[wildbill]

Another reason the tourism business is off is that the Greeks weren't very hospitable to US visitors to their Olympics.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, hence my thugs remark. Greece also has had a probably small gang operating for some years in urban Greece, murdering various foreigners, mostly those working on some form of foreign investment in Greece. And stuff like this, from a probably dead link:

Greece Probes Police Links To Fascists
1997
AP

An investigation was launched last week after the nationwide broadcast of a videotape showing about 40 members of a police anti-terrorist group assaulting a man, apparently an Albanian immigrant. Made in 1993, it also showed the men lauding Greece's 1967-1974 military junta.

Two of the men in the tape were anti-terrorist squad leaders and both were immediately suspended.

Romaios said one organization believed to have ties to the officers was "Golden Dawn," a neo-Nazi group known for its hatred of Jews and foreigners.

Leaked to the press by a legislator, the tape increased concerns about anti-foreigner sentiments in Greece and anti-Semitism in the police force. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, most of them Albanians, have been living here since the early 1990s.