So I haven’t abandoned the blog. The last 2 weeks have been rather barmy. I posted the Joburg pictures the night before a horrible 20 hours of crowded connecting flights, balling babies and 2am Abu Dhabi Burger Kings.
After that I managed to fit in a 6 days home-coming tour giving high-fives to friends and family alike before jetting off with Air Canada to my new home until next summer, Toronto, Ontario. Have been in the apartment with dunnez and gill for a week now and am really starting to feel at home. If you want to take a walk around our new neighbourhood, feel free to take a tour using Google Street View (on a side note, I’m still waiting for Drogheda to show up. Myself and my mother spotted the car driving past last year and managed to stand and salute. But, it looks like it’ll be another 9 months or so before that shows up though…).
Click the image above to be a virtual nosey neighbour.
Owly
Looking back on the pictures of the final week in Cape Town is a little bit strange now. It was barely a fortnight ago and yet seems like a lot longer. I saw an ostrich crying blood, climbed “The Lion’s Head”, insultingly said “don’t care, I’ll have whatever the house red is” in the heartland of South Africa’s wine country and saw Germany destroy Argentina 4-0.
And so… having written and talked way too much since the start of June and taken exactly 1501 photos, I feel it wise (and I’ve hung out with some owls in my time so now understand what real wisdom is), to close the South African chapter with a video of me coming down from a high:
possibly coming soon: Man Utd V Celtic thoughts, Bouts, Beaches Jazz Festival, Inception thoughts, Comic Con, Toronto street-cars and North American toilet bowl water displacement discussion.
So back in spring when I was looking at the world cup timetable trying to work out just how I could maximise my time around South Africa, I was really reluctant to apply for any tickets in Johannesburg. When you google “mostdangerous cities” or read articles like this one on CNN, “The world’s most dangerous cities“, there’s not really a lot of reasons to get you to pay a visit to “Jozi”. To quickly put it into perspective, a quick comparison shows the “murder-rate” for South Africa is 49 per 100,000 per year, while Ireland’s is 0.9, and of course most of that is focused around Joburg.
But you have to look at the things with a little perspective. If you go looking for trouble, then chances are you’ll find it. This is going to be true whether you’re on O’Connell Street or in Johannesburg’s CBD. From talking to so many people over here I was told that almost all of those victims of violent crime are gang-related and so not reflective of everyday life. A taxi-man in Durban put it simply, “You aint gonna lose your life brother, maybe just your wallet, eh!”
Joburg is on fire, click image to view gallery "From Durban To Jozi, Photos LITERALLY From The Road"
Typically the first half-hour of my time in Johannesburg would also prove to be my most traumatic. I was driving in from Bloemfontein and was greeted by massive plumes of smoke emanating from the road ahead. Cars weren’t slowing down though, instead it seemed like they were speeding up. Turned out the ditches and hedges along the side of the road were all ablaze.
I later found out this is a winter ritual that people practice all over the state of Guantang as lots of people are forced to walk through bush to work or the shops or wherever and it’s safer and clearer if the growth is all just burnt. Weird. I’d have just bought a strimmer and set of hedge-clippers but hey.
When I wheeled off the freeway and stopped at my first set of Johannesburg traffic lights, or “robots” as they’re known here, I was in for another shock.
"robot"
I was greeted by the sight of a young girl who couldn’t have been much older than 16 seemingly trapped in a manhole. It really was quite the site, and the look in her eyes as she stared at me screaming for help almost made me get out of the car. And then, some instinct just kicks in reminding you what every single piece of safety advice tells you, never get out of your car at traffic lights! They turned green and I floored the little Kia’s accelerator and sped away. I can only assume she was a plant on behalf of some sort of criminal gang trying to get tourists to abandon their cars and get out and help her. I sure hope so. Besides what type of a girl gets stuck in a manhole anyway?
This intro made for one of those moments where you just think, “isn’t it great when a city lives up to its reputation”. I’ve had that experience before when I flew into Paris last winter and saw a monochromatic scene out of the plane’s window as the thick snow covered every inch of the city with the only black appearing where the city council had cleared the roads. But this Joburg introduction was something else!
The other thing that stressed me out on day one was the accommodation. What’s this, me, moaning about my place of rest on my blog? That’s a new one! Oh no wait, no it isn’t:Â Bloemfontein…Â Anyway I was staying in the Ball n Kicka Fan village. This was far from my first choice, but they were close to the park and rides and promised good security and parking and all that stuff and were one of the few options still with vacancies. At R500 a night, it was far from cheap, but hey it couldn’t be that bad, right?
