In Lasta, Greece’s abandoned village, the Saint George cafe operates on an honor system where visitors serve themselves coffee in exchange for donations, reflecting a bygone era. Despite the cafe’s charm, the village exemplifies Greece’s looming demographic crisis, with a dangerously low fertility rate of 1.3 and a rapidly aging population. Over recent decades, economic hardships and mass emigration have transformed many towns into ghost villages, with Lasta’s permanent population dwindling to nearly none. The Greek government is investing 20 billion euros to address the declining birth rate with incentives, but experts suggest that deeper reforms are essential to counteract this trend.
