queer malaka looking for athens GR crusties

[greekfire]

Hey frendz! I'm Juniper, nice place you got here.

Me and my partner want to visit Athens GR in the next year or two and I'd love to get the vibes from people who have been, or folks who live there currently. Greeks to the front, μιλαω λιγο ελληνικα και θέλω να μάθω περισσότερα! I would like to live in Athens eventually, for ancestry reasons and also to escape the Trans Genocide in this nationalistic hellhole.

How to squat in Athens? If we don't want to squat, what are decently cheap and LGBTQ safe hostels?
Is there any way to get the plane tickets for less than 2000 dollars? (Like, holy shit)
Anyone down to be friends and show us around eventually?

Thanks! ευχαριστω πολη!

 

[ali]

There is a decent scene in Athens. For a while the center of anarchist/squatter movement was Exarchia. I recommend checking out squat.net and looking up Athens, Greece etc to find links to more recent news and resources.

The gay district in Athens is/was Gazi. I stayed in a relatively cheap place close to there when i visited a few years ago and felt fairly safe. It was kinda hipster and gentrifying at the time, so it might not be so affordable today.

If you are looking at a $2000 flight, you are doing something very wrong. You should be able to get there for well under $1000 from the US, maybe even $500. Same rules apply for all flights - always check the routes between two hub airports, don't get a quote from some nowheresville branch line airport. Check different days of the week, check different carriers. In case of Greece there are dozens of low cost carriers that fly there because it is a massive tourist destination, so flights might be seasonal or leave out of secondary airports. If you are traveling full-time it's easy to get cheap flights because you don't have the rigid constraints that people who are trying to fit a trip into their work schedule do.

 

[japanarchist]

I remember reading that there is an anarchist hostel or cafe in Exarchia. They should have a facebook page with info and if i remember correctly its all in greek. If you find it I bet you can definitely meet some people there who can help you and get you plugged in.

 

[ali]

I just got back from a few weeks in Greece for work. I didn't really investigate the cities because in my free time i wanted to go climb mountains and shit, but just passing through there was plenty of anarchist and squatter graffiti. What i am not sure about is how much of it is just teenagers painting stuff on the walls because they think it's cool, or because it's something related to the politics of their football club, or whether they actually, legitimately live that lifestyle. Sadly i also saw a lot of Christian supremacist, anti-vaxx and "anti-antifa" (🙄) stuff too. Country definitely feels a bit more nationalistic than it did last time i visited, but yeah, could be because i was there for work instead of pleasure and otherwise traipsed out to more remote (and conservative) areas.

One thing i did see is loads of abandoned buildings in various states of disrepair. I think you'd need to be careful not to accidentally squat in a rich guy's holiday home - no doubt they have video surveillance and alarms and all the rest of it - but it felt like a few spots in the countryside were legit left behind and would've been great places to crash for a while, if you don't mind a long hike or bike ride into town.