Even though
I’m living in Johannesburg for more than five weeks now, so far I didn’t see a
lot of the city. I know some places close to Turffontein, where I live, like
the next Spar, a mall, our Gym, the hospital and park station, Johannesburg’s
central station. Slowly but surely we don’t need to navigate with GPS on our
cellphones everytime that we go somewhere anymore. It feels good to know the most
important ways and slowly getting used to our area. But anyway we only knew
very few places in Johannesburg because even if we were driving through the
city we were always using the same streets. That’s why this weekend we decided
to act like real tourists and take place in a tour with the red tourist buses
that we had seen driving through the city. Accompanied by five other German
volunteers I started my tour at the park station going on to places like Gandhi
Square, Gold Reef City and Constitution Hill. During our tour we got a lot of
interesting information about Johannesburg – about its foundation in 1886 and
its past as gold mining city, about its names origin that isn’t quite sure
because Johann was a very common Dutch name, and about its many nicknames like
Joburg, Jozi or eGoli, which is Zulu and means place of gold. We also went to
the Top Of Africa, a viewing platform on the 50th floor of the
Carlton Centre that was Africa’s tallest building for 41 years. As the weather
was very clear we had a great view all over the city.
To complete
our tour we went to the Neighbourgoods Market in Braamfontein that offers a lot of
fresh food, speciality goods and clothes. Many people meet here every Saturday
and it’s in the middle of the cultural centre for arts and entertainment. Even
though Johannesburg isn’t very pretty on the first look, it’s places like
Braamfontein that characterise the city’s very own flair.
To round
off the day we went to a “typical German” Bierfest in Montecasino and it was
very funny to see what South Africans think how Germans dress! We also had a
lot of fun with songs like “Polonäse Blankenese” and “Viva Colonia” that probably
almost no one except us could understand but everyone tried to sing anyway.
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