They aren’t coming back because they wanted to,” said Stefanou Vaggelis, a 50-year-old distillery owner as he threw back tsipouro - a strong spirit favoured by locals - with friends in the village centre dotted with tavernas. The arrival of young, city-dwelling Greeks is being watched with a mix of pity and hope by those who never left. Her experience has been far from idyllic. I never imagined I would actually spend my whole life here.” “I’ve always wanted to leave the village. “A year ago, I couldn’t imagine myself holding a garden hoe, or doing any farming,” said Lakka, as she watered the herbs she grows in the village of Konitsa, which nestles among snow-capped peaks near the Albanian border. In a survey of nearly 1,300 Greeks by Kapa Research in March, over 68 percent said they had considered moving to the countryside, with most citing cheaper and higher quality life. It’s a reversal of the journey their parents and grandparents made in the 1960s and ‘70s.ĭata is scarce on how many people have made the trek, but as people angered by austerity head to the polls on June 17, anecdotal evidence and interviews with officials suggest the trend is gaining momentum. She faced a simple choice: be stranded without money in Athens, or return to the geriatric village where she grew up plotting to escape.Īt age 32, Lakka, an office clerk who also juggled odd jobs, joined a growing number of Greeks returning to the countryside in the hope of living off the land.

REUTERS/John KolesidisĪs Greece sank into its worst economic crisis since World War Two, Lakka had already given up her dream of becoming a web designer. Spiridoula Lakka, 32, poses for a photograph in front of her parents' beehives in the village of Kalithea near Konitsa town in nortwestern Greece, April 2, 2012.

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