In which Jess gets a sunburn, TJ gets a beer, and the downtown gets explored

We've been busy!

Traveling around last weekend was great but we returned a bit tired.  Moreover, it's been a busy week at work.  I've gotten out of a few late meetings to find an incredibly patient Jess the only one left in the office.  (I also try to hold on to the car keys prior to these meetings...)

We have adventures planned for upcoming weekends (stay tuned!), but this week decided to relax and explore the city we technically live in, but are so separated from here in the northern suburbs. We're not geographically far from the rest of the city but we're magnitudes away in terms of lifestyle - the few blocks we live in are the wealthiest in all of South Africa.

The city has a metro area stretching over 630 square miles and dozens of neighborhoods, but many of these are either sleepy (and wealthy) bedroom communities or the townships (which are neither sleepy nor wealthy).  Far more fascinating, however, has been the exciting transformation in some of the city's "no-go" downtown neighborhoods, which have been re-engineered from a veritable war zone into several vibrant if tiny communities over the past five years.  Sounds like some places to explore!

What follows below is a back-and-forth narrative about our weekend adventures...

FRIDAY:
TJ: Third time is indeed the charm, I suppose.  For the third time in two weeks we drove down to Melville, a quirky neighborhood north of the city center that feels like all of Chicago's Hyde Park squeezed into a single, six-block street.  Fewer ironic mustaches, more sketchy guys offering to "make sure nothing happens to your car while you're gone..."  But still.

We were in search of salsa.  No, not pico de gullo (which is utterly impossible to find out here), but salsa dancing -- there is a very small but apparently enthusiastic community of salsa dancers here and Jess wanted in.  First, however, we had to find them.

Jess: Our first two attempts had been failures with respect to salsa, but turned into wonderful adventures in and of themselves - malva pudding the first time, and a fascinating conversation with an English missionary (I think) in the guise of a socioeconomic developer the second time.

I was determined to make it to a salsa night because it seemed a unique way to spend some time with a broader sample of South Africa diversity than we'd encountered in the wealthy suburbs. Jackpot! We met some fantastic people who were more than welcoming, and quick to give us the inside scoop on where else to go dancing through the week. My favorite dance of the night was 10 minutes of freestyle on the dance floor with a new friend, Dineo, who danced a gorgeous blend of salsa and African dancing, and laughed with me as I tried to follow her moves.

SATURDAY:
TJ: The morning market downtown in Braamfontein is one of those things that keeps coming up in conversation as a "must do" -- and rightly so.  The neighborhood has only begun to turn: two or three square blocks of hip cafes, great book stores, and a converted parking structure in an apartment block that houses a fantastic weekend market.  A bit hard to find: pay someone not to break your car windows and then grab a coffee from one of the best places in the city, leave satisfied, hook a left, a left down the dark alley until you see the bright colored doors, and then follow the hanging lights til you're there!


 Most importantly, I finally found (moderately) decent beer!  Beer brewing has been taking place in modern-day South Africa for over three thousand years, a process that has apparently left us with virtual monopoly SAB-Miller and several national beers that all taste like watered-down MGD.  People who drink beer in this country take their brands very seriously, despite the fact that they all taste the same: awful.  Fortunately, a representative of Darling Brewery (a SA microbrew) was on hand to sell a few bottles of something with taste, body, and color.  None of which are great, mind you, but still...


Jess: The market was absolutely amazing. Gorgeous pastries, a giant wok of simmering shellfish and tomato sauce that had to be at least 3' in diameter, the best mushrooms I've had in my life, locally produced white port, and that was just in the first row. Also, we bumped into friends - an incredibly great feeling given that we've only been here two weeks.

TJ: After the market we headed over to the Apartheid Museum ("see apartheid where it belongs, in a museum").  The architecture -- and really, the entire museum -- was very well done.  Some familiarity with South African history and politics is required (way too much time is spent on splinter parties in the 1940s) and some facts around ANC paramilitary activities were left off, but it was otherwise a very well done and extremely thorough exhibit.

Jess: The museum was amazing. It was a well designed blend of video, newspaper clips, photography, and text, and handled an important and difficult topic with thoughtfulness and even-handedness. My only disappointment was that the section on the Truth & Reconciliation Commission was apparently closed for renovation. I was quite interested to learn more and watch some videos of the actual process. Well, now I have a new personal research goal. If anyone has any recommendations please do share in the comments.

SUNDAY:  
TJ: How can we turn down brunch with some of our favorite colleagues and their families?  Or why would we even consider not joining fantastic people for a meal that includes three rashers of bacon no matter what you order?  We used to think that we had interesting stories:  their three years launching a successful chicken farm in northern Mozambique, building their own mud house, and finding spitting cobras in their bed room make virtually anything we come up with tame.

Jess: Although next time we have a two-hour brunch in direct sunlight in this continent, we will definitely apply sunscreen first.

TJ: Afterwards, we headed out to the "market on main" -- a repourposed warehouse in the Central Business District that houses a weekly market, great shops, and a fantastic rooftop bar with (you guessed it) salsa dancing.  (The picture at the top is of the very same rooftop local.)

The trip there really help put the fantastic success of the project into perspective: thanks to South Africa's point-blank refusal to erect road signs, we were required to make a small detour through nearly every single neighborhood the guidebook and websites call "no go zones": Hillbrow, Berea, Yeoville, and Marshallstown.  The difference between our plush northern suburb and these bombed-out slums could not have been greater.  The people of Jo'burg are making incredible strides to revive their city, but a lot of work remains.


Jess: Arts on Main was another fantastic market. It drew the same hip, trendy kind of crowd as Saturday's Braamfontein market, but after seeing both it's clear that the Bloemfontein neighborhood is significantly more turned around than Maboneng. The market itself is inside an artists' collective - we stopped into one of the larger galleries and the proprietor walked us through a gorgeous pop-up book for children about deforestation. Possibly a bit scary for the younger kids but still an amazing work.


After we finished browsing through the market (and having second lunch, which involved brie & carmelized onion egg rolls followed by mini French eclairs) we headed into the adjoining Canteen bar, which has live salsa dancing on the roof every Sunday afternoon. We saw some people we'd met, met some new folks, and had a generally fantastic time.