Visions of Jo'burg

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So I have decided to a series of "city/province focus posts"... wherein I will share photos from whichever place I am focusing on, as well some after thoughts from our time in that area.

We have been home for almost 3 months now... seems crazy. I still have not seen a lot of my family, and even some of my friends. I took the job at Whole Foods quite soon after we arrived and with the absurd hours, I was just constantly drained and did a lot of sleeping. But that job is finished (thankfully!) as of yesterday. Jump for joy.

johannesburg gets a bad rap worldwide and even within South Africa itself. If you mention Joburg to,say, an American who has never travelled or if they have travelled, they have always stayed at the tourist 5 star hotels and only visited the "safe" tourist areas- they will cough out stories of crime and robbery... I could give you the same description while speaking of Dallas... or Northside Fort Worth.
Joburg has a bad area, Hillbrow and it's surrounds, that I would not recommend visiting- especially after hours... although during the World Cup, 3 of our Mexican guests frequented Hillbrow- at night, in a rented car and had a lot of drinks... and had no problems at all.
Johannesburg to me, well, holds quite a few good memories. In fact I would say that I really love Joburg. Jozi. Egoli. The City of Gold. I love that you can be in the Northern Suburbs and experience the ridiculously flashy shopping centres of Sandton and Rosebank- much nicer than most here in North Texas... yet if you travel just 15-20 minutes down Jan Smuts, you get to the student area, packed full of hair salons, tuck shops, Ethiopian restaurants and clubs that play throbbing trance into the early hours of the morning... and go further down the road and, well, you find yourself in the city centre. I have only seen streets this packed and full of foot and vehicle traffic in New York. The streets of central Joburg are packed with tiny cafes, hawkers selling almost anything, Indian spice shops, tons of Somalian and Ethiopian immigrants selling cheap knock offs of everything, loud and vibrant taxi ranks. It is a rush, exciting and hectic... sprawling giant buildings stare down at you and then you see the back alleys where makeshift businesses try to carve their way onto the main road...
simply put, I miss Joburg. I enjoyed our time working and living there... and I cannot wait to find myself strolling through the Rosebank rooftop market again.

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