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Given where Athens started, the accomplishments are startling. There's an efficient new international airport with a 20-mile suburban railway link, a new subway system that carries 530,000 passengers into central Athens daily, 130 miles of new and upgraded roads, and the restored tram that connects the city to the sea. President Costis Stephanopoulos now boasts of the "Greek way" of last-minute heroics, while the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, announced in June, "This is a--should I say it?--a Greek screwup which is inherent in our character. But in some miraculous way, it produces good results." Still, not everyone is impressed. "They've done a lot," says an I.O.C. executive. "If they were hosting the Olympics in 2008, I'd be very encouraged."
Although many of the remaining loose ends are cosmetic, there is an escalating roster of what an Olympic security consultant calls "holy s___!" problems. Even with gleaming mass-transit facilities, traffic experts recently clocked the average speed on 20 major Athens roads at 6 m.p.h., rendering emergency-service vehicles essentially useless. (Not that it will matter if ambulance drivers make good on their strike plans.) Two recent blackouts have stumped city engineers. And while members of Greece's notorious anticapitalist November 17 terrorist group were jailed last year for committing 19 murders over an 18-year period, small terrorist bombs still detonate in Athens with astonishing regularity.
Those issues have lately tarnished Athens' status as a cultural capital awash in history--the Romans were tourists here. Athens is a captivating, sophisticated city with swank shopping districts, colorful neighborhood squares known as plateies and lots of convivial sidewalk cafes, or kafeneia. Stretching from the deep blue waters of the Saronic Gulf to the rocky slopes of Mount Hymmetus, Athens is a lively jumble of modernity mixed amiably with the majestic remnants of this city's glorious past, from the elegant Parthenon, which keeps watch over the city, to the soaring columns of the Temple of Zeus in the city center. Wherever you turn, history blinks back. Even in the spanking-new metro system, ancient ruins found in some stations during construction are encased in glass.
The Greeks are desperate to change their national can't-do image by throwing a first-class Games. But they are physically, spiritually and monetarily tapped out from having packed all their Olympic preparations and a century of urban renewal into four dizzying years. "Everything we have done here is beyond any human imagination," said Public Order Minister George Voulgarakis in early July. "It is well known we really spent more than we could afford." Greece is one of the smallest countries to play host to the Summer Games, and the I.O.C., an organization normally allergic to accepting blame, has conceded that handing the prize to a nation of 11 million people who have an average annual income of $11,000 was a mistake. In a recent interview with a Belgian newspaper, I.O.C. president Jacques Rogge said future Olympic sites would "already have a maximum of infrastructure in place and a minimum of virtual plans."