Will Athens Become the New Berlin?

Clearly Athens has been going through it as of late. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">2009 financial crisis</a> and the subsequent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underestimated-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">underthought austerity measures put in place by the IMF</a> crippled the country’s economy, and hit its capital hard. Due to this, things got cheaper for foreigners, and huge amount of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/business/greece-economy-golden-visas-tourism.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">tourists and investors were flooding the place</a> before the COVID pandemic; apparently this improved things a bit, but tourism definitely brings its own headaches. And, as I write this, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wildfire-rages-near-athens-homes-damaged-hospital-evacuated-2022-07-20/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">some of its suburbs just stopped burning</a>. So yes, Athens is pretty screwed up right now. However, things are bad in the sense that they were in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/t-magazine/1970s-new-york-history.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">New York in the late 70s</a>, or in East Berlin after the wall came down: this economic suffering has coincided with Athens becoming a rare, rare beast. Rent is cheap, and so is the food (which is, clearly, Greek, a great cuisine); additionally, <a href="https://www.travelsafe-abroad.com/greece/athens/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">it’s safe</a>. All this adds up to major appeal for a certain group: artists. <a href="https://medium.com/@theothermap/will-athens-become-the-new-berlin-e090a83ffb4d">Read More</a>