As the queues of jobless Greeks grow, more and more young people are moving abroad. It's an exodus that's particularly painful for Greek journalist Giorgos Christides.

Hanging out with friends is becoming increasingly difficult for me.

It seems my friends are fleeing Greece one by one, and the next time we see each other for a beer, our meeting place will probably be London's Trafalgar rather than Thessaloniki's Aristotle Square.

These past couple of weeks, I saw two of my best friends become residents of London, leaving their spouses and children behind, to work in the British capital and escape the employment no-man's-land that Greece has turned into because of the crisis.

Recently I also had to bid farewell to my brother, who returned to Saudi Arabia where he works as an engineer. The trend is not limited to 30 and 40-something professionals, but is spreading to younger age groups as well.

According to the latest national polls, more than seven out of 10 young Greeks aged 18 to 24 believe that emigration is the ideal - indeed the only - way out from the crisis. Two out of 10 have already applied for jobs and university places abroad.