Terrorists, construction delays, traffic chaos, and other mega-problems are seen as potential obstacles for the summer Olympics. But if the gargantuan Athens Games go down the tubes, it might just be on account of the little things that won’t.
Ladies and gentlemen, please bear with us as we address the prosaic matter of plumbing.
Greece is unlike Europe, North America and Australia in many, often charming ways. That is why it remains one of the world’s top tourist destinations. But not all of those ways are quite so endearing. For example, while most of the developed world flushes used toilet tissue away with the waste water, in Greece it is typically placed in a waste receptacle next to the toilet.
That unintentional ecological approach will be a surprise to many visitors, if a recent unscientific survey is any indication. Although warnings are not unknown (one restaurant posted a sign depicting a grimacing toilet and the admonition ”Do not place Papper in the Toilette”), most establishments seem not to have considered this potential disaster, with just a few months and counting before the opening ceremonies.
That means millions and millions of ill-advised flushes, and untold consequences to Athens’s ancient pipes, which, if not as old as the Acropolis itself, are still badly in need of modernisation.
How this will play out, especially given the frequency with which Americans and other prodigal consumers, already clog more modern equipment through wasteful practises, is one big unknown.
If going is a challenge, so is coming and going. The same street name can be found in multiple places in Athens, with some incarnations no more than a couple of blocks long. Don’t count on cabbies to be helpful — often, they have no idea, and even if they do, very few speak another language. (On the other hand, most taxis are gleamingly new and blissfully inexpensive). Greece’s Transport Ministry publicly warned that ”vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and people with disabilities, are subjected to a great deal of discomfort by the improper behaviour of taxi drivers”. They asked that the police intervene and stop taxi drivers from turning away disabled and elderly passengers, in order to ”improve services and the image of the country”.
Ordinary Greeks tend toward considerable hospitality, and are always glad to give directions, though pride themselves more on their willingness to help than on their willingness to admit they have no idea how to get somewhere.
On another front, hairdryer-wielding fanatics might note the questionable ability of the electrical grid to handle huge numbers of gadget-happy visitors. Add to this the air-conditioning pressures of an August that, thanks to global warming, is tending to be even hotter than typically unbearable past Athens summers.
The sort of peripheral disasters waiting to happen only compound the challenges facing the official event itself. Although many sporting facilities, a new airport and spacious highways have been built, a lot of effort has gone into cosmetic efforts with mainly propaganda value — exhibits, signs, depictions of the ancient games. As a result, with just two months remaining, workers are still scrambling to finish numerous competition facilities, a topic of frequent discussion in the Greek media.
”Greeks are famous for procrastinating as long as possible, and then rushing frantically at the last minute,” says Costis Chlouverakis, a physician and writer. ”The Olympics were announced in 1997, but they didn’t do anything for years. Of course they are not ready.”
A favourite joke circulating on the Internet shows the Greeks half-ready for the 2004 games and the Chinese already done for 2008. Even the Athens city website remains ”under construction”.
Outside the Olympic venues, the city seems an odd mix of frenetic remodelling and indifference. A week spent walking and driving through disparate parts of Athens revealed the kind of chaos and lackadaisical fix-it projects that have long characterised the city. For every stylish new club that has opened, one sees dozens of properties where work appears to have just begun.
Many proprietors of hotels, restaurants and the like appear to have only recently realised the profit potential of 1,4-million visitors. The city hasn’t had major hotel construction in ages, though a number of new, large hostelries are racing toward completion and with good incentive: prices for superior-quality rooms will average about â,¬800 a night.
The lodging mainstay, hundreds of small hotels, are undergoing face — and wallet — lifts. One little pension with tiny rooms plans to raise its rates from about â,¬50 a night to â,¬250. And to handle the massive influx, the authorities plan to enlist a number of cruise ships, creating floating hotels.
Yet the optimism may be unwarranted. As of late May, according to Associated Press, thousands of hotel rooms were still available at just â,¬150 a night, and concerns over construction delays and security, as well as a delayed promotion programme, had hurt bookings and forced prices down.
Some roads appear to be getting their first rejuvenation in 150 years — unearthing past construction indiscretions. One controversy erupted when a woman walking in the Plaka noticed the words ”Dearly Beloved” on unsettled paving stones.
Security concerns are clearly paramount, but perhaps the biggest challenge of all will be simple communication. The term ”it’s all Greek to me” was coined for a reason.
Many signs are only written using the Greek alphabet. Spoken and nodded Greek can be confusing, too, for the uninitiated. For example, the word for yes, ne, sounds a lot like its opposite, and the word for no, okhee, sounds a lot like ”okay”. Lifting the head vertically, something like Western civilisation’s affirmative nod, is Greek for ”no”. Something like our wave goodbye is their ”come here”, and what looks like ”come here” is actually goodbye.
Given the large number of American citizens who traditionally attend the Olympics, a complicating factor is a strong anti-Americanism, strong even by European standards.
Greeks were upset about the ”McDonald’s-isation” of the world well before the Iraq war sent United States approval ratings through the floor. Still, after amiably harassing an American, the typical Greek quickly moves on to demonstrate their familiarity with US geography, to proudly note the success of their Americanised cousins, and to bust out a bottle of ouzo, the distilled Greek national drink with the liquorice essence.
If Athens is not quite ready for the Olympics, the people of Athens certainly are — ready to evacuate, that is. Athenians, who never need much excuse to escape their overcrowded, foliage-deficient city for the beauty and tranquillity of the Greek isles, may not stick around to enjoy this latest incarnation of the quadrennial sporting spectacle their ancestors created.
”We’re all leaving a month before the games, and returning a month after,” says Michalis Papayiannakis, a Synaspismos member of the European Parliament.
Well, maybe not everyone. When authorities announced openings for 42 000 Olympics ”volunteers,” 160 000 people applied — many of them Greek. Even so, one local skeptic warned, ”Check how many actually show up. Greeks are not volunteers. We have an expression, ‘You can get free cheese only in the mousetrap.”’
Despite all the problems, it’s too early to write off the Athens Olympics as a disaster in the making. Every Olympics has been subjected to the most dire of predictions.
Perhaps more importantly, for all their tendencies to procrastination, the worry-bead-twirling Greeks can be resourceful in a pinch. For the World Athletic Championship in 1997, authorities envisioned a soothing display of greenery outside the airport to welcome arriving tourists. But trucked-in pine trees did not get planted; half died in the parching heat, half were apparently taken home by airport staff. With one month remaining before the event, staff frantically began sowing flowers and watering them with great diligence. What the crowds saw on their arrival was a beautiful garden that looked like it had been there forever.
”You see,” says one typically philosophical Athenian, ”we’re magicians here.”