Comment Re:This isn't scaremongering. (Score 1) 494
The greeks are in that shit for various reasons.
The main one is: they are all tricksters, cheaters and betrayers. It is basically a greek sport since Homers time, so no one really cared until it backfired.
You heard about the island with 5000 inhabitants and 4000 of them blind? One or two years ago the health care insurance made a survey turned out there was only one single blind man on the island.
If you go to the greek archiples in a sailing boat it is strongly advised not to make funny radio calls: 'We have a problem!', other boat: "What the fuck, your GF does not like to give you a BJ at the rudder?", "No, it is far worse!", "Shut the fuck up, what is it then!?", "The beer is empty!".
Funny? No, not really, sad is: two hours later a coast guard boat from the greek coast guard comes along side and and they shout: "prepare to be boarded, we got your emergency call about having a problem".
The end of the story is: they escort you into a harbour and demand a 'security certificate' from you, that the ship is safe and well equipped because "they have on protocol your: we have a problem' radio call". Needless to say that the authorities in the harbour are unavailable for 3 days or more so you have to pay for being in the harbor and anything extra you 'do' there. The security certificate bottom line costs about 3k Euro.
Or the other story, you land with an airplane in Chania, Krete, Greece. You like to take the bus from the airport to the town. The driver and ticket seller throw you out of the bus. If you try to stay inside they throw out your luggage. They 'proclaim' the bus only has accidentally stopped at the 'clear to see bus stop' and force you that way to use a cab. Likely the cab of a relative
Oh, and btw. there is mo law preventing Greece from making their own currency, actually they 'threatened' to do so for quite some years.
The problem with Greece and the euro is: they simply became greedy. The last time I was in Greece a coffee in a random bar costed like 15 cents(euro), that is roughly 15 years ago, perhaps 17, just one or two years before the Euro.
So for 'western' tourists the country was cheap. In Germany you pay about 2.50 Euro per coffee. At that time around 1.10 Euro.
Guess what you pay now for a coffee in Greece? A random Coffee in Athens? It is likely more than 2.50 Euro. They try to rip off tourists, figuring how expensive a coffee is in Paris, London or Berlin. But a tourist there shrugs, and tells himself: first, that was my last visit to Greece, and second, I only take one or two coffees a day, instead of my usual 6 or 8.
What is happening, or has happened, is: the greeks are fucking themselves over.
Oh, and I can tell you minimum a dozen more 'fraud' or 'corruption' or 'abuse of power' stories I experienced in Greece! However the boat story is the one why no of my friends is going to visit the country in the foreseeable future.
You don't plan to make a vacation for 3k Euro as a two couples and come home with -6k or lose your own boat to the coast guard. That is ridiculous