I should have smelt a rat when I checked the terrible online reviews a few days before checking in, but at that stage they’d already charged my credit card due to their “FIFA World Cup special pre-stay payment system”. So anyway, imagine 6 annoying univeristy students being put in charge of a accommodation management for 400 football fans and you get a picture of the standard of administration here. Now I didn’t mind the tiny cold room or the lack of the advertised wifi, but when you’re being so badly ripped off it’s at least nice to see your assailant with a smile on their face, rather than the sullen hang-dog expression all the staff seemed to possess there. But amazingly I’ve still found 3 positives for the Ball N Kicka! Bring on the bullet points!
–
Got to do some stereotype spotting. It was just like being in a prison movie. Best one was the group of overweight Argentinians who wore bandanas and had taken control over the laundry room timetable.
Met the Australian version of me, Daniel. Left a media job in a magazine to travel around for the month by himself. Great company for the 2 games we went to.
Food stamps. More prison style logic. While there was a big bar and canteen-style restaurant on site, these only accepted vouchers, which you had to buy from an old woman in a little hut. So you’d end up swapping a “chicken burger w/ egg” for “beer” instead of having to leave the bar and queue up again. Hilarious.
Soccer City meets Drogheda United
The two games I went to were both great. Soccer City goes straight to the top of my favourite stadiums list. It’s unlike any other ground I’ve ever been in and the reception for the Argentina team was incredible.
To go to Ellis Park the next night to see Brazil take on Chile was a nice wee adventure too. It’s quite a historic ground due to that whole Mandela/Pienaar 1995 Rugby World Cup thing, so great to say I’ve been there. But it lacks the nice design considerations that all the FIFA-funded grounds like Soccer City, Cape Town’s Green Point Stadium or Durban’s Moses Madhiba Stadium have. Brazil had the game sewn up quite early on and I genuinely thought I was watching the champions elect, but we’ve subsequently found out this is not to be the case. I have watched all four of the semi-finalists through the course of the tournament and Brazil were by far the most dominant side that I saw. But I guess it’s what you bring to the table in the crunch quarter-finals where you’re really challenged that really matters.
We all took the park and ride shuttle bus to both games which was a fun experience. The city of Johannesburg has invested really heavily in a new commuter bus system, Rea Vaya, which it now hopes will continue to be popular after the world cup. From my own experience, and I know this is tainted by the world cup, it was fast, safe and cheap. If it gets more people out of the dangerous minibus taxis then it can only be a good thing.
Aswell as visiting the famous Apartheid Museum (powerful stuff, presume my reaction was the same as the millions who’ve visited before so I won’t discuss it here), I also went to a transport museum and a lion park, which were both lots of fun, though for very different reasons! Gotta love dem buses.
Soweto butchers
On the second-last day in Johannesburg I went to Soweto on a bicycle tour. Soweto (South-western township) is one of those things everyone says you have to do if you’re in Joburg. I was sort of sceptical though, as from what I could work out most tours just drive round and encourage people to look out their window and take pictures of some of South Africa’s most poverty-stricken areas. I knew I wasn’t going to do something like that, but when I heard about Lebo’s Soweto Bicycle Tours, I thought maybe a tour could be done with a bit of dignity. And I hadn’t cycled anywhere in a month so figured now’s the chance!
Our guide was great as he grew up in the area (calling Soweto an area undersells it, an estimated 1.3million people live there with an insane population density of nearly 23,000 people per square mile according to the Wikipedia entry) and so knew exactly where to go to get a sense of the place. And lets be fair any place that has housed the likes of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and plays such an integral place in the history of apartheid-era South Africa is worth a visit.
We would park up the bikes every few minutes and, shock horror, just stop and talk to people. Got to have some nice shibeen brewed beer (bitter and milky but strangely enjoyable) and some strange meat from some type of antelope if I remember correctly (amazingly nice. I love antelope). I reckon the cycling and walking meant there were none of the superiority complexes that you would no doubt develop in an air-conditioned Mercedes mini-bus. I’m trying not to be patronising here (they don’t call me patro-nige for nothing), but meeting some of the local kids was pretty heart-warming too. When they come up to you and pull on your t-shirt and point to your camera and say “shoot me”, even if you have any social reservations about taking their picture you pretty much have to do it, or else you’ve made some nasty little enemies! Plus they loved actually seeing their picture afterwards on the camera, nice to think you can still make someone’s day just by taking their picture. Anyway, enough patronising, safe to say Soweto gets a big thumbs-up.
