September 7, 2012 – SWEDEN – As a pharmaceutical salesman in Greece for 17 years, Tilemachos Karachalios wore a suit, drove a company car and had an expense account. He now mops schools in Sweden, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis. “It was a very good job,” said Karachalios, 40, of his former life. “Now I clean Swedish s—.” Karachalios, who left behind his six-year-old daughter to be raised by his parents, is one of thousands fleeing Greece’s record 24 percent unemployment and austerity measures that threaten to undermine growth. The number of Greeks seeking permission to settle in Sweden, where there are more jobs and a stable economy, almost doubled to 1,093 last year from 2010, and is on pace to increase again this year. “I’m trying to survive,” Karachalios said in an interview in Stockholm. “It’s difficult here, very difficult. I would prefer to stay in Greece. But we don’t have jobs.” Greece is in its fifth year of recession, with the economy expected to contract 6.9 percent this year, the same as in 2011, according to the Athens-based Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research. Since 2008, the number of jobless has more than tripled to a record 1.22 million as of June, out of a total population of 10.8 million. “In Greece, there was no future,” said Ourania Michtopoulou, who moved with her husband to Sweden in 2010 after both lost textile industry jobs in Thessaloniki, where they had a comfortable life with a house and car. “Here, I can hope for something good to happen. Maybe not for me — I’m 48 — but maybe for my children.” Their family now crams into a small apartment, while her husband, Nikos, works for a landscaper and her teenage children struggle with Swedish lessons. “It was not easy for them,” she said. “My daughter said lots of times, ‘I hate Sweden — I want to go home.’” Karachalios began his career in pharmaceutical sales after his mandatory military service, working at three different companies in the southern city of Patras. He married a Chinese woman he met at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had a daughter, and divorced. “You can plan, you can organize, you can make plans for 10 years, 20 years, but you don’t know what life brings,” he said. An intense man with flecks of gray in his thinning black hair, Karachalios said he has lost 20 to 30 pounds since moving to Sweden. His hands are stained with grime. Instead of the suits and ties he once wore, he now dresses in jeans and work boots. His suits remain in Greece. –Business Week
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It’s sad, especially for the children who really don’t understand what’s really going on. It’s also sad for the older people, who are no longer physically able to do physical labor. But there’s nothing wrong scrubbing toilets (I’ve done that) just like there’s nothing wrong wearing suits to work (I’ve done that too). There are many here in the U.S. who ignore what’s happening in Europe, thinking it will never happen in the “land of opportunity”. I would say that one day they will in for a rude awakening. Many prayers for all.
Maranatha
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Exactly, Irene. Kind and thoughtful sentiment on your part.
Alvin
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I had a profession with degree from other country and came back to the States after the economic situation in that country got worse, had to start from the beginning and now making my way up… Also wore suits overseas and in here jeans for work most of the time last year. Did almost everything in my life and don’t feel any shame, at the contrary appreciation for life and goals is very intense plus the feeling that I did it by myself with no help.
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I’d happily clean toilets as long as it paid 35 grand a year 🙂
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