to get into contact with our guests, either at a shared dinner, or on a hike we undertake together, or by sharing my knowledge and enthousiasm for Naxos and its nature and history with our guests and by answering any questions they may have around those topics.

I love looking for animals and plants I don’t know yet in our garden or along the coast, documenting them with pictures, identifying the species and writing about them on this web site – hoping to help other people to perceive and enjoy nature as much as I do and thus to enrich their holiday (or life) experience. I especially love to draw attention to the small and easily overlooked living things in our surroundings, and to the great beauty that can be found even in the smallest organisms, or wherever we look in fact – in the clouds, in the rocks, in the waves of the sea.

Nikos was born in Kóronos on Naxos, and though he mostly grew up in Athens, he always longed to come back to his island. With the building of the cottages he made a lifelong dream of his come true.

His greatest joy is to bake his famous whole grain bread in the wood oven and to share it with his friends and our guests, and to sit with them discussing life and the world over a glass of his home made wine.

In my book “The Two Doors of Life” I recount the adventurous story of the life of Nikos’ father Dimítris: his time as a shepherd boy in Kóronos, as a soldier in World War II, his experiences during the German occupation and the civil war, up to the assassination of his cousin Nikifóros Mandilarás, a famous lawyer, during the time of the Junta. (available only in German)