Soweto
Overall Joburg isn’t somewhere to be afraid of. I’ve already written too much I didn’t venture out too much after dark anywhere other than the stadiums, nor did I go looking for any drugs, fire-arms or prostitutes. And that mentality seems to have worked as it looks like I managed to get out of their alive.
Here’s a celebratory vuvuzela chorus from just after Argentina beat Mexico 3-1:
outro: am actually now back in Joburg in a hostel after a great few days in Cape Town. My Etihad flight returns to Dublin tomorrow. Sad times. I’ve more South Africa pictures/writing/recapping to do though, and something tells me the fact I move to Canada next Tuesday may be worthy of an entry or two…
So I left Durban a fortnight ago now knowing it was 6 days until my next game, Switzerland V Honduras in Bloemfontein. I had a something booked for Bloem from Wednesday onward but had 3 nights in between to try keep myself amused.
The only photo I remembered to take in Clarens. Ooops.
So with time to kill and a huge part of a continent to see, I set out for tiny town of Clarens which is a town about 5 hours inland of Durban just before you turn the corner west for Free State. The drive was fantabulous, passing through the edges of the Drakensberg mountain range, featuring some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever had to avoid looking at for fear of crashing. As you leave the coast you really feel the landscape changing quite dramatically with big rugged mountain peaks springing up from the flat plains that surround Durban.
Anyway, I ended up having to stay in a big impersonal hotel in Clarens, The Protea. It charged R50 (€5) for half an hour of internet access but my bed came with 6 pillows. Hmmm. I’d rather have free wifi and sleep on the floor…
From the little mountain village of Clarens, the red Kia Picanto and I set off west into the province of Free State. Up until 1994 it was called The Orange Free State, and still shows a lot of the social divisions that would have existed during the Apartheid Era. This is particularly evident in any restaurant you go to. Typically the restaurant manager is white, all the waiting staff are black, and are serving tables that have a distinctive black or white group. While there are no longer signs saying “Coloured only†or “European areaâ€, but it wasn’t until I got to the younger university town of Bloemfontein that I finally saw a racially mixed group dining together.
Anyways, I actually drove right across all the sparse farmland of Free State to Kimberley, which is on the very eastern edge of the province of the Northern Cape. If you look at a map of South Africa you always see this huge section in the north-east of the country with nothing marked in it. This is not a printing error. This is the wild untamed Northern Cape! And I can happily report that there is indeed nothing there. A guy I befriended in a pub told me there’s an old saying about the area that if you invite your neighbour over for dinner, you’ll see him leaving his farm over the horizon at breakfast time. I always thought that phrase was about the American mid-west or Australia outback, but hey it’s applicable here too so I wasn’t going to start a fight. To spice up this, I think we’ll have some bullet points…
Some facts about Kimberley:
In 1873, Kimberley was the second largest town in South Africa with 13,000 whites and 30,000 blacks. It is now the 15th.
On 2 September 1882, Kimberley became the first town in the southern hemisphere to install electric street lighting.
The British built a concentration camp at Kimberley to house Boer women and children during the second Boer War.
The first electric tram in South Africa was launched here in 1904.
The BIG hole, Kimberley
So yeah, one hundred years ago this was the place to be. To give a little background… Kimberley was formed when some kids found a shiny looking stone in a river. Turned out to be a diamond. And next thing you know you have an entire town built around a mining community. These smart European entrepreneurs got lots of black slaves to dig a hole which you now visit. It’s the biggest hand-excavated hole in the entire world and was pretty damn cool. But ultimately, like the town, it’s really just a hole.
Outside of the big hole and accompanying recreated Victorian town thing they’ve got going on around The Big Hole, the accommodation in Kimberley is what interested me most. Having stayed in hostels, hotels, apartments and houses I decided to get my checklist out and tick off B&B [TICK] and Country Farm [TICK]! The B&B was just like what you’d get at home, but the farm was a right old laugh. They had antelopes, warthogs, horses and geese and a whole load of old machinery and Victorian bits and bobs which were great. You could even take a bit of a mini-safari hike around the land which I happily did before it got dark. It was great and brilliant for a change. It was also the first time I’ve experienced complete darkness and silence in a very long time. I was half-expecting some Bafana Bafana fan in over-sized glasses and builder’s hat to pop out from behind a bush with a vuvuzela ruining the moment.
My room in the B&B #1 - the host family...
