A coincidence: The same week we are talking about San Bernardino, California, we arrived in Athens. Greece, not Georgia.

The Parthenon, et cetera.

And we did not spend any great time in the cradle of Western civilization, but we were around long enough to be pretty certain we will never return. Not until they fix the place.

Aggressive beggars, homeless people sleeping on park benches, packs of dogs, broken pavement, crumbling buildings and an air of apathetic desperation really brought home what a crisis Athens and Greece are in.

It was sad and a bit scary and thoroughly depressing.

Greece has one of the most incompetent governments in Europe, is deeply in debt, and may be about to go bankrupt and exit the Euro zone.

Meantime, a left-wing government has been elected because Greece doesn’t believe in paying its bills and doesn’t like austerity and the left-wing guys suggested they could just ignore debts and austerity.

On the street, the sense of looming disaster is palpable. And we were in what is considered one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city, near Syntagma Square.

Even in what is mostly a retail district, we could hardly walk 20 yards without being accosted by touts or beggars.

The news here is filled with Greece and its financial issues with the European Union, and the news stations here seem to be reporting on almost nothing else.

We stayed in a tiny hotel with a peek-a-boo view of the Parthenon, but we were not sure what we would do here after visiting the Acropolis — which I did in 2004, during the Summer Olympics that Greece never should have held.

The city now seems somehow inimical to tourists, who are one of its last income streams of significance, and we could hardly wait to get out to one of the islands, where the tourist shakedown seems at least a bit muted.

I’m sure Athens has positives, too, just as does the town where I used to work.

But I am not sure I would trade San Bernardino’s problems for those of Athens — which seem far deeper, probably more intractable and more pathetic, given the glory Athens has known.