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by
Peter Hadzipetros |
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Athens
under construction
The
massive Olympic makeover has a lot of Athenians nervous
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They
may as well put an orange fence around Athens for the next eight
months. The whole city is a construction site. There's a fine
coat of dust on everything: buildings, cars, even the stray
dogs that seem to claim every street corner in the Plaka, the
ancient neighbourhood that lies in the shadow of the Acropolis.
The official line is all Olympic facilities will be ready on
time -- and they probably will be. But there's a real hint of
Montreal circa 1976 wafting through the streets of Athens these
days.
"You leave your apartment in the morning, and they're ripping
up a new piece of sidewalk every day," said Susan Morucci, a
transplanted American who runs an inner city medical clinic
for Medecins du Monde.
The city is in the midst of replacing 2,400 kilometres of sidewalk
before the games begin on Aug. 13. Once off the main streets,
most Athenians shun sidewalks; many are barely wide enough to
walk on, and those that are, are often occupied by parked cars.
If you're in a wheelchair, you'd be hard-pressed to find a curb
you could safely navigate.
Visitors to the city may be taken aback by the constant sound
of construction.
"There is, inevitably, a lot of building work going on, but
I live in Dublin, so I'm pretty used to that," said David Walsh-Kemmis,
in Athens for the first time to run the recent marathon. "What
I'm not used to is road work happening in the street outside
my bedroom window at four on Saturday morning."
Officially, the only two projects that raise a hint of concern
are the stadium's roof and a rail line linking the year-old
airport to the stadium. A decades-old commuter rail line that
runs from the port city of Piraeus through Athens and into the
suburbs beyond the Olympic site is also undergoing a major facelift.
Stations are being rebuilt. Currently, some are little more
than piles of rubble. Everything else, officials say, is on
time.
And most people you meet echo that sentiment. This is, afterall,
a country that remains convinced it should be the permanent
host of the games, that it was robbed when Atlanta was awarded
the 1996 Olympics. No Toronto-like anti-Olympic protest groups
have ever taken hold in Athens.
Over drinks and mezes (appetizers) in a café in the heart of
Monistiraki, Athens' mammoth flea market, Yiannis Symeonides,
a 24-year-old journalist, exudes confidence over his city's
ability to prepare.
"It's like a race," he said. "We started out slow, but now we're
sprinting to the finish line. In the end, we will be there."
Still, there are concerns. Olympic organizers are planning to
close the city centre during August, to ease the city's notorious
congestion. But local residents haven't been included in that
planning.
"We don't know what it means," Susan Morucci said. "Is my clinic
closed, too, for the games? Do we have jobs? And what about
the people who use the clinic? The [government] hasn't told
us anything."
Greece has had to import thousands of foreign workers to try
to meet some pretty tight deadlines. And they're working around
the clock.
"My big fear," Symeonides said, "is that what doesn't get finished
in time for the games will never be finished."
Across town in the trendy Kolonaki district at a popular haunt
for Greece's young urban professionals, the mood is a little
more cautious.
"It's a disaster," 30-something lawyer Gavriel says. His law
school chum Natasha nods in agreement. "I plan on being as far
away from Athens as possible next August."
He pauses and looks at me.
"But wait," he laughs, "you're a journalist and you will be
writing about this. Everything will be just fine!"
LETTERS [Email
Peter here] |
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About
Peter
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Peter
Hadzipetros produces the Consumer
Zone for cbc.ca and runs the web site for Marketplace. Until
he got into long distance running a little over a year ago, he was
a net importer of calories. He successfully completed the Boston Marathon Apr. 21, in a time of 3:57:17.
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