Living in another country is not about
having a different time but about learning about it and its culture!
And my last weekend was defiantly one of
those!
Our trip to Johannesburg started early on
Friday morning, right after we brought the children to Kammaland. We drove with
a bus from Pietermaritzburg for about 6 hours.
Suddenly we heard a big buuum, I thought something hit our bus, but the
tire was broken. Hmmm,nice start to begin with. We had to change to another bus
and we were friendly welcomed:” Don’t you have enough money to travel? ”, a
black woman asked us, since it was one of the cheaper buses.
We finally made our way to Parkstation and
looked for a taxi to get to our Couchsurfer. But none of the drivers knew the
address and the phone number he gave us was not working. So we asked a
policeman to help us. He tried to explain the way and finally said that he will
take us, unless it is a problem for us to drive with his car. So when we
arrived at the Couchsurfers house, he was not there and the area he lived in
wasn’t looking to good.
Finally we got to meet Pie and everything was
forgotten. He is such a funny and warm character. He told us that he is from
Rwanda and first lived in exile in South Africa, no he helps other refugees and
gives readings about his refugee and new live! Really interesting! With him we
were even able to walk to the supermarket in the dark. This evening he cooked
spinach from his garden with cassava for us. It was a long evening because Pie
liked dancing a lot and gave us lessons in Kizumba and
Bassata all evening long!
The next morning we went to the Neighborgoodsmarket
in Braamfontein,
where you could buy lots of special food and even got to try some:
D it was delicious! One highlight was a coconut where we could drink from.
Afterwards we went to an Art Gallery. Than we had to walk across the Nelson
Mandela Bridge while it was raining until we reached the Market Theater. We didn’t
look at it for long but tried to flee into a coffee to warm up with a Milo (Hot
Chocolate). In this Coffee there was something like a poetry slam going on,
they even sang. This was one of the things you would never get to know in a
normal vocation.
Our last stop for this day was the Carlton
Centre, the tallest building of Africa, where we had an impuissant view over
Joburg :)
To get back to Pie’s house we had to take a
Minibus taxi of which we were afraid driving with. We looked for one with many
women in it, but we didn’t feel really comfortable. But what should you do, its
public transport: D
After we arrived we cooked a German meal.
Knödel and Kartoffelpuffer…
The evening program was dancing in a Reggae
Club “House of Thandoor”, in the jewel of Joburg. At first everybody looked at
you because we were the only whites in there, but later on many women came and
showed us some African dancing. Totally different compared to our dancing. But
they can move their hips so much better than we can. Back home we kept on
dancing until the middle of the night.
This caused the tired feeling the next
morning. But we decided to go to Arts of Main. Also this time we had to get
there with the public transport, but since Pie came along we felt much safer.
After walking around and eating a self-made
Frozen Yoghurt we watched Pie dancing on the “Rooftop Salsa” before we finally
decided to get in there too. We danced (not as good as he did of course) and
had conversations with Zulu guys about their culture. This was something really
interesting to learn about!
Again, we decided to go to the “House of
Thandoor” to dance. The “Rooftop Salsa” DJ gave us a lift. Since he was born in
Ethiopia, grew up in New York and was hungry haha Pie decided to take him to a
restaurant with typical African food: A type of black fish with chips and
cassava. All eaten with the fingers and
I tried it, it was really nice; D Once again we had a really nice evening!
On Monday we made our way back to Greytown,
without any problems :)
This weekend was way to short but it was
simply wonderful and we learned a lot about the Zulu and Rwanda Culture :)
Have a nice Friday and a nice weekend, I
send you tons of sun since the weather was good until it started to hail couple
hours ago.
Love Fredo
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