Are We There Yet? by David Smiedt

context of good-natured sporting rivalry.
    Pretoria has always had an air of quiet prosperity about it. The streets are wide, neat and lined with stately jacarandas that wrap a lilac pashmina around the city’s shoulders every spring. Through my childhood and teen years it was decried as a larger regional centre which was to urban sophistication what rhinestones are to denim. Those who had ventured there for business trips entertained us with stories such as the time so-and-so ordered a cappuccino and was told, “Sorry, we’ve run out. Do you mind if I serve it in a mug?” There were also myriad hilarities regarding English-speakers from Johannesburg trying to make it through working lunches with Afrikaners from Pretoria. My favourite involved a cousin who had sailed through one such meal impressing his clients with his bilingual capabilities. Things went downhill rapidly, however, when he meant to order aarbaie (strawberries) for dessert but instead requested ambaie (piles).
    I checked into my hotel in the Hatfield district then took a stroll. As I walked I discovered that the city had undergone a radical metamorphosis. Home to three universities, as well as the University of South Africa, the world’s largest correspondence institution, Pretoria feels like a casting call for Dawson’s Creek.
    Hatfield’s streets were lined with pubs, cafes, clubs and restaurants between which flitted packs of three-sheets engineering faculty lads and cliques of mocha-skinned nymphs wearing gravity-defying hipsters and “yes but not with you” expressions.
    Then there were the Afrikaners. How could a race with such ugly ideas produce such beautiful women? I followed a group of these celestial creatures into a square bounded by four pubs whose patrons were all watching South Africa take on the West Indies in the opening match of the World Cup. Regardless of whether they were in the German, Irish or ultraviolet-suffused Cheeky Monkey bar, punters had draped themselves in flags and cheered every boundary while their bored girlfriends silently wished the overs away.
    Nursing an amber, I occupied a stool in the corner of the Red Wolf bar and was immediately struck by the relaxed nature of the city’s inhabitants. Unlike their counterparts in Johannesburg who clutched their bags to their chests like fullbacks taking a Gary Owen, the women in Pretoria were entirely comfortable leaving their totes on pub tables while ordering a drink at the bar.
    As the game progressed, the home team’s fortunes sank. With defeat looming, you could cut the testosterone with a knife. It soared even higher when a few stultified girlfriends decided they’d had enough of this shared experience and wanted to call it a night.
    There are two things I cannot look away from: one is traffic accidents and the other is a couple arguing in public. Invasive? Perhaps. Intriguing? Certainly. I was entertained by unresolved issues being raised from relationship limbo on three fronts. It was a veritable cavalcade of confrontation as phrases that began with “You never …”, “Well, you always …” and “How was I supposed to know?” ricocheted around me like emotional ammunition.
    Suitably entertained, I made my way to a steakhouse where I spent the meal trying to figure out whether the cowhide motif was horribly inappropriate or merely brutally honest.
    Energised by Pretoria’s vibrancy and the party-till-you-puke philosophy of the locals in this area, I pooh-poohed the idea of returning to the hotel and took to the streets for a stroll, my hands thrust deep in my pockets as I am wont to do in moments of simple contentment.
    I chanced upon a gloriously glitzy pool hall where I played the kind of immaculate stick you do when alone in a foreign country after several stubbies. The table beside mine was being used by a pair of local women in their early twenties who struck up a conversation by asking if I