Athens...so far yet so near to home

Greek crisis...also faced by many cities in the U.S.

Greek crisis forces thousands of Athenians into rural migration | World news | The Guardian: "'Athens has failed its young people. It has nothing to offer them any more. Our politicians are idiots … they have disappointed us greatly,' said Dikiakos, who will soon be joined by 10 friends who have also decided to escape the capital.

They are part of an internal migration, thousands of Greeks seeking solace in rural areas as the debt-stricken country grapples with its gravest economic crisis since the second world war.

'It's a big decision but people are making it,' said Giorgos Galos, a teacher in Proti Serron on the great plains of Macedonia, in northern Greece. 'We've had two couples come here and I know lots in Thessaloniki [Greece's second biggest city] who want to go back to their villages. The crisis is eating away at them and they're finding it hard to cope. If they had just a little bit of support, a little bit of official encouragement, the stream would turn into a wave because everything is just so much cheaper here.'"