West family

Yesterday evening at a braai (BBQ) with some friends I finally got an answer to why there is no IKEA nor any market for their products here in South Africa. The reason is that the only people who can afford IKEA furniture are white people. These same people are completely foreign to the idea of doing any kind of work in their own home; let alone assembling furniture. Last night Chris told us about a friend who had lived a while in London and moved back to South Africa. He had shipped at great expense an IKEA cabinet he had bought in London because he was so proud to have build it himself. Imagine that – building your own furniture from scratch!

On that same note I’ve heard that many South Africans do not know how to use the petrol station with out assistance. You can spot a South African when you see someone sitting in their car waiting for someone to come over and do all the work; not even getting out of the car to pay.

It was an interesting experience last night two families (aside from us) with two small children each. The adults sat outside by the Braai while the Zimbabweans took care of one child each inside. One “nanny” per child. Most of the time the nannies watched cartoons with the kids. The Zimbabweans got to eat the same food as us mainly because the host family didn’t have a separate kitchen where they could make their own food.

In restaurants it is cheaper to have human dishwashers than a machine. In construction it is cheaper to have a group of laborers mix concrete for days by hand than to buy a truck of ready mixed concrete.

This is such a stark contrast to Sweden where labor costs are among the highest in the world, while material stuff is relatively cheap. Here it is the opposite stuff is expensive and services cheap.

On Table Mountain

Kalk Bay ice cream

Finally Grandpa and Grandma arrived!! The first day while they were still jet-lagged we just walked down to the penguins and had lunch at the golf course. Yesterday we toured the peninsula, lunch at Groot Constantia and watched the sunset from Table Mountain. The weather was great and everyone enjoyed the day.

Elsa liked the subtropical garden

Cooling off in the creek
Sirpa by the bamboo forest

Some of the larger vineyards have nice parks and gardens that you can enjoy after your picnic or their restaurants. Vergelegen is probably one of the more spectacular. What a beautiful place. The gardens are a nice way to slowly get back into a ‘ok to drive’ state after a bottle of wine.

Saturday we went with our friends John, Vanessa and Tony to the Cool Runnings tobaggan place. The gutter-like slide curves down the mountain – if you don’t use the brakes you get some amazing speed down the hill. John (Tony’s dad) went crazy and actually flew out of the track (got massive friction burns) but it was his own fault so he got no sympathy… It was really fun!

The traditional furnishing

Coffee Ceremony

Food served on Injera

A few days ago we had a really cool dinner experience at Addis in Cape,  an Ethiopian restaurant in Cape Town on Long Street.  The food is served on a Mesob, a  woven basket.  All food is served on top of  Injera, a sour dough pancake. You eat with your hands where Injera is used as an utensil to scoop up sauces & meat. Everybody shares the food from a common plate.  Injera is very popular in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.  A very important element of Ethiopian cooking is called berbere. It is a red paste made up of a multitude of spices and herbs. The dinner ends with a coffee ceremony. If you are in Cape Town you have to stop by and have dinner there.  If you missed the chanse in Cape Town you could always stop by at Addis in Daar in Daar es Salaam,Tanzania!

Table Mountain with it’s hat of clouds. The cloud flows like a stream down the gorges

Cape Point on a foggy morning – this taken way out on the tip of the peninsula

I usually format the photos too small to see much detail, but this time I couldn’t do it – these photos demand to be sized large. Unlike other photos on this blog – you can click on these two and get the larger photos. Try it.

Sirpa and I hiked out to the end of the peninsula this morning in dense fog, no wind and no people -  just fog. The fog and the lack of wind (not used to that here!) gave the whole area a magical mystical feeling. Nice. Many lizards and millions of sea birds and two seals. And a mouse.

Noticed this street name on way to the university.
Linköping is a miserably boring city in Sweden.

Probably the most beautifully located university in the world. On the mountain side overlooking the city below the old university is magnificent. It is small though. I was there trying to get inspired enough to write my application to the Ph.D program at Lund university. It would be fun to do some research. After walking around and drinking huge amounts of coffee I think I worked out a good idea for a research project. We’ll see in May if it is good enough.

Way out on Cape Point

Posing in the very strong winds on Chapmans drive

A week after our first visitors Karin, Kalle and their two kids left our next visitors arrived. Nathalie an old friend from waaaayy back and Omer her ex boyfriend from Israel. Omer is cool, though he constantly gives me a hard time because he is soon a Ph.D psychologist (me = just masters level) – on the other hand he is still stuck in Freudian therapy stuff and hasn’t yet realized that it is sooo passé. I guess that evens things out; he has academic volume and I have more of the quality…

Anyway we are enjoying great sunny weather – but horrible winds. As soon as you get out of the wind it is a very nice 25-30 C.  Nathalie who was so taken by the elephants at Addo Elephant Park keeps finding ways to somehow weave in facts about elephants into just about any conversation. While talking about music: “did you know that the African elephant’s ear is bigger than the Asian elephant..”

Idag var det gymnastik på schemat för Elsa. Alla barnen måste ha likadana gymnastikkläder, dvs vit pikéttröja och marinblå shorts. Det finns ingen möjlighet att byta om eller duscha så barnen har dessa kläder hela dagen.  Idag var det löpträning på schemat.

We planted a garden about 4-5 weeks ago; the paprika and the artichokes died; guess they didn’t like the steady Southeasterner wind. The basil and the tomatoes thrive in the dry heat. Picked a bunch of basil today and made a big batch of pesto. The cheese is made from one of the few good cheese producers in this country; though Sirpa bought the wrong kind. Oh well Pesto it shall become nonetheless!

The art on the walls of Olympia Café is made of scrap tiles and other small stones etc; they’ve done a great job. Sirpa fits in with the stylish decor; she about to order her favorite dish – something with goat’s cheese. I however cannot eat anything goat after spending too many summer days with the kids at Fredriksdals trädgårdsmuseum and their stinky goats.