"If things don't get better here in a year, we are thinking of moving abroad as a family to a country like Denmark or Sweden, where they need doctors and the salaries are better," George said late last year, sad at the prospect of leaving friends and Greece's blue seas and clear skies behind.
The crisis in Greece — the country has registered nine consecutive quarters of contraction — is reshaping the country. In addition to the tough austerity measures brought in to meet the terms of the 110 billion euro EU and IMF bailout, the optimism of the good years has all but vanished.
At 13.5 percent, Greece's unemployment rate may not be as bad as Spain's but it continues to rise and is forecast to reach at least 14.6 percent this year. Unemployment among young Greeks is higher still. Little wonder that in a survey for a centre-left newspaper last August, seven out of 10 Greek college graduates said they wanted to work abroad. Not since the aftermath of World War Two, when Greeks fled poverty for a better life in places like the United States and Australia, are so many in the Mediterranean nation looking abroad for their future prospects.
A NEW CHANCE
Just before Christmas, the Katharakis got lucky. After months of searching for a job as bills piled up, George was offered work on the island of Crete, where Georgia's parents live. The job — the health ministry finally opened up some positions in public hospitals — will pay about 2,500 euros a month including overtime and weekend shifts. Though the contract is only for a year, the couple didn't hesitate. They moved to Crete in mid-January, leaving behind their flat — the folders of medical cases for George's PHD piled up on the large dining table, wedding pictures now in boxes — in case their stay in Crete is not extended.
The past year has been tough, Georgia says. It will take some months to get back to where they were financially. The couple had to spend nearly a third of Georgia's salary to pay private day-care for Kalliopi after staffing cuts meant they could not get her into the local public day-care centre. They cut out all spending but the minimum — food and what they needed for the house.
Without the support of their parents, Georgia says, they would have had much bigger problems. Even with George's new job, the couple remains anxious.
"Even now we don't know what the future will be like because the job is just for one year," Georgia said just before the couple left for Crete.
They may yet join the growing wave of emigration. "It's a very big decision because we like our country, and our parents and our friends are here," George says. Then there's the idea of adjusting to a new place with its different customs and language. He asks his little girl to say the only word she knows in English.
"Fish," she says. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Simon Robinson)
– – – –
ROMANIA: For those who avoided the debt party, hope for a better year ahead
By Luiza Ilie
BUCHAREST – Mariana Stefanescu is fresh off a 24-hour shift as a neurosurgery nurse at a Bucharest state hospital. Her kitchen smells of coffee, pears, fresh flowers and home-cooked chicken.
Through the open window, car horns and the clatter of trams mark a typical morning's traffic on one of the busiest streets in the Romanian capital. Mariana's husband Dan is away on a work trip, their children, Andreea, 9, and Vlad, 8, are at school.
Mariana, 42, runs through the family budget: her monthly salary, including overtime and night shifts was cut last year to 1,400 lei ($437) — a little above the average wage in Romania — from 2,000 lei. Dan, 37, who works for a charity foundation, has brought home 1,000 lei a month for years.
Like most families in Romania, where GDP per capita is less than half the EU average, the Stefanescus learned to live cheaply long before the recession hit. Over the past two years, though, as the government cut state wages by a quarter, slashed bonuses and jobs and raised value added tax, they've concentrated on making sure the basics are in their supermarket cart.
While they don't feel deprived, the family lives from payday to payday. They do not eat out, Stefanescu says, and save next to nothing. They keep postponing an eye check-up for Dan, who squints when they watch television. They switch off the light every time they leave a room.
"The children still get dessert, but the (chocolate) Kinder egg is now rare, a reward," says Mariana, a lean tall woman, with auburn hair, a melodic voice and a welcoming smile that both her children have inherited.
DODGING THE CREDIT TRAP
Around two years ago, Romania was the European Union's fastest growing economy. Foreign investment poured in, as did cash from Romanians working abroad. As elsewhere in eastern Europe, an influx of cheap credit triggered a shopping frenzy among Romanians eager to catch up the West.
Now most of those gains have gone. The currency has lost roughly a fifth of its value against the euro since its 2008 highs. Hard-currency loans, which posted double-digit growth in the years before the crisis, now account for more than half of all private loans, weighing heavily on tens of thousands of mortgage holders.
On the streets of Romanian cities, where currency exchange offices once dealt with a flood of remittances sent by Romanian migrants, pawn shops and second-hand stores have multiplied.
Central bank data shows Romanian private lending was, at some 41 percent of GDP in 2009, among the lowest in the EU, where the average was 150 percent. But roughly half Romania's labour force, or 4.5 million people, have an average of two loans with banks or other financial institutions. One in 10 is behind on their loan payments.
The Stefanescus are glad to have dodged the credit trap. When they inherited a 65 sq-metre (699 sq-feet), two-room apartment from Dan's grandmother in late 2007, they decided to sell it, take out a loan and then buy a three-room flat. Then the financial crunch came, strangling lending.
"It was for the best," says Stefanescu, who last autumn joined several thousand protesters at two of the largest rallies against the government's austerity measures. "It would have been impossible for us to repay it now."
