Cape Town is often compared to Vancouver. The similarities are not entirely superficial. Both have sublime settings between mountain and sea. Both flaunt their beach culture. Both are major ports and gateways to their respective countries. And now they have something else in common.
A few weeks ago I was visiting Cape Town, the city of my birth. Fever for World Cup football (soccer to us Canadians) was building. The huge new stadium was complete. Excitement was in the warm air, but something else as well, a strange sensation that at first I could not put my finger on. Then it hit me. The city was experiencing something eerily similar to what Vancouver had recently gone through just prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics – a serious attack of nerves about whether they would be ready and able to pull this thing off.
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