ABSTRACT
Nikolay Ermakov pondered the landscape as the taxi powered around the bends in the road above the sea leading to Cape Town. So different from his native St. Petersburg, where he would soon return to report to his boss, retail entrepreneur Luba Petrova, the prospects of opening a Woolworths2 in Moscow. Rolling hills of lush vineyards rose to meet mountains of indeterminate shape, dotted with graceful white houses where, Nikolay knew, good wine was waiting for him to taste it. As Cape Town came into view, Nikolay felt his well-traveled brain struggling to position it. Almost Southern United States, but too colorful and prosperous-looking. Almost South of France, but with a colonial air and Anglo-Saxon order. Almost an English spa town, but gone wild with color and peppered with palm trees, spread out below a most extraordinary fl attopped mountain. He was about to learn about the specifi c character of South African places and people that could only be described as South African . . .
