Mandela lived in this area after he finished his education and he lived with his first wife and the kids. His house was turned into a museum and we were able to visit inside. This one bedroomish apartment with no seperate kitchen or bathroom was still considered as a quality space to live in. Overall, reading about the movements to abolish the apartheid with the efforts from Hector Pierson, 13 year old kid that was shot to death in his high school due to uprising, has shown me that it took a lot of will power from all kinds of sources and backgrounds to get the job done and move to a democratic Rep of SA.
Our day tour of South Africa culture continued at the Apartheid Museum, which was a massive 'history book' in itself. The entire museum was full of video and audio clips from different times including pre and post Apartheid era. They had a special Mandela exhibit that was fascinating as well. Learning about the details of this amazing guy makes you want to constantly do something good for the world. He is true leader and led his country by an example after suffering through 28 years in a Robben Island prison. I certainly will do more research about him when I get back home for sure.
After the museum trip we wanted to relax abit and headed to the Sandton area. As I mentioned before this is the Beverly Hills of South Africa and seeing both Soweto and Sandton which are 20 mins apart from each other shows you a good deal of mix of the rainbow country.
Putting our soccer hats on again, we were curious about the ticket prices for the Final game. We had the tickets and
Last 4 days of this amazing trip in South Africa had full of excitement, joy and surprises all packed into it. On Saturday we started the day with visiting the famous SoWeTo (South Western Townships) area where many of the anti-apartheid movement took place in 70s thru 90s. It was quite eye opening to see the difference in lifestyle in these townships. We went to the area around 10am and almost the entire town was visiting the church even though it wasn't a Sunday. As we walked around the Vilakazi street that resided Nelson Mandela's house we were pleasently surprised by a local kid that approached us and asked if he could sing the South Africa's national anthem. This 10 year old kid had the most amazing voice and sang the anthem beautifully. Knowing that the anthem had 4 different languages in itself it sounded pretty cool to hear the differences in dialect between Afrikaans and Zulu even though I did not understand a word of it.
Mandela lived in this area after he finished his education and he lived with his first wife and the kids. His house was turned into a museum and we were able to visit inside. This one bedroomish apartment with no seperate kitchen or bathroom was still considered as a quality space to live in. Overall, reading about the movements to abolish the apartheid with the efforts from Hector Pierson, 13 year old kid that was shot to death in his high school due to uprising, has shown me that it took a lot of will power from all kinds of sources and backgrounds to get the job done and move to a democratic Rep of SA.
Our day tour of South Africa culture continued at the Apartheid Museum, which was a massive 'history book' in itself. The entire museum was full of video and audio clips from different times including pre and post Apartheid era. They had a special Mandela exhibit that was fascinating as well. Learning about the details of this amazing guy makes you want to constantly do something good for the world. He is true leader and led his country by an example after suffering through 28 years in a Robben Island prison. I certainly will do more research about him when I get back home for sure.
After the museum trip we wanted to relax abit and headed to the Sandton area. As I mentioned before this is the Beverly Hills of South Africa and seeing both Soweto and Sandton which are 20 mins apart from each other shows you a good deal of mix of the rainbow country.
Putting our soccer hats on again, we were curious about the ticket prices for the Final game. We had the tickets and for some crazy price we may consider selling them. Our logic was if it covered the entire trip we would sell the final tickets and watch the game at a fan fest. The face value for the final ticket was $900 and the best offer was not even twice that. The demand wasn't that crazy compared to Germany in 2006 where the scalper were selling the final tix for $4k-$5k. Oh well I wanted to experience the final experience anyways. Flew all the way down here and had to see the final right?
For our last Saturday night we planned on meeting Thomas's German friends at Melville to watch the 3rd place game vs Uruguay. As much as no one cared about this consolation game they usually ended up being on of the more exciting games since both teams are relaxed at this point and would not play under pressure. The game was a fantastic piece of action. At one point I was convinced Forlan was going to win the game for his Uruguayans but German engine with a little help from the Uruguay goalie did not allow that. Final score 3-2 Germany with Forlán hittig the post on the last second of thr Injury time. Crazy game. We celebrated the win with other Germans at the restaurant and headed to our now 'local' bar called Six. No Swazi girl to hang out this time but we enjoy each others company with couple of other Spanish guys joining us. From the conversations I understood that the best way to see the rest of the cool sites of Africa you have to come here for a
temp assignments. These guys were doing consulting and have traveled to Bostwana, seen the beautiful beaches of Mozambiqu and have traveled through landlocked countries like Lesoto and Swaziland. Tanzania was most of their favs as well. Maybe in another lifetime I will make it here again. I am not sure how but would love to come back again do the rest of the Africa.
Sunday was the game day and we didn't plan anything else on this day. Our hostel was full of international folks from Argentina Chile Holland Germany Spain and couple of US and Canadian guys were hanging out as well. We were pregaming with the World Cup CD that I made and drinking some local beer. With a group of six, two Candians, an American, a Colombian and us, headed to the stadium with the local buses that were organized by Fifa.
As we headed inside the stadium you could feel the excitement and the tension amongst Spanish and Dutch fans. Both of them never won a world cup ever Dutchies coming close with two finals. The famous Octopus Paul predicted the Spanish win before the game and he is 7 out 7 so far predicting every Germany game correctly. I did some serious shopping at the offical FIFA store before game getting some cool stuff as a souvenior.
Before the game started there was the closing ceramony. South Africans put an amazing show to the fans and Shakira did the waka waka songs live. I practically finished a 8gb mem card today and moved to my 4gb hoping that it should cover rest of the trip. The final of the closing ceramony featured my man Mandela at 92 years old with a 37 degree cold weather toured the entire stadium. Spirits of every single 85,000 fans out there went up and they all stood up to greet Madiba.
