Athens mixes old and new

ATHENS, Greece — You peer out the window of a bus that just left Athens International Airport. And being a provincial American, you can’t help but think how much Greece looks like Arizona.

There are mountains in the distance and desert just about everywhere else. And, oh yes, it is hot.

But distinctions come quickly as we draw closer to the city. Olive trees, not cactus, are the landscape’s trademark. And there, high on a pedestal-like hill of stone, is a breathtakingly stark place they call the Acropolis. This isn't Arizona. Greece is civilization’s 3,000-year-old intellectual birthplace.

There is so much old, so much new, at the 2004 Olympics, brought home to a country that sired these Games long ago.

Old: The very site where the Games began, in Olympia, a four-hour drive from Athens, will be the scene of next week’s shot-put event. A rectangular field’s stones remain in place, marking the finish line for the first Olympics sprint.

New: What it costs to play host to an Olympics. Athens is spending $7 billion that it doesn’t have and preparing for cost overruns that some have estimated will hit $10 billion.

Old: The notion that you can bring together people for a distilled exercise in athletics that are as much about mind and soul as they are about the wonder known as human anatomy.

New: Security. Think back to your most recent experience in a labyrinth known as airport security. Now apply it to every venue at the Athens Games. It is a repeat routine of emptying pockets, pulling off belts, throwing personal items in a tray, cringing as you step through the all-knowing, door-size frame that invariably squawks because it detected something suspicious on your person.

It means that, at a time when the worldwide concern is about terrorism — a concept at odds with sport and antithetical to the Greeks — reality is at the heart of 2004’s Olympic Games. Security at this event will cost $1.5 billion — 15 times the security budget required at Atlanta eight years ago.

Because of the buildup, not everyone believes al-Qaida or similar evildoers would try to infiltrate an event so layered by military and intelligence specialists. The doubters would appear to include the athletes themselves.

Michael Phelps, the impending star of these Games, has everyone in suspense as he tries to match, or exceed, the record seven medals rolled up by Mark Spitz in 1972. Phelps, like Spitz, is a swimmer, although not yet an orator. But he makes his point.

Asked at Wednesday’s news conference how he felt about security issues, Phelps, in Valley Boy tones, said: "When we came in, we just thought that Athens was doing an excellent job. They’re making sure we all feel safe. It is just like being at home. It is a great country."

Where you truly feel at home is in mingling with the folks who have turned their city and their country into a kind of geopolitical family room.

Thinking back to Tuesday night, very late, there was a waiter who understood that a long flight and late arrival had left an American guest’s stomach as weary as his mind. I know absolutely zero Greek and put my dinner order in his hands.

He brought some of the most succulent chicken souvlaki a grill has ever seared, not to mention a heavenly tomato-and-cucumber salad, all of it blessed by a chilled Greek ale. Then, after the check had been handled, he brought to the table another beer — on him, of course. He got the tip he deserved, then rushed out the door to return it.

We’ll all be in good hands here the next two and a half weeks. The descendants of those who built the Acropolis and forged our intellects are on their way to another triumph, fittingly, in a competition they invented.