For years, Greece has been criticised for not meeting schedules to get everything ready in time for the world's biggest party. At one point, the concerns were so great that Olympic organisers were threatening to hand the honour back to Sydney. But now, with just over two months to go, it looks as though everything is on track. One Australian is watching Greek progress more closely than most.

PETER RYAN, FORMER NSW POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, it's changed enormously in the two years since I've been here.

Taking me for a walk around central Athens today former NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan.

PETER RYAN: It's a city that doesn't really sleep. It's within the traditions of Greece to eat late at night, 10:00, 11:00, people start going out for dinner and don't finish till 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning - it's got a very vibrant night life. The cake shops here are just unbelievable - they must make the best cakes in the world.

For the past two years, Peter Ryan has been working here as chief security consultant to the Athens Games.

PETER RYAN: You'll see a lot of police officers around. This is the summer uniform. There's a lot of them as you can see across the road, walking through the city. And during the Olympic Games there'll be well in excess of 45,000 security staff on the ground and particularly in the city there'll be large numbers of police officers and security personnel drafted in especially for the Games. So you will see a lot of security profile throughout the city during the Games period.

REPORTER: People seem completely relaxed strolling through the streets here. That seems like a good sign at least?

PETER RYAN: It's a very safe city. It's low crime. It's very little violence. It's got very low levels of violence against people. There's very little drunkenness. You don't see misbehaviour in any of the tavernas or nightclubs or bars. It's a very generally safe city.

But Ryan knows that from a security point of view, Athens presents a real challenge.

PETER RYAN: Yes, I think because of the sheer size of the public gatherings - it is the biggest public event in the world - and we just have to make sure that every conceivable precaution is taken to make sure the public, the spectators, the athletes particularly, everyone is safe.

Greece is only too aware of the new security environment. For years now it's been staging exercises to prepare for the worst. Just over a year after the Sydney Olympics, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington changed forever the staging of big international events. Bombs in Madrid earlier this year, the first al-Qa'ida strike in Europe, only reinforced the potential threat to the Olympic city.

COLONEL ELEFTHERIOUS IKONOMOU, (Translation): We are spending one billion euros, three times more than was spent in Sydney on Games security. The human resources we're using are three times that of Sydney.

It's police Colonel Eleftherious Ikonomou's Ministry of Public Order that holds ultimate responsibility for security.

COLONEL ELEFTHERIOUS IKONOMOU, (Translation): We have developed the most widespread system ever known of international cooperation, including support from NATO, and anything humanly possible that could be done, we've done to ensure that organisation of a safe Olympic Games.

In addition to tens of thousands of police officers, the Greek Government is deploying its army, air force and navy, and NATO will be enforcing a no-fly zone. But everything is brought back down to earth when on May 5, exactly 100 days before the opening ceremony three bombs were set off outside police stations in Athens.
It was the work of local anarchists - small home-made bombs are nothing new in this city. As is usually the case, no-one was injured. But despite this, the Australian Government stepped up its travel advice.

PETER RYAN: It came out at a very unfortunate time and it has had quite significant reaction here.

Peter Ryan says the Greek authorities were not happy. They accused Australia of exaggerating the threat.

PETER RYAN: It is important that governments do protect their citizens by issuing travel advisories about particular countries, particularly after Bali and alleged threats made against Australia, but this one came at a particularly bad time. The IOC was visiting right in the middle of the coordination commission visit, the final visit where the green ticks were going in the boxes to make sure everything was alright and it was viewed as a very unfortunate thing to say by the authorities here at that moment in time.

Tonight the International Federation of Journalists - or IFJ - is opening its annual congress in Athens, I find the president of the Athens Games, Gianna Angelopoulos Daskalaki, chatting to an Australian - IFJ president Christopher Warren.

GIANNA ANGELOPOULOS DASKALAKI, PRESIDENT OF THE ATHENS GAMES: There is lot to say.

CHRISTOPHER WARREN, IFJ PRESIDENT: Well it's always important to have a trade to fall back on. I have some idea of the excitement you're going through. The experience is good. I think it is fantastic.

REPORTER: So you're not too angry to speak to some Australians in the crowd?

GIANNA ANGELOPOULOS DASKALAKI: No not at all. You are more than welcome. That's why I'm angry - because nobody can take away this right that you have to come to Greece and enjoy excellent games - fantastic country and people here love you.

Australia's travel warning was seen as an affront to Greek pride and Canberra was accused of trying to make the Sydney Games look good at Athens's expense.

GIANNA ANGELOPOULOS DASKALAKI: We have accomplished seven years’ work in just four years time. This is a fact, it is proof of what we Greeks can do when we work for a purpose, in a professional way, all together. For us in Greece and for you all in the international press, that day is rapidly approaching.

ALEXIS PAPAHELAS, CURRENT AFFAIRS PRESENTER: Well, we think Australians are kind of jealous, they don't want these games to be better than theirs. This is sort of the joke we keep telling ourselves.

'The Files' is an influential weekly current affairs program. Presenter Alexis Papahelas has good contacts with the political elite here in Athens. He's hearing a lot of anti-Australian sentiment over the travelling warning.

ALEXIS PAPAHELAS: It's hard for me to understand why Australia or anybody else would do that, because really Australians have been involved in the security process. We have Peter Ryan here who was responsible for the Sydney Games, he's here every day working a lot of hours. I've talked to some of these people privately off the record and they assure me that Greece is doing pretty much everything possible. There is a theory out there with the security level you shouldn't have these kinds of public events. That's a different story. Let's not have the Euro soccer games in Portugal. Let's live our lives like the terrorists want us to live our lives. We like Australia. We have a lot of Greeks living in Australia so we always had sympathy for the country. We have spent so much money, so much energy on this, we are a small country undertaking a huge task. When some countries are picking on small issues it really drives us mad, when somebody says after all the money you've spent, all the things you've done, you have to do more or we're not coming. It's crazy.