After Kimberley, came Bloemfontein, a “buzzingâ€, “vibrant†student town. When I went to look for a hostel here, I thought I’d spelt the town’s name wrong or something as there was literally nothing showing up. So i used iStopover again, which set me up with the most uncomfortable 3 nights in my trip so far. The proprietor, a “man who likes to drink†named Glen had basically turned his house into a makeshift B&B for the duration of the World Cup. Now that sounds like noble behaviour, but when all six original inhabitants of the house decide to stay living there by moving into one bedroom then things get weird.
When I arrived the grandmother was asleep in her chair by the window in the sitting room. From what I can work out I was staying in her and her husband’s room. There was minimal effort made to hide this fact as their was a wedding photo above the bed along with some old medication and other elderly person bits and bobs. I half expected to find a pair of false-teeth under the pillow but luckily this didn’t transpire. The maid was black and practically unacknowledged and just observing this ingrained social structure at play leaves a pretty sickly feeling. On the last night, the host even came into my room a little drunk and revealed he hated  soccer and real men player rugby. Thanks for that Glen!
By coincidence I read a brilliant article by David Smith just yesterday on Bloemfontein on the Guardian’s website, “The discomforting subplot to the World Cup’s rainbow nation narrative“. Gives an interesting perspective from a journalist living here the whole time away from the sheltered euphoria that most football correspondents are conveying in their reports. Oh look more bullet points…
Facts about Bloemfontein:
The name Bloemfontein means “fountain of flowers”.
The writer J. R. R. Tolkien was born in the city on 3 January 1892. Though his family moved away when he was four.
The ANC was founded here on 8 January 1912.
The city’s Sesotho name is Mangaung, meaning “place of cheetahs”. There’s ongoing talks to officially rename the city of Bloemfontein to Manguang.
"Sheepy" - Oliewenhuis sculpture garden
There’s not a whole lot to be done there, but I did happen upon one of the finest modern art museums I’ve seen, the Oliewenhuis. It’s not very big but whoever the curator is has done a great job maximising what they’ve got. I won’t go through everything as there’s too much to recall. Some highlights included a brilliant map of Zimbabwe woven together from shredded dollar bills, a sheep sculpture garden and fantastic grounds where I just sat and read for 3 hours after the tour.
I also visited a zoo. Which, in a country so famous for huge nature parks, was a little unsettling. Considering I’ve seen so many animals in their natural habitat while here, it was a bit crap to see the lions in a 20mx30m enclosure bored out of their trees. (I know lions don’t live in trees). Ditto for the elephants… I guess it did allow for some great close-up photos, but I’d still rather the excitement of quick sighting in a 630 square miles nature reserve. But hey I’m the goonie who splashed 40ZAR on it…
Finally, I guess the only other thing of note I did while here was check out a 3d screening of a World Cup game. I’ve been ever so slightly sceptical of all things 3D when it comes to live football, but I guess it was a bit of a novelty so I went and paid my 100ZAR and sat down to watch Germany V Ghana.
WOW, it's like the refs are warming up ON MY FACE!
The first thing I noticed is the lack of cameras they have to use. This is an obvious side-effect of the fact that you are only seeing the feed from whatever cameras at the stadium are equipped to handle 3D with the two special lenses and all that. This means you end up with maybe 4 cameras, which for a guy who has watched quite a lot of League of Ireland games on the TV is a lot, but in this world cup where we’re used to multiple replays from up to 30 different cameras it’s a strange experience. But the 3D does bring some moments to life and makes for quite an immersive experience. Though I will add I had no idea what to do at half-time. So I did what I would do at a normal football match and went for a wee. But not before taking off the glasses of course…
What a crazy day of quarter-final action that was. I watched both Brazil 1-2 Netherland and Ghana 1-1 Uruguay (Uru win 4-2 on penalties) in a nice wee pub (or “the only pub” as you could also call) in Simon’s Town, which is a sea-side village an hour south of Cape Town. Flew in from Joburg on Wednesday and headed down to the Cape of Good Hope area for 2 nights just to mix it up a little bit at the start of my final week here. Anyway while the pub may not have had any other proper football fans (typical white Afrikaans crowd not knowing the rules and wishing they were watching the Springboks), it was still quite a day.
