ATHENS, Greece – Strike up a conversation with any American athlete or family member here, and as soon as the requisite sports talk dries out they’ll be quick to mention the clubhouse.

Nearly all of the 536 American athletes, as well as their visiting friends and family, are registered with the “Hometown Hopefuls” house. It’s where everybody from America seems to spend their sedentary hours. With daily traffic hovering around 1,000, the clubhouse functions as an air-conditioned spot for visitors to check their email, eat free food, or just park their parents for a few hours.

It’s located in a three-story converted disco whose decor has been tempered down to what may be the most anodyne setting in all of Athens. The basic furniture and USA-themed banners lend it an air of comfortable blandness, like a student center at a nice liberal-arts college. Decorations in the two-tiered dining room include table centerpieces fashioned out of sports supplies and wall art featuring various American athletes leaping and rowing and breast stroking in front of their native skylines. On the third floor, there’s a quieter room with couches, English-language newspapers, and Wi-Fi laptops.

Visitors sing the praises of the free food and Internet access at Hometown Hopefuls, but they take something else away from the clubhouse: familiarity. Athens, with its dusty streets and effusive customs, can be a discombobulating city. It’s common for men to greet each other with kisses and hugs. If you don’t speak Greek, simple how-are-you-doing conversations can come across as screaming matches. It can all be a little off-putting for somebody who’s just off the boat from, say, New Jersey.

Water polo player Omar Amr’s parents, Medhat and Zakia Amr, estimate they spend five hours a day at the center. They say they find the center cleaner than the local establishments they’ve been to. “This place exceeds any other place in Athens,” said the Orange County, Calif., father.

Hometown Hopefuls is tucked away on a dead side street in an otherwise bustling part of the city. The sign on the building identifies it only as a “center.” Behind the nondescript doors await a squad of security experts that rummage through visitors’ bags with the meticulousness of immigration officers. Indeed, the waiting area by the security table can get clogged up, and parents can be overheard talking beach volleyball or, as one dad muttered the other day, “I smell fish!”

While it was barely five past six and most of Athens was still digesting their late lunch, the hometown hopefuls dinner buffet was set to an early-bird American clock and ready to go, stocked with fried fish, grilled chicken, green salad, and watermelon. There were also mini baklavas and a gyro station. Most of the round communal tables were already full.

When asked, visitors say the primary reason they hit the building is free grub and camaraderie. But the success of the clubhouse also touches on stirrings of anti-Americanism at these Games. While visitors from other countries skip down the streets with flags painted on their faces, the American tourists play it inconspicuous.

Prior to coming over here, in fact, the U.S. athletes were instructed to keep displays of national pride on the down low. Adding fuel to the fire: America is wiping out the other countries in the race to take home the most medals. It’s only fitting that Americans might want to take refuge from it all.

The building is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. There are no rules apart from the four-guest limit – and a spokesman said exceptions are routinely made for athletes with larger packs of visitors, one of whom had a posse totaling 15 people. Once inside, people are free to ask for autographs, though apparently taking photographs is the done thing this summer.

Of course, what it boils down to is brilliant brand marketing. Bank of America sponsors the house, and the company has an entire arm devoted to sports marketing – and they also work with the PGA and major league baseball, among others.

“Sports are a good demographic to appeal to,” said Dockery Clark, an executive with Bank of America’s sports marketing and sponsorship division. “There’s an emotional hook. People feel passionate about their particular team and they transfer that passion to our brand.”

The company’s deal with the Olympics gives them the right to use the Olympic logo. In addition to feeding all the athletes and their entourages, the bank also pays 25% of athletes’ families’ airfare and hotel bills. The bank is signed on to do the same at the 2006 winter Olympics in Turin and the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing. Ms. Clark said visitors to the center have already told her they’re switching banks as soon as they return home.

With the din of televised sports and communal eating filling the dining levels, the uppermost floor with the computers offers a more hushed setting. On Tuesday evening, an athlete’s baby was napping on one couch, and Wolf Wigo, a water polo player from New York, sat on another with his father. The men’s water polo team had recently lost and the elder Mr. Wigo had his arm around his son, who was staring into the middle distance. A woman tiptoed over to the athlete to pay her respects.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be back.”