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Wednesday, August 11

Modern, ancient Greece on display

ATHENS - Tried to figure out the Athens subway system Wednesday. It was all Greek to me.

(That cliche sees daylight only once. Promise).

But such is the curious sensation of Athens. One moment you're trying to figure out whether to take the purple line to Doukissis Plakentias or the red line to Agios Atonios, the next you're inspecting Athena's statue from 480 B.C.

As these Olympic Summer Games begin, it is Athens' split personality that is their fundamental theme. Not a swimmer or a sprinter or a drug test or an AWACS plane. But a city, trying to marry the old with the new, the dusty past with the glittering and dangerous present. It takes only a day to understand that Athens of 2004 is one big billion-dollar juxtaposition. There has never been an Olympiad like it.

A modern subway train rumbles right past the ruins of the ancient market square of Agora, where Aristotle and Plato once held court.

Up the street from the Hephaisteion, a remarkably preserved temple built 449 years before the birth of Christ, is a bustling McDonald's. And a street stand that sells knives, machetes, guns and handcuffs.

Standing atop the Acropolis, with teeming Athens spread below in the afternoon heat, one hears silence. Except for the police helicopters overhead. You can look down on the remains of the temple of Zeus. And also wealthy yachts in the harbor. And building after building, for Athens has less green space per capita than any capital in Europe.

The Olympic visitors flock by antiquity. A guy wearing a Yankee cap steps inside the ropes to pose for a picture. One of the security men blows his whistle, in the way a lifeguard tells a kid to stop running on the pool deck.

And a short walk down the hill from the Parthenon brings you to a concession stand where a cup of frozen lemonade goes for about $5.60. Nothing ancient about that at all.

The Olympic torch Wednesday went through the town of Metamorphoses, which long ago gave the world the word for change. By Friday, the flame will be in a city with a new freeway that goes by a Holiday Inn.

``We are writing a new chapter in Olympics history,'' Athens Olympic Committee President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki was saying Wednesday. ``We wanted to show the world a modern Greece. We believe that we are already doing that. ... But we also wanted to make a connection with ancient Greece.''

We call Gettysburg an historical treasure, from a battle 141 years ago. The Agora was destroyed five times over a thousand years by five different invaders, from the Persians to the Romans to the Visigoths, each time rebuilt, so you get old ruins upon even older ruins.

But just across the street is a restaurant with a big plasma-screen television, and ostrich on the menu.

A souvenir shirt has a picture of ``The 11 Gods.'' But they are not Poseidon and Ares, but rather the men's soccer team that won the European championship.

Athens is forever serving up surprises. Ride down the street and there is statue after statue of one god after another. And then suddenly, there's Harry Truman.

Harry Truman? Greece was rebuilt with his Marshall Plan after World War II. The Greeks honored him like they honored Socrates.

Then there are the dogs. Athens apparently has long been the choice of residence of every stray in southern Europe. Officials apparently started rounding them up some months ago - prompting concern from animal rights' groups and a headline this week in one of the local papers: ``Where have all the dogs gone?''

I can report that there are several survivors from the purge. Eleven of them were barking at one another Wednesday at Syntagma Square, which is in the center of the city.

That's Athens. Cruise ships borrowed to house VIPs, and stray dogs in the street. It took modern Greece seven years to get ready for the Olympic Games. It took the ancients nine years to build the Parthenon. Now both share center stage, in a city and an Olympiad that carry across millenniums, like a supernatural discus throw.

Incidentally, know what the Greeks say when they're confused? ``It's all Chinese to me.''

I don't know what the Chinese say. We can find that out when the Olympics go to Beijing in 2008.

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