Of course last minute things kept on popping up on our last day in South Africa (well, last day until September 2011), 20 July 2010: going to get an international driving licence; finding locks for the suitcase, making sure our SA simcards and post box keys etc. were all in the right hands...stress we hopefully won't have again until we leave Germany! After a tearful hug with the dog and the cat we left for the airport at 3pm. Once there, checking in was no problem – our luggage was within the weight limits and our passports were in order. Naturally, we joined friends and family at the Spur to have the last steak (I mean a real steak) that we will have for 14 months. The hours to boarding went too quickly and before we knew it we were crying and hugging and receiving words of wisdom at the last point friends and family were allowed to accompany us. We went through the hand luggage and passport checks without incident (nobody cared – or noticed? - that I had 15 syringes with me!). The band Freshly Ground boarded the plane with us so we felt pretty awesome travelling with celebrities...
On the plane we managed to get some emergency exit seats with extra leg room. Already people in the plane just assumed that we could speak German and started chatting to us – all we could reply with was a stupid look on our faces. Anyway, we were served disgusting wine with delicious lamb stew followed by a selection of movies to bore us to sleep. I wish it worked – we were awake the entire flight (take-off at Johannesburg - 19:25, landing at Frankfurt - 06:10). At about 2am I even lay down in the passage in front of our seats but no luck. At about 4am we were served quiche-shaped egg jelly enough to give the hottest place on earth the shivers. Hence we didn’t eat breakfast at that ungodly hour. Anyway, the landing and baggage collection all went well apart from the tired feeling that I can relate to drinking a whole bottle of bad whiskey the night before. The airport was as impressive as O.R. Tambo and there were many reminders of SA relating to the recent Soccer World Cup held there. Stephan’s uncle, Torsten, picked us up promptly and off we went to the car. This point is really where all English ceased to exist and the striking difference between Germany and SA became apparent.
The first thing we noticed was that most of the manual labourers were eastern European – definitely not German and most definitely not black. Next, the floors at the airport are labelled in hundreds - instead of just ‘1’, ‘2’ or ‘3’ they were ‘100’, ‘200’ and ‘300’ (later I noticed the same on a pizza menu). The majority of people seem to drive station wagons or other non-japanese cars. It is very strange to drive on the right...or wrong....side of the road and of course they drive rather fast here, around 140/160km/h in the middle lane. The highways are built through forests – so far I haven’t seen what we know as ‘suburbs’; much of the highway goes past farms etc. and every now and then one can turn off towards a town with a few villages. We turned off into a town called Waldbreitbach and then drove further to a collection of quaint fairytale houses amidst rolling hills of other such collections and farmlands and grazing cows and horses and and and.......it is all too much to take in for third world city-kids. At Torsten’s house we had some traditional rolls and cold meat and cheese for breakfast, had a brief look around but quickly passed out for about 5 hours to catch up the lost winks.
When we awoke we took a drive to the shop to pick up some potato salad (of course!). Again our brains were overloaded with new things to look at. The trolleys need a couple of euro as deposit before they can be pulled out and when you put it back your euros pop out again. Inside the shop there are not really any international brands...Everything is in German and made in Germany it seems. You can buy 5 litre buckets of chips for 2.50euro, organic things are called ‘bio’ and everything is paprika flavoured. In these dingy looking discount shops (not at all like the vibrant and happy Spars and Pick n Pays in SA) there are random items everywhere – apples, then socks, then bubblegum, then ice-cream, then pens etc. But the people are very friendly; everyone says ‘halo’ but as of yet we have not replied for fear of their striking up a conversation with us only to be met with our blank and stupid faces.
When we got home we had what they call a ‘grill’, which is like a braai except that there is no charcoal, no steak, no boerewors and no chops. Instead, we had some chicken and some tiny pork sausages on a tiny ‘grill’ with tiny pieces of wood. But alas the exceptional German engineered potato salad made up for that. Soon after that, about 8 or 9pm we were fast asleep again even though the sun was still shining down. So far we have not been able to gauge the time of day by looking at the sun since the light and position of the sun in relation to the horizon seems pretty much the same all the time.
The next few days we were not as overwhelmed with new things except for the bitter taste of German bureaucracy as we tried to get all the important things done like opening a bank account, getting phones, registering our address etc. We did however stay up long enough to see the sun set at about 22:30. On Saturday the 24th of August we will be off to Puderbach (where Stephan’s grandmother stays) for her birthday. I won’t make any promises on when I will make another entry documenting our adventure but if anything interesting happens you can read it here.
Bes demnรคchst!
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