ATHENS, Greece—At an outdoor café in the Plaka, the oldest neighborhood in Athens, a man from Bangladesh is selling binoculars, a Turk is hawking "Rolex" watches from table to table, and a Romanian works the lunch crowd, playing "Never on Sunday" on his accordion. Why shouldn't Athens be ready for the world's athletes? It's already got the world.

The world started here, more or less. Just above the Plaka, the Acropolis looms over downtown like a cat on a window sill. People lived on the Acropolis 7,000 years ago. They're still finding artifacts up there that date from 500 B.C. If civilization is a man, Athens is his DNA.

Nine-time gold medal-winner Carl Lewis poses with the ancient Parthenon temple as his backdrop Thursday. The Associated Press

I am here in this café, witnessing the passing human parade, with Tom LeClair. For nine months, LeClair teaches contemporary American literature at the University of Cincinnati. The other three months, he falls in love. It's easy enough to do in Athens, as we shall see.

LeClair has been coming to Athens since 1979, when he first visited to interview the writer Don DeLillo.

LeClair has taught at the University of Athens and has taken leaves and sabbaticals to extend his stays. He married and divorced an Athenian. His girlfriend now is from Athens. LeClair knows what he knows.

Beginning today for the next 17 days, Athens will be known as the Olympic city, even if none of the competition is close to downtown. The modern Olympics began downtown in 1896, in Panathinaiko Stadium, where the marathon will conclude. But the new stadia and expanded highways are not the Athens LeClair knows.

"Do you want to see the sports sites?" he asked me, referring to the Olympic venues.

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Nope. I want to see everything but. Pretend I have three hours to see everything that makes Athens what it is. Show me that.

Down the marble sidewalk we go, past the Parliament building, past bronze busts of the Greek tragedians Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. Into the National Garden, Athens' answer to Central Park, past the Presidential Palace, where the guards must be at least 6 feet tall. You pose for a picture with a guard. He never moves or changes expression.

Just down the street, LeClair played pickup basketball every summer, until his hip made him stop. He wrote his first novel in Athens, Passing Off, about a basketball player from the United States who pretends to be a Greek American. LeClair is a basketball junkie, so he describes Athens as "a basketball court. There is always action, competition, pushing and shoving," LeClair says.

We walk up the long hill to the Acropolis, up curvy paths no wider than a bike lane, past tiny, white-washed homes perched on the hill. If you want to move into one of these houses, you'll need goats to haul your furniture.

We arrive at the entrance to the Acropolis. The wait at the ticket window is short. "It's August and the Olympics are here and we only waited five minutes. I'm worried about this country," LeClair says.

Athenians normally vacate the city in August, usually to the beach, where it is cooler, or their native villages. This year, worried by predicted gridlock and suspected terrorism, more locals than usual have abandoned their city. Traffic is no worse than I-75 at 4 in the afternoon.

It's one of a few myths we've discovered already. Another is the dreaded heat. Athens is dry hot, like San Diego or Los Angeles. Once the sun retreats, it's mid-70s pleasant. That's why Athenians come out late to play. Try getting an outside table at a restaurant at 10 p.m.

The marble on the Z-curved steps to the top of the Acropolis is weathered by time and tourists. Older people walk with arms hooked, as if the marble were ice. The Parthenon stands as the Acropolis' crown jewel. It's a temple to Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin), the patron goddess of Athens. Scaffolding covers much of it like a scab. "I don't remember when it didn't," LeClair says.

The Acropolis is jammed with tourists. We take pictures of people taking pictures. To build the Parthenon, LeClair says laborers hauled 12-ton slabs of marble on wooden skids from Mount Pendeli ... 20 miles away.

The Acropolis closes to visitors at 8 p.m., except on nights of the full moon. Imagine a shimmering moon lighting the Parthenon, and you'll understand why LeClair loves Athens, and man's underused ability to see beyond what is possible.

LeClair admires the passionate way Greeks live their lives. "They're emotional about family and friends. They're emotional about politics. They're just very engaged," LeClair says.

He likes that he can go to a free movie outdoors, on a rooftop above a restaurant in the Plaka, with a view of the Acropolis. He likes that old men in the National Garden gather in a circle to discuss politics. He likes the way the summer sun drops from a dark blue sky and bounces like a good chest pass off the white-washed walls and orange-tiled roofs of the houses, bathing the city in light.

Forty percent of all Greeks live in Athens. It's a city of 5 million people, big enough to absorb a spectacle as grand as the Olympic Games. If not for the Olympic banners adorning the main thoroughfares downtown - and the ubiquitous shops selling Olympic merchandise - you'd hardly know the Games were here.

Tom LeClair will go to some Olympic basketball games and to a session of table tennis. He thinks the Olympics are good for the city. He's not here because of them, though. He'll take a table outside at a café. The passing scene is every bit as passionate, and often more compelling.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com