Downtown Johannesburg

On Saturday, May 19th my friend Lauren took me on a tour of downtown Johannesburg. Lauren is South African and works with sustainability at a South African mining corporation.

Lauren picked me up at 10:30 and we drove to the city center.  Our first destination was Carlton Center.  The Carlton Center was the tallest building in Africa for 38 years and has 50 floors. The panoramic view at the top is quite extensive. You can see all the way to Soweto, the old mine hills of Joberg, the football field that hosted the 1995 South African rugby team from Invictus, and the still-evident poverty of the city.

The following picture shows the view from one side of the building.

This next picture is small but shows heaps of trash thrown from one of the illegal ‘squater’ buildings.  These are old, almost torn down, structures that shelter impoverished families.  They are run by landlords who accept rent from poor squatters in return for shelter. Government forces sometimes go and evacuate these squatter settlements but they are usually re-populated shortly after.  The buildings have no water, electricity, or maintenance services.

We drove around after the Carlton Center and decided to go to the South African Brewery to the World of Beer tour.  The tour was quite interesting.  Its started off with a well-produced video of people drinking South African beers all over the world and then it showed an actor playing Charles Glass who walked and talked between six TVs surrounding the circular room we were in. I could not get my eyes off of one of his sideburns, which was definately peeling off.

The tour encompassed several more tacky videos. These videos ranged from the beer history of Egypt to traditional African beer production.  I actually enjoyed the African beer experience because we drank some local African beer from a gourd seed. Following tradition, the men drank before the women.  The beer tasted very tart and sour and was not carbonated.

The best part of the tour was the fact that we were able to have several draught beers with chips at the end.  Lauren and I had a nice lunch on the bar balcony, with a view of the city. It was a sunny, warm day and nice to sit outside. In SA they serve draught beers in the glasses that go with the beers.  So, Castle Light only gets served in Castle Light glasses and Peroni only gets served in Peroni glasses. A few days earlier I ate at an Indian restaurant with some friends and the waiter was so apologetic because he had run out of heineken glasses to serve my beer in. I did not mind at all, although I did enjoy the the level of dedication to branding.

Later that evening, we then went to a national reserve near where I live. It is an eco-environment that is the property of the mining company Lauren works for.  It hosts rare frogs, guinea fowl, ducks, zebra, and several species of antelope. It was truly amazing to be walking in a park next to impala in the suburbs of Johannesburg.