{"id":640,"date":"2019-03-21T19:43:51","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T18:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zeus.bitvalve.org\/blogs\/headingsouth\/wp\/?p=640"},"modified":"2019-03-21T19:43:51","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T18:43:51","slug":"in-and-around-cape-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"In And Around Cape Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a smooth journey (shoutout to KLM!) with a short stopover in Amsterdam, we arrived in Cape Town airport at around 23:00 local time, where we picked up our car and then drove into the city to our hotel for the next two nights. I had driven on the left side in Scotland before so I thought that it wouldn’t be so big of a deal, but what can I say, I guess it was \ud83d\ude42 For a little while I felt like learning to drive all over again: judging the width of the car while sitting on the right side (weird in itself) is not trivial, switching gears with the left hand is odd and last but not least, staying on the left side of the road when turning left is hard. Anyways, we arrived safely and woke the next day after a good night of sleep without any jet lag (how nice is that?) as South Africa is roughly the same time zone as home.<\/p>\n

The next day we spent strolling through the city past the various must-see sites. Particularly impressive is Cape Town Castle close to the ocean, which was built by the Dutch around Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company as a fortification for their “refreshment station” for ships passing by on the sea route to India and East Asia. We also visited the District Six Museum, which commemorates the forced relocation of 60’000 non-white citizens from this district to outside of the Cape Town to give the precious real estate to white people instead. The museum contained a large number of exhibits from those dark days and our guide, who lived in District Six at that time and was forced out, added a personal note to the sad story. We concluded the day with delicious dinner at a traditional (yet a bit touristy) restaurant where we got served ostrich, kudu and springbok filet along with a lamb stew, all of which was fantastic!<\/p>\n

In the plane to Cape Town, we had gotten to know Peter, a physician from Canada who had grown up in South Africa where he had attended a German school, and he had given us many helpful tips and recommendations for our trip around the cape. As the friends he was visiting had to work, we decided to take him up on his offer to accompany us on a car ride around the Cape of Good Hope and act as tour guide in return. We particularly liked Peter’s focus on beautiful nature as well as delicious food, which is exactly what we were looking for \ud83d\ude42 We drove along countless beautiful beaches with hardly any people (for European standards) lined by beautiful mountains and windy roads (by now the left-hand traffic was working much smoother, apart from the occasional lapse of turning onto the right-hand side, accompanied by frantic shouting from the two other passengers…). When I once took a wrong road and then tried to turn around in a township, Peter scolded me that if I had done during the day, we easily could have been robbed of our car and potentially much more, as criminality in these shantytowns (euphemism for slum) is very high… After at shock, we had another delicious lunch in a beautiful little seafood restaurant right on the shore before returning to Cape Town.<\/p>\n

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Nach einer reibungslosen Reise (Cheers KLM!) mit einem kurzen Zwischenstopp in Amsterdam kamen wir gegen 23:00 Uhr Ortszeit am Flughafen Kapstadt an, wo wir unser Auto abholten und dann f\u00fcr die n\u00e4chsten zwei N\u00e4chte in die Stadt zu unserem Hotel fuhren. Ich war vorher in Schottland auf der linken Seite gefahren, also dachte ich, dass es keine so gro\u00dfe Sache sein w\u00fcrde, aber was soll ich sagen, ich sch\u00e4tze, es war wohl schwieriger als gedachte \ud83d\ude42 F\u00fcr eine Weile hatte ich das Gef\u00fchl, wieder ganz von vorne anzufangen: Die Breite des Autos zu beurteilen, w\u00e4hrend ich auf der rechten Seite sitze (seltsam an sich), ist nicht trivial, das Schalten mit der linken Hand ist seltsam und last but not least ist es schwer, beim Abbiegen nach links auf der linken Stra\u00dfenseite zu bleiben. Wie auch immer, wir kamen sicher an und wachten am n\u00e4chsten Tag nach einer guten Nacht ohne Jetlag (wie sch\u00f6n ist das?) auf, da S\u00fcdafrika ungef\u00e4hr die gleiche Zeitzone wie zu Hause ist.<\/p>\n

