a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It rained this morning, but it cleared up later, and warmed up to 12 °C (54°F), which was a welcome change from Friday night.
I walked around the Neumarkt area, and Rudolfplatz, and went into a few stores, seeing that most stores close down on Sunday, and Monday, for New Year’s Day. Here are some pictures from Friday night and Saturday.
Hey! I made it into Cologne. It was snowing lightly as we landed in Frankfurt. The snow had started to stick to the tarmac, and the de-icing trucks were just fanning out to go clear any layers of snow or ice.
The intercity express train from Frankfurt to Cologne made short work of the 118 miles (190 km) from Frankfurt. The trip took only 50 minutes. These trains travel at speeds up to 186 mph (300 km/h)!
I arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. My layover is several hours, then a short hop to Frankfurt by air, from where I will take the train to Cologne.
Time flies, and my stay in South Africa is over again! I have a midnight flight out to Frankfurt, via Amsterdam.
As soon as I get to Frankfurt, I plan to take DeutcheBahn’s Intercity Express (ICE) train from to Cologne, to stay there for a few days.
I shipped a package of books and red tea that I bought here, from myself to myself, in Seattle today. Books are so heavy, and I don’t put food in my baggage when I travel. The post office branch I visited did not have new 2017 stamps , and I settled for a panel of 2014 stamps that commemorated World War I.
Turned out it was the Molteno reservoir (or Molteno dam), one with a colorful history.
Construction was completed in 1880, but then the dam stood empty through two unusually dry winters. When the drought finally broke, the dam overflowed. The eastern wall broke and sent a tsunami of water down through the city, destroying houses and uprooting trees. Yikes!
Another catastrophe occurred in June 1900, when a famous hot air balloonist called Isidore Michaels got in trouble with the wind, jumped from his balloon basket with a parachute, but ended up in the middle of the dam and drowned, enmeshed in his parachute strings. The dam had to be drained to retrieve his body.
After that, the dam served the young city of Cape Town for many decades to come. It is still in service, supplying the city center with water, alongside several other dams in the Western Cape Water Supply System that were brought on-line.
P.S. It’s a white Christmas in Seattle, with an inch or two of snow falling overnight in the city. White Christmases are rare in Seattle, but in 2008 four inches of snow blanketed the city on Christmas Day.
I took a short drive out this afternoon to Bloubergstrand (‘Blue Mountain Beach’). From there, one sees the iconic view of Table Mountain (looking blue in the distance).
It was windy again today, and a dozen or so kite surfers made good use of the wind.
‘Bring an end to the Zuma era .. that is all I ask’, pleads a teary-eyed ‘South Africa’ in Santa’s lap, in this cartoon by Fred Mouton in Saturday’s newspaper Die Burger. (In the United States, a similar request from Santa would be to get President Trump impeached).
Here is what the latest edition of Heineken’s ‘Cities of the World’ campaign beer bottles look like. (They have been around since 2014). Heineken sells its beer in 192 countries, says its website.
I checked into the First National Bank building in Cape Town on Thursday, in a quest (unsuccessful so far) for a few new 2017 South African 5-rand coins.
The building was designed by famed architect Sir Herbert Baker, and inside the banking hall’s dome there are four beautiful plaques.
There is a lot of history in the plaques, and I did some on-line research to find the full explanation for them.
My friend Marlien and I drove to Gordons Bay and Betty’s Bay on Wednesday, all along the scenic coastline of False Bay. The South Easter* blew strongly at times, the way it usually does in December.
*Also called the Cape Doctor, since the wind blows away the smog accumulating in the Cape Town city bowl between the harbor and Table Mountain.
Braai means barbeque in South Africa, and can be used as a noun or a verb. I like to check out the offerings in the grocery store for braaiing.
Early Monday evening, the results were in: Cyril Ramaphosa won the vote for ANC President, with 2440 votes to 2261. Hopefully this is a sign that the disastrous Zuma presidency and legacy will be coming to an end.
There was TV coverage all day, but none of the exhaustive and detailed analysis that come with elections on TV in the United States.
More artwork .. this rhino in The Watershed building in the V&A Waterfront is part of a public art exhibition campaign to save the rhinos. There are fewer than 5,500 black rhinos and 22,000 white rhinos left on the planet and poachers are still killing them at an alarming rate.
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) opened in September 2017. The art collection is housed in an old grain silo complex at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
There is a big lawn at my guesthouse, and early in the morning a few hadada ibises are out foraging for worms. Amazingly, the lawn is still a little green in spite of the drought, and they have to work at it with their beaks, but they do find an earthworm or a bug now and then.
The 54th National Conference of the African National Congress (South Africa’s ruling political party) is set to start on Friday at an exhibition center near Johannesburg. The event is more or less the equivalent of the national party conventions we have in the United States before a presidential election. By Sunday, the ANC will have elected a new chairperson, and it is very likely that this person will become South Africa’s new president as an outcome of the 2019 national elections.
Even though Cyril Ramaphosa served as deputy president of South Africa under President Jacob Zuma since 2014, many (most?) South Africans hope that he will prevail over his rival Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, ex-wife of Jacob Zuma. It is time to pay serious attention to South Africa’s economic challenges and clean out the worst of the vast corruption and cronyism in the Zuma administration. Ramaphosa has tweeted that he wants to address infrastructure challenges, and wants to target a 5% growth rate for South Africa’s developing economy (currently at about 1% annual growth).
It drizzled a little bit today here in the far northern suburbs of Cape Town (68 °F/ 20°C). I am sure the precipitation did not add even a fraction of a percent to the water level in the dams here, though. At the current dam levels (34.2% full) and water usage, city officials estimate ‘day zero’ to be May 18, 2018. Day zero comes when dam levels have dropped to 13.5%. At that point there will be no more water coming out of faucets, and residents will have to collect water from some 200 collection sites around the city.
I arrived in Cape Town! The connection in Charles De Gaulle airport involved a long walk to the departure gate. I didn’t mind: good to get one’s circulation going after sitting in an airplane. And, I could check out some of the better insides of the departure terminal (which was not the case last time).
There are signs everywhere in Cape Town airport, and at the overnight hotel, that implore visitors to save water. ‘Every drop counts’. I will try to.
