Blog of Jonathan, Elke und Rainer

Jeden Sonntag findet auf dem Weingut Blaauwklippen der allseits beliebte Family Market statt. Regionale Produkte, antike Schätze oder Kunsthandwerk kaufen, bummeln, Freunde und Familie treffen und dazu noch lecker essen und gemütlich unter uralten Feigenbäumen sitzen – so lässt sich der Sonntag entspannt genießen…

Fröhliches Treiben unter fröhlichen Wimpeln

Ein Händler mit Township-Art vor malerischer Kulisse

Der Markt gilt als besonders familien- und tierfreundlich – wie man auch am Speiseangebot sehen kann: healthy, organic, gluten free,… you name it, you got it!

Leckeres für Mensch…

… und Tier! 😉

Internet is such a beautiful thing. But it (thankfully) cannot change the weather 🙂
Some two weeks ago, before Elke came, it got cold, but didn’t rain… Then when they arrived, it got hot — actually very hot — again. Three days ago, we had 30°C, which is pretty unusual for winter, even around here 🙂

Google Now today offered this predicted weather:

So, finally it’ll rain for an extended period! Good!

The national catchment areas are at an all time low, and the one-night rain three days ago was just a tiny fraction of what’s needed to fill the water reservoirs again.

Edit: Some interesting links on the water-levels of:

• Dam levels in Cape Town
• Dam levels by Dept. of Water and Sanitation
  So this weeks rain has helped restore the dam levels somewhat (to overall from 29 to 35% capacity, where 80-90% level is good).

Franschhoek – Pass am Mont Rochelle

Nach knapp 23 Stunden Reisezeit von Haus-zu-Haus sind wir beide endlich gut gelaunt in Stellenbosch angekommen!

Having really sore muscles from climbing Table Mountain. Esp. when descending the stairs. Now I just learned that a colleague of mine in the Dept. of Mechanics ran the Comrades Marathon this very week-end, which is 89,13km! He even did it the 2nd time!! And he doesn’t have issues climbing any stairs 🙂

Signal Hill is the mountain to the west of Cape Town with it’s highest peak being Lions Head. It also is a nice park, that at night is populated with tourists and locals alike to watch the sunset 🙂

Enjoy:

Cape Town at Night from Signal Hill

This week-end I had a car… So after doing the shopping for Elke’s & Jona’s arrival, I was out-and-about. I knew I wanted to venture Cape-Town, I just didn’t know where, District 6, or the port again, the Aquarium, the museum, or Robben Island?

Driving into Kaapstad, seeing the Table Mountain, the destination was set. Glad that I had brought enough to drink and was all set. Parking was not that easy, though 🙂

On my hike, I got to know two blokes, that had been roaming the whole South of Africa, one from Switzerland, the other from England/New Zealand/now Australia.  Both had come from Namibia, the other had been to Zimbabwe and Bostwana, too! So they had a lot to tell and at lunch at the Cafeteria pictures to show.

But first, we had to climb the 1:30hrs, which is easily doable… If you’re not in the sun… The view is just stunning:

View from ascent at Platteklip Gorge.

At the top, we were lucky to see the weather phenomenon that clouds/fog builds up along the coast and are blown into the bay just to disappear again:

The beaches & city of Camps Bay covered in mist.

The view from Table Mountain down to the Cape, the town, Lions Head and Signal Hill is just stunning:

Cape Town, Lions Head and Signal Hill (Stitch of 60 images).

On our way down, we came across this little bird… Unfortunately, it was already getting dark in the valley, and setting ISO-1200 and stabilizer all help, but still at 300mm I am shaking too much…

Potjiekos: Carl pours the ingredients

This past Friday, I was invited to join the departments team-building event, a Potjiekos. A great way to learn about South African culture and even better to get to know the team.

In return, they had to try my „Schwäbischen Kartoffelsalat“ 🙂 A potato salad using a old family recipe with even older vinegar with lots of oil (a colleague gasped, when I poured another droplet into it, to make it more squishy 🙂  )…

So Potjiekos means small pot food is cooked in a three-legged pot on the fire! We decided on doing a dessert for everyone, a pudding, that is really easy to make as well: three eggs, three cups of sugar(!), stir, then stir, following by some fervent stirring, then add a bit of flour, salt and baking powder, some more sodium bicarb and off into the pot.

After 1:30hrs the pudding has baked thoroughly, and then is taken out of the fire, and might need some moisture: enter the Amarula. The Amarula is a „Likör“ and although being quite sweet of course needs more sugar… If You know me, You know, that I do like this recipe!

So, even though the end result with the dough’s sugar turning brown (caramel!) and the Amarula-creme on top, this might not look too attractive to the unsuspecting eye, it does taste really good:

Pudding & Amarula in a pot

Now, You have to see what the others were cooking! Amazing feast with Oxtail Potjiekos, two times lamb, and another chicken! Really plenty of food.

Together with colleagues, I went for a nice wine-tasting, starting at 11am 🙂

And a wine-tasting it was, when I heard, that out of the three proposed options — we are gonna do them all!

View of Lionshead in the distance (above the fog :))

Starting at Uva Mira up on the hills with a beautiful view over the valley towards Cape-Town, one could nicely see the False Bay, Table Mountain, Lionshead and the city in-between. To the left rises Table Mountain. I’ll add a picture of the mansion of Uva Mira estate at the Wine-Tasting Entry 🙂

Next stop was „Adoro Wines“ where we also tried the local cheese with the wine, which needlees to say goes very well. By this time of tinewasting our chat grew even more slurred, mine at least. A picture tells more than thousand words… We sat in the sun, had good wine and cheese, and in the end I couldn’t properly pose a photo with the camera.

Green stuff at Adoro Wines.

Our thyrd schtop of our singwashtung, we hit Boschendal. Last time I visited, I just had time to get to the shop. They have a large selection of different grapes and their wine-maker tries out new combinations — after all, (if I remember correctly) the estate, a cooperative, now has 7 different farms that grow for/with them.

Boschendal estate

After all this wine, we had to cool it off with a beer. So my very nice friends showed me their favorite bar in Franschhoek, the Elephant & Barrel.

The Franschhoek Church

Welgevonden Estate has plans to outsource the up-keeping of lawn-mowing, speed controls and general traffic control…
However, the personnell is not as trustworthy and keeps chasing the wrong-guys.

This saturday morning at 8am my landlords invited me to join a concert of the primary school, or so I thought. What I didn’t expect was a competition of choirs — and mind You, a nation-wide competition that the choir of my landlords daughter had won last year!
So, this was this years run-up to the national competition, and there were 4 choirs of the West-Cape region, from Stellenbosch, Somerset, Paarl and some city close to Cape-Town.

Stellenbosch Laerskool on stage

At the end, the head of Jury walked onto the stage and presented (in Afrikaans) his critique in quite some detail, like how certain words are supposed to be pronounced, and on general professionalism when presenting, so much I could make out…
In the end it was 2x A+. Well done.

Paper deadline is approaching…
Glad I have good Music, some Jazz, some classics, right now:

• „The Approaching Storm“, Chicago
• „Aqualung“, Jethro Tull
• „Aquatarkus“, Emerson, Lake & Palmer