If there's one person in Athens with a huge stake in pulling off a safe and secure Olympic Games it's the city's mayor, Dora Bakoyanni.

DORA BAKOYANNI, MAYOR: We are doing everything we can think of, not only we Greeks, but all our international colleagues in the security measures. We have the seven experts of the seven last Olympic Games sitting in Athens with us. We are running over every possible scenario. My feeling is that cities all around the world can be in danger, of course, but Athens will probably be the most secure city to be in August 2004.

Athens is the oldest capital city in Europe and the Town Hall features a display of all its past mayors. Dora Bakoyanni is Athens's first woman mayor. She comes from a well-connected political family and understands terrorism all too well. In 1989 the November 17 anarchist movement assassinated her husband, the then deputy speaker of parliament.
Two years ago, police arrested 19 members of the November 17 movement, including its political leadership and the men who killed her husband. This was an enormous confidence boost to those who want to assure the world that the security situation is under control.

DORA BAKOYANNI: Look, I've been a long-time terrorist fighter if somebody can call it like that in English. I've fought terrorism the last 15 years of my life on every different level - on the local level, which means the Greek level, on the international level, the European level, et cetera. What is important is that we have dealt with our local terrorism. For me personally it is very important, because I know that the people who killed my husband and the father of my children are in jail today, so that's a very important issue, which is dealt with.

Support for the November 17 movement and its anarchist goals is still significant. Anarchists, Greens and other demonstrators have formed a loose coalition and marched together under the banner anti-2004. This protest was prompted by the deaths of several immigrant workers during the rush to complete construction of the athletes' village.
The marchers say that the Olympics are organised by an elite club of capitalists who have little regard for its social or environmental impacts. They ridicule the two women central to the Athens Games - the mayor, Dora Bakoyanni, and Games President Gianna Angelopoulos Daskalaki, whose husband, a leading industrialist, has made millions out of Olympic building contracts.
The march had its moments of drama, nothing new when anarchists meet police. Architect Panos Totsikas is a spokesperson for the anti-2004 coalition.

PANOS TOTSIKAS, ARCHITECT (Translation): The problem as we see it, is not just the Athens Olympics, to which we are opposed, but the Olympic Games as a whole, the way they run and the people who run them.

ANNE VAFIDI, LAWYER AND ANTI 2004 CAMPAIGNER: The Olympic Games is out of any spirit of athleticism, of collaboration, of solidarity, of it's a party. It's a party of profits.

But more than anything else it's the use of the military that concerns Totsikas and his colleague, lawyer, Anne Vafidi.

ANNE VAFIDI: We have never had an army, either Greek or foreigner, in the city. We have exercises, multinational, NATO, the GNC or somewhere else. But in our city, the presence of NATO's army in our cities - never. We have had that never - never seen it before.

One month before the opening ceremony, all Olympic venues will be subjected to a lockdown. Each site will be searched and checked and then closed off to all but those with security clearance. Whole parts of the city will be inaccessible. It will be a huge disruption to daily life for everyone in Athens, but one group will feel it more than others - the gypsies. The gypsies in this slum on the outskirts of Athens survive by selling fruit and vegetables and scrap metal and rely on free access to the city for their livelihoods.
Maria is looking forward to getting married through the Games but knows it will be a difficult time for her family.

MARIA, (Translation): We wont be able to get to Athens. We deal in scrape. They’ll cut off the roads. We want to make a living.

PROKOPIS, (Translation): Come and see the toilet water that runs out into the soil. All the kids are getting hepatitis and rashes. Bring your cameras and have a look.

Prokopis and his family have perhaps suffered more than anyone as a result of the games preparation. Along with several other families they were evicted from homes they’d occupied for decades so that a car park could be built for the main stadium. This is where they ended up - miles from anywhere on land that was reportedly a NATO waste dump.

PROKOPIS, (Translation): This is dirty water. For young and old it’s at hepatitis level. What can I say? It’s dreadful, dreadful.

The Government has provided them with temporary housing, but the facilities are clearly inadequate. They rely on a generator for their power and say the water tanks the Government provided are filthy.

MAN, (Translation): Take a look in here. A week ago this old man got in and cleaned it. Vegetation was growing in it.

PROKOPIS, (Translation): Those germs could kill us, that’s tuberculosis. As a Greek gypsy, I don’t care about the Olympics. I care about where I live and my pocket. We’re in this mess because of the Olympic Games. We’d be much better off without the Olympic Games.

OLD MAN, (Translation): We’re Greek citizens, we vote, serve in the army like everyone. And we too have rights.

PROKOPIS, (Translation): They kicked us out, look at us? We’re 50 kilometres from home. Disgusting.

REPORTER: Maybe they could start the marathon here.

PROKOPIS, (Translation): Good one, I’d like to see this. Get all the tourists in with their cameras. Chinese, Japanese, so they can see how bad our situation is.

Like every Olympic Games there will be winners and losers in Athens. Some say with all the money going to the city's infrastructure, the real winners will be the two women at the heart of the bid - the industrialist's wife who is president of the Athens Games and the city's mayor.

ANNE VAFIDI: Everything that brings money is good for Dora. The privatisation and the commercialisation are the two factors of success for her.

ALEXIS PAPAHELAS: These games were supposed to be about fun, about people getting together competing in sports but also sort of dancing around the streets and having fun and sort of enjoying the spirit of coming together in peace. That has been completely lost.
Over the years this has become such an enormous enterprise that it has become more of a commercial thing and, of course, security has taken over and the big danger with that is it could become a totally sanitised event, just a televised event filmed within a bubble. Nobody wants that. If it's like that, who cares about the games?