And the game... To be honest I was expecting more of an exciting goal scoring Finale knowin that both teams play open football with attacking mind. What was interesting is that the famous Dutch Total Football were be displayed by both teams since the Dutch egend Johan Cruyff implemented that style of fottball in Barcelona and the 7 out of the first 11 Spanish team was playing for Barca. Spain controlled more of the possesion but Holland had the more clear chances with Robben missing two be the national hero twice. Ramos and Fabregas misses for Spain made a 0-0 final result. The referee Howard Webb went too crazy with his yellow cards. 14 yellows and a red card was too crazy and to be honest be couldn't manage the game well. He ended up making mistakes as well. We had to wait until 116th minute for Iniesta to score the game winning goal with a nice shot with his right foot. I was rooting for Spain and felt pretty extatic at the moment but I did feel bad
for Dutchies to be honest. I think they deserved to winit too but you got to capitalize on your chances. Final score 1-0 to Spain and they are the crown Champions of 2010 World Cup. Viva la Espana! Ole ole ole Ole Ole...
As the game went to overtime and temp continously dropping a degree every 5 mins or so we started freezing after the game. I think I had 4 layers of clothing but still.. The biggest game of my life was over. It has been a great tournament...
Monday was our true free day. There was really only one thing left that we haven't checked it off from our list- visiting the famous Lion Park. Coming all the way to Africa and not doing a Safari trip would not be a completed job. Lion park was 45 mins from our hostel and as we got inside we right away were greeted by the lovely giraffe. He had his special food that I fed him with. He had this huge tongue that would grab that food like a lizard. It was amazing though.. Whenever he felt like eating he would come and go back when he is done with you. Beautiful animal truly.
For the lovely lions we were warned to be pretty careful with them not to open the window, obviously not get out of the car. We did our own tour which was the best. There were total of 4 lion camps that we toured. Each camp had 8-10 lions with only one male lion and rest of them lionesses. It was truly amazing to see big ass lion walking 10 feet away from you. And they are no different than a cat if you think about it. Does the same streching move and licking his own paws. Ok maybe little bit more dangerous :) even sudden moves like getting your hand out of your car or standing up would trigger thier instincts to see you as a prey. They all lived in a harmony and whoever messes up that harmony they would get rid of that thing as I heard on of the tour guides explained. Also he mentioned that lions in the wild will live around 10-12 years and the ones in these camps were would survive until 20. Took amazing close up with these giant cats will share them
as well.
The finale of the lion park tour was to meet and greet the lion cubs. We had a five minute timeframe to pad them and rake bunch of pictures. My fav was quite white in color and he had his paw stuck on my sweater. This was the most amazing of all. To play with a lion and pad him like he is your own cat. Pretty cool experience!
After the lion experience we also saw the crocodiles and snakes at another site. At one point I had a 3 months old crocodile in my hand and later on a giant Asian snake wrapped around my neck. Phyton snake was pretty cool with his skin shining beautifully. The tour guide showed us the crocodiles around the damps that they hung out. We could pad these puppies so much but knowing that they live over a century and surviving without a food for more than 6 months is pretty cool feature for them. We saw a 60 year old one in there. Wow he was biggg!
On our last evening in Joburg, South Africa, the African continent we wanted to hang out with local folks. Our friend Mark invited us for a Braai , south African BBQ. Had a great time winding down on the entire trip and chatting about the past two and a haf weeks. Food was delicious and there were some other intnl folks that joined us as well. Couple of Scandinavian guys who were friends with Mark's friend and a girl from Israel that started couch surfing South Africa today. This couch surfing idea is pretty cool actually as you can meet cool people thru this and save some money as well. I will check it out for sure for the next time. We finished the night with a texas hold'm poker. It was great fun to wrap up our trip with locals and some intnl folks.
As I am writing this blog entry from the plane that took of 16 hours ago from Joburg and we still have not arrived to NY yet, I feel pretty content and relaxed about the entire trip. Today before heading to the airport we did some last minute shopping hoping that the WC is over and the prices would come down but they were mostly the same... After getting into the plane I felt that ok I guess the trip is over. I missed my folks as well and it was great well spent 17 days alltogether. I had no expectations before I got here and we made plans as we moved ahead. Highlight of the trip was Cape Town for me. Even though we stayed the shortest time here compared to Joburg and Durban I think it was truly an exceptional city. Dubliner on Long Street, Paulaner at Waterfront, the Table Mounrain, the crazy Argentina vs Germany game, and hanging out with the local girls would not be forgotten.
Overall experience is still hard to put on words. I guess I satisfied different desires from learning about SA history to watching live football games to partying in different cities of SA to laying down at the beach for hours doing nothing. I think I needed all of that to have complete packaged experience in South Africa.
The big question: Would I visit here again? Absolutely yes but realistically not sure. I met a colleague from Citi Joburg who was in the Sandron office and mentioned that Citibank has an office in Cape Town. Maybe I'll work on that opportunity eh?:)
Thanks for reading my blog! I hope it was somewhat entertaining to catch up on WC and learn some stufff about South Africa. Waiting to see your comments!!
See you in Brazil 2014! :)
AT
Thank Mr. AT for all your blogs and making all of us be part of the joyful and wonderful event that was the 2010 world in RSA!! Through your blogs, one could not only live the games and all the atmosphere surrounding them, but also and probably most importantly the behind the scenes, ie, life in South Africa viewed from Africans (locals and immigrants). Just want to thank you again for providing these memories to all here in the States, you were our eyes... Muchas gracias - Domo arigato - Merci beaucoup - Danke - sağ olun my brother!!!! Brazilia 2014!!!
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