Last spring apprehension gripped the citizens of this small country. The long ruling Socialists had just been voted out of power leaving the untested center-right New Democracy party to face the incredible challenge of hosting the first Olympics to be held in Greece for 108 years.
The Greeks are famously ill-organized procrastinators whose saving grace is their pride. The country was fearful that the last-minute way of doing things was not going to be good enough this time. As we walked through the construction site that our city had been for so long and we saw how much remained to be done on this day last year, we despaired. We compared the whole enterprise to a slow motion train wreck and feared the worst.
And then the gods of Olympus intervened.
It began with football. The last major football meet that Greece went to was the World Cup in the United States. We lost our group level games with a total score of 10-0 (4-0, 4-0, 2-0). So we were not entirely confident that our national team would not disgrace us again in Portugal last June for the Euro Cup.
The gods protected our goalmouth (ask the Czechs) as the Cinderella story unfolded. Greece beat the hosts, saw off the Spaniards, kicked French ass, survived the Czechs and beat the hosts again to become the most unlikely Cup winners ever. You really should have been in Athens that Fourth of July.
Then the much feared Olympics, with an added billion euros in security spending on top of everything else because of US-UK paranoia. I remember counting 3 blimps (two security) and about 6 to 12 helicopters and airplanes flying at ALL times in the days before the games. The games were bloodless and even security-alert-free (unlike Atlanta) and a great success.
Tonight, Greece won its first ever Eurovision song contest, the very same contest that gave Abba to the world. Yes, I know it is sad, inane and boring. In the national morale stakes however, it is a wonderful tonic and caps off a truly magical year, which followed a long time during which national esteem was bumping along the dirt road.
Perhaps what you should take from this is that just as things can deteriorate rapidly, so too can magical seeming events happen suddenly, unexpectedly and swiftly. The gods or God (if you prefer) move in mysterious ways. Alternatively, streaks happen.