Joburg Trip

Parfles and I went to Jozi / Jo’burg / JHB / Joey’s / John H Burgers last week for a two day wedding of our lovely neighbours.
Sort of conveniently, Jo had a meeting on Friday morning and another on Monday morning, so we decided to make a weekend of it.
Unfortunately, this did mean getting up stupid early on Friday morning (the flight was at 6, so you can imagine what time we had to wake up).

[Skip to the end if you just want the "what I thought of JHB" part...]

Friday

We picked cheap accommodation near to Friday’s wedding, which was great in terms of the (lack of) driving.
The B&B was… interesting. I think it was set up in the 70s and tricked out big style, and looked great.
Since then, though, all they’ve done is clean it every day.
It wasn’t awful, but it was very basic and very old school, and we were looking for somewhere just to sleep, and that was cheap.

The friday wedding was at the very posh Avianto and was great.
It was a nice, smallish, wedding and we met some very cool people.
Alas, the travelling and early wake-up took its toll, and about an hour into the boogie part of the festivities we had to roll home and collapse into bed for sleeeeeep.
Some pictures from Friday’s wedding on Flickr.

Saturday

We decided to asplore a bit and we tripped off to Melville.
It was lovely.
We walked around and looked in a bookshop and had a nice breakfast.
It was leafy and green and sort of Obs-y.
And, what a coincidence, Outer Li JHB is there!
We managed to collar Grant for a coffee and a chat, which was very groovy, as is he.

Then we headed off for the second wedding, a more traditional affair, in Soweto.
This one was more even fun than the Friday.
There was a big mix of people, but we were the only whiteys.
We had a couple of especially cool interactions with the kids, who were surprised / happy / interested to see a white face.
Reminded me a lot of travelling, actually.
My closest frame of reference for the Africanness of the wedding (me being from the UK) is what I can only call Bollywood Extravaganza.
Loads of singing and dancing,by everyone. Full of Win.
Some pictures from Saturday’s wedding on Flickr.

We left as the sun came down, determined not to get lost in Soweto in the dark, which we didn’t.
We did get lost outside Soweto in the dark, though, and spent an hour or so getting through and out of inner city-ish Joburg. Squeak!

For din dins we went to the very posh, very deep into the dark farmlands, Roots restaurant.
Pricey. Excellent, but not amazing. One or two of the six courses blew my socks off (salmon tataki was one), the others were merely good (but still better than most places). Service was also good, but, to be honest, I was expecting better for the price / vibe. Not that they were incompetent, but the overall experience wasn’t particularly smooth, especially the timing – too inconsistent.

Sunday

We decided not to do any touristy things and just to crash the hell out. We were tired!
So went out in the morning, bought a DVD or two to watch later, some wood and food for a braai, then spent the rest of the day in big comfy chairs under a big tree reading big books.
It was big awesome.

Some observations of JHB by me

• Driving. A faster, more concentrate-y, affair than driving in CT, but I kinda liked it. If you’re trying to join the flow of traffic, GP drivers (hmm, coincidence?) give you a gap. You have to be quick, but they do leave you a gap. Also: the onus is on the faster driver to get past the slower, not for the slower to get out of the way. No flashing, honking, get-out-of-the-way bullshit. Just zooming past when there’s a gap.
• Dark. Where are the streetlights on the highways, dammit? And on the signs? And why has the useful reflect-y stuff that has worn out not been replaced? Grr.
• Dry. Probably just me, but I felt dry. Often thirsty, eyes watery.
• Big. Like, totally. Srsly. It takes aaages to get anyway because the distances are so beeg. And I’m not one of these Capetonians* who won’t drive into town from the Southern Suburbs because it’s “far away.”
• Secure. Well, tries to be anyway. funny how just a metre difference in everyone’s wall height (well, often plus electric buzz lines) makes such a difference to the vibe.
• Professional. I’m thinking mostly of waiting staff here, but it was true of other sectors too. The staff are professional. I’m not wanting a waiter totreat me like I’m the Prince of Persia (ahem) of something, but the waiter should have a certain level of respect for the customer, and for themselves and their job. No throwing down of plates or splooshing of beer as the glasses hit the table here. I thoroughly enjoyed being serviced in Jo’burg.**
• Foody. The food there was consistently good, but pricier than CT. CT still better.
• Expensive. In general. I’m sure that part of this is not being a local, but there didn’t seem to be much to do that didn’t invovle handing over large wodges of money. What can you do up there that’s similar to going for a walk in Newlands?

So, I might go back.
If I do I’d like to do so with a native guide.

I’m definitely a Cape Town guy, though.

* – by the way, I am now officially a Permanent Rresident – woot! Picking up the bit of paper was a bit of an anti-climax after all the kak I went through to get it…
** – erm…