How expats experience “three years Greece in the crisis” (Part IV)

This is another story I received today for the series “How expats experience three years Greece in the crisis“.  Because as often mentioned, the Greek crisis affects all of us living here: whether Greek or expat. The story was submitted by Katerina from UK.

Below the story by Katerina:

“It was over 30 years ago I first came to Rhodes and fell in love with Greece, which, on my return to Rhodes a few years later I felt I was returning home. Since July 2011 it has been my home.

We’ve been very lucky and to cut a long story short we signed up for a villa to be built in 2006 but the company went bankrupt in 2010 and we had to pay a large amount more to finish the villa ourselves. We were lucky and not the only ones and we know of a couple who lost their life savings. There was a knock-on effect on businesses on the island and we helped stop a Greek friend from going out of business: an hotelier ‘friend’ did not pay a bill in full as he had not been paid by the German tour operator. We hear that hotel staff and hoteliers wait many months to be paid by the tour operators but what I don’t understand is that tour operators are paid by holidaymakers at least 6 weeks in advance of their holiday so why do hoteliers have to wait months on end (even after the season is over) to be paid?

It makes me angry to read the negative media stereotyping when you know there are people paying voluntary taxes, corruption is not limited to this country alone, wages have been slashed (top, experienced doctors and surgeons only earn about €800-1000 per month now) and I would never call the people that work long hours every day for 6-10 months ‘lazy’!

It was reported that the head of the IMF said that ‘it’s good that people work for nothing’ but isn’t this slavery, which was abolished in civilised countries several centuries ago? It seems that it’s a hard price to pay for something that snowballed from fraudulent investment bankers (“banksters”) wrapping up bad debt in triple A rated investment packages.”

BTW: I see a growing readers’ interest in these kind of stories, therefore, please, keep sending your own experience with the economic crisis. It has to be maximum 300 words. A name (nickname would do as well), country of origin, how many years in Greece and if possible age. Thank you 🙂

BTW: I do not edit or proof read the submitted stories, except to check if  non-no language is involved. Therefore, you write at your own risk lol