Crime in Athens

Murder, armed robbery, rape and other violent crimes are not a big problem in Athens which is one of the safest cities in Europe if not the world. Most crime is of the petty variety but even pick-pockets who work the crowded metro cars in central Athens are nowhere near as numerous as in Italy or Paris and by keeping your hands in your pocket, or holding tight to purse, you make yourself a difficult target. Women can walk the streets of Athens in safety though there are areas between Omonia, the Larissa train station and Arhanon street where though I might walk it at night I would feel a little uneasy about my daughter doing so. Many hotels now have safety deposit boxes in the rooms and a big safe in the manager's office, again not because of any crime spree but to make the client feel more comfortable.

There are a few street scams that you may want to be aware of. The first and most popular is the man with the cafe/bar who asks you the time and then invites you to his bar or cafe, depending on his perception of what kind of person you are. He usually asks where you are from, tells you he has a cousin from there and invites you for a drink/coffee. Once you are there you are intrduced to a girl(s) at the bar and she asks you to buy her a drink and at the end you get a bill for a lot more than you want to pay. (Usually about $100 which I would happily pay to talk to a beautiful Greek/Russian/Albanian/Ukranian woman all afternoon, but not in these circumstances.) Of course when you dispute the charges the men in the bar swell up in size and use the threat of violence to convince you to pay. In some reports the final price has been negotiated down and only one person said he was physically harmed (and this person was of dubious character himself). The bottom line is when the man approaches you on the street and invites you to his bar just tell him no thank you as probably 99 out of 100 people do. If you find yourself in this situation, as scary as it may seem, these guys are an anachronism, the last of the bars that made their money when the US 6th Fleet sailed into port and sailors with pockets full of money roamed the streets looking for booze and girls. Preying on foreigners is pretty low. But falling prey to these guys takes a combination of naivity and a little of what those sailors were feeling.

A variation of this is the man who takes you to his friend's travel agency to buy ferry tickets to a quiet island and he tells you there are no tickets or there is no ferry and sells you a fancy hotel in Mykonos and a cruise. You may even be paying a normal price, but the fact is you did not come to his shop for a cruise and a fancy hotel, you came for ferry tickets.

Taxis are another story. Being a taxi driver in Athens is not an easy life. Rates are extremely low for a metropolitan area and two drivers will work the same car on 12 hour shifts trying to make a living. To supplement their meager income they have a number of tricks which won't work on Greeks but will on foreigners. The two most famous ones are the hotel and restaurant trick where you get in a cab and when you tell him which hotel you are going to they tell you that you don't want to stay there because it is a bordello, or in a bad neighborhood, and take you to another hotel they know of. Of course they get a kickback from the hotel. This is not just a taxi-scam but a hotel scam as well and some decent hotels do this. The same thing with restaurants. You say you want to go to a specific restaurant and the taxi driver tells you it is closed, or it has gotten bad, and takes you to another, usually an expensive fish restaurant in Microlimono on the sea, where he makes a percentage of what you order. One person wrote to me that the taxi driver actually called their hotel room at 4am to ask them what their bill was because he thought the restaurant was trying to stiff him. So if you get taken by one of these guys take your phone off the hook before you go to bed.

Another taxi trick is to turn the meter on 2 which makes it run twice as fast. They are allowed to do this after midnight. Taxis are allowed to do trips for a set price which is decided before the trip, not after, unless of course you and he agree on an hourly rate.

But generally there is not that much you have to worry about in Athens in terms of crime. That is not to say that serious crime does not exist in Greece. Athens has many of the problems other modern cities have. But someone coming here for a 2 week holiday is unlikely to suffer from them. Running a business is another story.

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