Am n\u00e4chsten Tag verbrachten wir einen Spaziergang durch die Stadt an den verschiedenen Sehensw\u00fcrdigkeiten vorbei. Besonders beeindruckend ist das Kapstadtschloss in Meeresn\u00e4he, das von den Niederl\u00e4ndern um Jan van Riebeeck von der Dutch East India Company als Festung f\u00fcr ihre “Verpflegungsstation” f\u00fcr Schiffe auf dem Seeweg nach Indien und Ostasien gebaut wurde. Wir besuchten auch das District Six Museum, das an die Zwangsumsiedlung von 60’000 nicht-wei\u00dfen B\u00fcrgern aus diesem Bezirk nach ausserhalb von Kapstadt erinnert, um stattdessen die kostbare Immobilie an Wei\u00dfe zu \u00fcbergeben. Das Museum enthielt eine gro\u00dfe Anzahl von Exponaten aus jenen dunklen Tagen, und unser Reiseleiter, der damals im Sechsten Bezirk lebte und vertrieben wurde, f\u00fcgt der traurigen Geschichte eine pers\u00f6nliche Note hinzu. Wir beendeten den Tag mit einem k\u00f6stlichen Abendessen in einem traditionellen (und doch etwas touristischen) Restaurant, wo wir Strau\u00dfen-, Kudu- und Springbockfilet zusammen mit einem Lammeintopf serviert bekamen, was alles fantastisch war!<\/p>\n

Im Flugzeug nach Kapstadt hatten wir Peter kennengelernt, einen Arzt aus Kanada, der in S\u00fcdafrika aufgewachsen war, wo er eine deutsche Schule besucht hatte, und er hatte uns viele hilfreiche Tipps und Empfehlungen f\u00fcr unsere Reise um das Kap gegeben. Da die Freunde, die er besuchte, arbeiten mussten, beschlossen wir, sein Angebot anzunehmen, uns auf einer Autofahrt um das Kap der Guten Hoffnung zu begleiten und im Gegenzug als Reiseleiter zu fungieren. Uns hat vor allem Peters Fokus auf sch\u00f6ne Natur und leckeres Essen gefallen, was genau das ist, was wir gesucht haben \ud83d\ude42 Wir fuhren entlang unz\u00e4hliger sch\u00f6ner Str\u00e4nde mit kaum Menschen (f\u00fcr europ\u00e4ische Verh\u00e4ltnisse), ges\u00e4umt von sch\u00f6nen Bergen und kurvenreichen Stra\u00dfen (inzwischen funktionierte der Linksverkehr viel besser, abgesehen vom gelegentlichen Versuch auf die rechte Seite der Stra\u00dfe abzubiegen, begleitet von hektischem Rufen der beiden anderen Passagiere….). Als ich einmal versehentlich falsch abbog und danach in einem Township wendete, schimpfte mich Peter, dass wenn man das in der Nacht getan h\u00e4tte, man leicht seines Autos h\u00e4tte beraubt werden k\u00f6nnen, da die Kriminalit\u00e4t in diesen Shantytowns (Euphemisms f\u00fcr Slum) sehr hoch ist… Nach dem Schreck hatten wir ein weiteres leckeres Mittagessen in einem sch\u00f6nen kleinen Fischrestaurant direkt am Ufer, bevor wir nach Kapstadt zur\u00fcckkehrten.<\/p>\n

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After a smooth journey (shoutout to KLM!) with a short stopover in Amsterdam, we arrived in Cape Town airport at around 23:00 local time, where we picked up our car and then drove into the city to our hotel for the next two nights. I had driven on the left side in Scotland before so … Continue reading In And Around Cape Town<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/headingsouth.bitvalve.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}