Greek ruins and the world’s oldest profession

(Friday blog)

I’ve just got back from a week in Greece. I was looking at some Greek ruins – namely the Greek economy:

Though I also had time to look at some ancient monuments:

But how bad are things really in Greece? After all, it’s difficult to find the truth in a corrupt joke of a country like Greece where nobody pays taxes and where a large number of people claim to be unemployed while actually working for cash. So, while the unemployment figures look awful, we can’t be sure if they (or anything in Greece) are reliable:

In the main shopping areas of Athens, the streets, cafes and restaurants seem busy. But that might just be because many young Greeks are still living with their parents as they can’t afford a place of their own. So the only way they can meet friends, lovers and potential lovers is by going out and hanging out in the shopping areas and cafes.

Once you get outside the centre of Athens, there are an awful lot of shops and offices for rent or just boarded up and left to rot as the Greek economy has shrunk by over a quarter since the beginning of the financial crisis:

So, there was me wondering how I could find out the real state of what is optimistically known as the ‘Greek economy’. Then I had an idea. What about looking at an industry which exists in every country and comparing that industry with other countries?

The oldest profession

There are two rather famous (or perhaps that should be ‘infamous’?) streets in Central Athens – Odoz Fyllis and Odoz Kolonou. To locals, Odoz Fyllis is affectionally known as “€20 Street” and Odoz Kolonou as “€10 Street”. Yup, in Odoz Fyllis you can get a ‘s*ck and a f*ck’ for a mere €20 and in Kolonou it’s only €10.

Now you might think that for a mere €10, the lady whose services you were buying would be a ‘double-bagger’ or even a ‘triple bagger’. And in many cases you’d be right. But there are also some very attractive young ladies willing to do a CBJ and then a CGFE for just €10.

Just as a comparison, a plate with small pork souvlaki skewers, some chips and a bit of salad in a basic restaurant/taverna also costs about €10:

So in Greece you can now get a quick (no more than 10 minutes) s*ck and a f*ck for the price of a kebab plus trimmings.

This sounds pretty bad. But, in fact, the situation is even worse. You see, these ladies are not freelancers working for themselves. They work in brothels probably run by Russian, Bulgarian and Albanian gangs. (I don’t think the Greeks are sufficiently organised or hard-working to even run a brothel properly). This means that from every €10 a customer hands over, the girl is probably only getting around €5 if she’s working voluntarily and probably less than that if she’s been trafficked from some Eastern European hell-hole.  At busier times, there are usually small queues of men in each brothel waiting for their turn to spend a tenner. So I imagine each reasonable-looking girl is probably turning at least 20 and probably closer to 40 tricks a day.

Doing a quick Internet search on the price of sex in places more generally associated with the sex trade, I get the impression that paid sex in Greece is now cheaper than in many more famous sex destinations.

This suggests that Greece is well and truly f*cked in more ways than you might like to imagine.

Meanwhile, Greek marinas are still full to bursting point with luxury yachts. It seems that Greece’s politicians, bankers and their business cronies are doing very well for themselves, while the daughters of the less well-connected sell themselves again and again and again for the price of a kebab.