A New Village, Sparkling Streets, And Stray Dogs

ATHENS, Greece – Everyone got all worked up about the venues for the 2004 Athens Olympics. Would they be done in time? The International Olympic Committee nagged, the international press sniped, and the Athens Olympic Committee idled and then switched into high gear, turning the city into a construction site.Now, with the Olympics starting Friday, all the competition sites are complete, the Calatrava roof is in place over the pristine Olympic Stadium, and athletes have been arriving smoothly at the new airport and riding down the Olympic lane reserved for Games-related traffic to their shiny new homes away from home in the Olympic Village.Sure, the venues and infrastructure changes are impressive. But as someone who visits Athens several times a year, I’m more astonished by the subtle Olympic improvements that have gone into the city’s new look.Two years ago, I looked out of my hotel room window and saw that all the neon signs and billboards had been removed from historic Syntagma Square.Then, this May, I noticed that the taxi stand which had been papered with a kick line of cellulite-free buttocks advertising a diet center now held a tasteful poster urging Athenians to volunteer as tour guides and “Show foreigners OUR Athens.”A few blocks away, the kiosk whose awning once bore a tobacco ad featuring a cigarette nestled between a woman’s breasts now had a minimalist, all-white replacement.Apparently, those changes were just a warmup. Last week I noticed that, along with two cafes and slip-resistant marble flooring, Syntagma Square had an even more surprising addition – brand-new collars ringing the necks of the square’s ubiquitous stray dogs.“The collared dogs were picked up, checked for parasites, inoculated, sterilized, and tattooed or fitted with electronic chips so we can track them. Then they were returned to the area where we found them,” Deputy Mayor Theodore Skilakakis said of the accessorized mutts. “Eight hundred dogs have already been through the program, and we’re going to keep going until there aren’t any strays who haven’t been treated.”The cleaning-and-collaring program has baffled some Athenians. “Sorry I’m late,” my friend Anna said, showing up for dinner 15 minutes after I did. “A dog in Syntagma started barking at me, and I thought, ‘Oh no, this stray is going to bite me.’ Then I noticed it had a collar, so I though it’s owner must be nearby. But no. It was just a stray in a collar. A collar doesn’t turn a stray into a pet.”A stray did in fact bite a Ukrainian archery coach as he jogged in an Athens park last year. The incident was highly embarrassing for the Athens Olympic Committee, but out of character for the Athens stray dog population.On the whole, Athenian strays seldom bite – they’re city natives who chase taxis, cross the street with the light, and sleep on the cool marblestoops during the hot afternoons. But the threat of being bitten looms large to anyone who has been barked at as they rush to dinner.It’s just this kind of anti-stray discrimination the deputy mayor hopes to eliminate with the collar initiative.“This will lower the number of dogs on the street, but will also create a better relationship between Athens’ citizens and the dogs,” Mr. Skilakakis explained. “When they see a collared dog, they’ll know he’s not homeless; he belongs to the city.”That logic didn’t work on Anna, who remained insensitive to the subtleties of the hottest new canine accessory, but it did influence a friend of the mayor’s who lives on Vassilias Sofias, an embassy-lined street off of Syntagma Square.“She has two dogs already, and picked up a collared one off the street to keep as her pet. She knew he was healthy because of the collar, and her vet confirmed that he was fine,” Mr. Skilakakis said.That’s one happy ending. But the end result of the collar program is unclear for now.“This is an ongoing effort, not something that was done just for the games,” Mr. Skilakakis said. “The goal for all of the Olympic improvements is for everything done for the Games to have a lasting impact on the city.”A few cosmetic changes to Athens, like the 80 sculptures adorning public spaces in the city and the 600 street events planned over the course of the Games, will disappear shortly after the Olympic and Paralympic athletes return home.Others, including the pedestrian walkway around the Acropolis and other archaeological sites, will permanently enrich Athens for natives, tourists, and future generations.The snappily dressed strays fall somewhere in between. In theory, the neutered dogs won’t reproduce and the stray population will diminish until Syntagma Square is stray free. And who knows, maybe then, I’ll miss the strays as much as the perky butt posters.But Athenian strays are savvy, and, I suspect, not easily eliminated with the passing of just a few generations. The larger question is whether the city’s’ makeover will give it a permanently radiant new look or just a two-week long good hair day. But as of today, all that matters is that for the next two weeks, even Athens’s Tramps will be Ladies.

A New Village, Sparkling Streets, And Stray Dogs

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