ATHENS — While Athens has a buzz among young people for hip and cool neighborhoods, coffee shops, bars and restaurants, it's not a favorite for ex-patriates, ranking only 50th in the world in a survey by InterNations.

Without explaining why they live in the city if they don't like it much, the expats' highest score came in the Cost of Living Index, ranking it 20th, but the worst at 64th was for the Urban Work Life Index, complaining there's not enough jobs.

Greece had been slowly recovering from a brutal near-decade long economic and austerity crisis when the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, although jobs had long been hard to come by and the country has the European Union's highest jobless rate. 

In Athens, 60 percent of  expats rated career options negative, compared to 34 percent globally, said Kathimerini of the findings, while 55 percent said they weren't satisfied with the economy, compared to 18 percent worldwide.

A 58-year-old British expat not named said that the “job opportunities are not as good as in other countries, especially for my age group,” but didn't say why he moved to the city then.

A 2019 Quality of Life Index by the site Numbeo put Athens at 61st among 78 countries surveyed in Europe, behind places such as Ljubljana, Slovenia as well as Gdasnk, Poland and Minsk in Belarus, which is ruled by an authoritarian government.