As if the Greeks haven't suffered enough from Northern European actions (admittedly in response to their own actions), it seems the anti-German sentiment is keeping the wealthy tourists away from the beaches. As Reuters notes today [5], 'German tourists are in short supply in Greece these days, frightened away by reports of visceral anti-German sentiment in some places'. Data for the main summer holiday season shows pre-bookings from Germany down by some 30 percent. We guess the pictures of Molotov cocktails being thrown, city-wide strikes, and cardboard cities full of unemployed youths was too much but as one Greek tourist-shop-owner clarified "They're not coming because of the problems. But we don't have a problem with German people, only their government." Tourism - the one remaining possibility for Greece to drag themselves out of the quagmire (aside from olive oil and yoghurt) - is now under pressure as The Germans ("That's just the way Germans are: if there's trouble in some country, then Germans just don't go there on their holidays.") wage "an economic war against Greece". Sadly the xenophobic and nationalist tensions are indeed rising (as we warned many times in the past - and suggest will be the ultimate undoing of the political compact in Europe) as the crisis had revived anti-German sentiment from World War Two that most thought had long since disappeared. "The Greeks moved on and tried to forget, then this. If you ask me, Germany owes Greece billions for all the murders and war crimes. Germany should pay Greece what it owes."
- advertisements -