Authorities in Greece are laying on bus trips to countries that might solve the plight of lovelorn farmers desperate for wives.
The startling shortage of available females in the country’s remote rural areas has spurred the ”love tours” by men who once mocked the likes of Shirley Valentine.
”We have got no women left, they have all gone off to be educated,” a farmer grumbled to Greece’s STAR television from a village near Zacharo in the western Peloponnese. ”Once they do that, they never come back.”
”Love buses” abroad have been organised by worried municipal officials.
The first coach, carrying 40 men, is expected to leave for Ukraine from Zacharo soon. All hope to find wives, says Spyros Bilionis, the deputy mayor, who had pledged to end the men’s plight.
”There are many [Ukrainian] women who would like to live in Greece,” Bilionis told the Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini.
”The standard of life there is not satisfactory, and they regard our country as a kind of paradise.”
Loneliness has purportedly become a huge problem in Greece’s depopulated countryside, where men far outnumber women.
”Women are not goats, they’re not there to be bought,” said another man in Zacharo.
He denounced the organised tours as upmarket sex tourism. ”But the truth is we are really lonely. If we want families, some say this is what we have to do,” he told Star TV.
In northern Greece, growing numbers of males have taken to relieving their frustration by finding wives in neighbouring Bulgaria.
”The border crossing is packed every night,” a frontier guard said.
”And it’s all men, not women, going in one direction, Greece to Bulgaria.”
Bilionis did not reveal how the men would lure women to marry them in Ukraine.
But with the western Peloponnese among the most fertile regions of Greece, he insisted most were ”well endowed”.
”Many have real estate assets which, if fully exploited, will allow them to live comfortably,” he added.
The farmers will have five days to find themselves a suitable bride. Greek television reported that hundreds of Ukrainians were already lining up for a preview of the visitors.
If lucky, the Greeks will exchange vows in on-the-spot civil ceremonies to shortcut visa regulations for their new wives.
If not, they can take comfort that Bilionis has already arranged other love buses for the future. – Guardian Unlimited Â