Greece tells Germans fearing huge heating bills to ‘come here for winter’
Greece’s tourism minister has sent an invitation to German pensioners wanting to escape astronomical heating bills and other high living costs this coming winter, urging them to see his country as an attractive alternative.
With gas bills already having doubled in Germany and expected to rise to around seven times the level they were a year ago, Vasilis Kikilias has said Greece offers the promise of warmth, hospitality and lower grocery and restaurant prices.
“In the autumn and winter it would bring us great joy to welcome German pensioners who wish to experience a Mediterranean winter, with Greek hospitality, mild weather and a high level of service,” Kikilias told Germany’s largest selling tabloid, Bild, as he launched his appeal, adding: “We will be waiting for you.”
He compared the gesture to offering asylum and described it as a way of thanking German taxpayers who he said had helped bail out Greeks from the financial crisis of 2008.
Mayors from across Greece have joined the appeal. Panagiotis Simandirakis, mayor of the port city of Chania on Crete, said that the island offered arguably the best conditions – only two months of what is normally an extremely mild winter compared with Germany’s – to enable people to “survive the crisis winter”. He said costs for everything from rent to a cup of coffee or a loaf of bread in Crete are a fraction of what they are in Germany.
Cynics might choose to interpret Kiklias’s invitation as little more than a marketing ploy aimed at boosting the Greek tourism industry after several years of a disastrous pandemic-induced slump.
But pensioner interest groups on Thursday were welcoming the idea as a constructive answer to what otherwise looks like adding up to a tough winter, in particular
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