Last night’s second quarter-final was the most entertaining and open knock-out game we’ve seen so far. I wish everyone would shut up about Luis Suarez’s handball in the 120th minute though, it’s how the system works. He made a choice to handle it and is punished by conceding a penalty and getting a red-card which results in him missing the semi-final. That’s how the rules works, anyone would have done it. Asamoah Gyan should really be the one who is villified as there was no need to take an extravagant blasted penalty like that. You can almost forgive someone for having a penalty saved, but there’s no excuse for not getting it on target (*cough* Chris Waddle, Roberto Baggio, Diana Ross *cough*). And for the record, I’ve NEVER missed a penalty at the world cup so do know what I’m talking about.
So it’s cheerio Ghana. I’m not sure whether it’s because Uruguay were one of my picks before the tournament started or because “Baghana Baghana” were terrible for huge parts of every game they’ve played but yeah I’m delighted to see them go through. I think if Uruguay can get their captain Diego Lugano back for the semi-final we could well see them in the world cup final. Which is ridiculous considering there’s only 6 or 7 teams who have made the final in the last 30 years. But it’s been quite a barmy tournament so far so anything could happen.
But of course to make the final they have to beat the Netherlands who managed to knock out the tournament’s favourites, Brazil. I have no problem with Holland but was absolutely gutted to see South Africa’s second most popular yellow team go out. I thought about it afterwards and realised it’s probably partly due to the fact I’ve loved watching them play under Dunga (I’m in the minority there I know), but also as I had a big rake of bets on them to win. Now they have to find a new manager to lead them into the 2014 finals. Which, because they’re taking place in Brazil, suggests there’ll be a little bit of pressure on whoever comes in… My money is on Leonardo. He left Milan after “difficulties” with Berlusconi and he is probably the logical choice. I’ll bet Luiz-Felipe Scolari wishes he hadn’t taken the Palmeiras job last month as surely he would have been the Brazilian’s FA’s first port of call.
Anyway, got into Cape Town CBD this morning and am heading off to Argentina V Germany later. After a bit of haggling and online negotiation, I got the ticket from an Italian guy who made me drive to his house to pick it up. I assumed I was going to be target of a hit but that wasn’t the case. Got it for something like €190, which isn’t too bad considering it has a face value of €160. Should be an absolute classic though, every game I’ve seen so far has had a very obvious favourite, but with this I have no idea what’s going to happen. My heart says Argentina but for some reason I can see Germany taking it. Hopefully both teams continue with the flair and spirit that’s brought them this far though.
A week ago I attempted to make some predictions. What a stupid idea. I only got five out of the eight last-16 games correct and my overall picks, Brazil, are now gone. D’oh. Anyway for the sake of sticking my neck out I think we’re see a Spain V Uruguay final… (13/2 – 4th most likely outcome right now according to the bookies….)
Also I realised the other day I’ll be in the middle of flying back to Ireland when the second semi-final is on. Not cool. Ah well.
I know it’s illegal to take pictures while driving…
These are some quick poorly framed and lit snapshots I took, mostly with my phone, over the last 10 days or so while driving between Durban and Johannesburg via Free State. I kind of like the weird gritty feel that the Nokia E51 brings to the party. And don’t forget to click the little speech bubble in the bottom left to get the captions.
This video is the mark of a man slowly going insane:
It’s me stuck at some “roadworks”. These stopovers are an industry onto themselves. Two people are needed to wave the red flag at you, they get a phonecall from someone else a few miles down the road when they can earn their wages and switch to waving the green flag. Depending on the traffic and the length of the road affected, you might be stuck there for anything up to 30 minutes. In which time you see the contents of a long-distance minibus taxi spill out onto the road as people go for a piss or a cigarette. The equivalent stock of a Tesco fruit & veg department gets offered to you by some clever entrepreneur and invariably someone in the line of traffic will have fallen asleep and will have to get a few honks to get started again.
Still though, it’s all a lot less stressful than the M50.
PS, proper write-ups and pics of Free State and Jozi soon! It’s been a funny week…
Enjoy your spell here, don't linger too long though, I'll run out of milk.
Keep up to date with the sporadic updates by subscribing to the blog's RSS feed here, and feel free to visit my twitter, @wheatln2, for more of the same.
What a crazy day of quarter-final action that was. I watched both Brazil 1-2 Netherland and Ghana 1-1 Uruguay (Uru win 4-2 on penalties) in a nice wee pub (or “the only pub” as you could also call) in Simon’s Town, which is a sea-side village an hour south of Cape Town. Flew in from Joburg on Wednesday and headed down to the Cape of Good Hope area for 2 nights just to mix it up a little bit at the start of my final week here. Anyway while the pub may not have had any other proper football fans (typical white Afrikaans crowd not knowing the rules and wishing they were watching the Springboks), it was still quite a day.