11.07.2013 Walking the Joburg CBD - Marshalltown

I've started to develop a bit of an addiction - namely spending the day wondering aimlessly around the Johannesburg CBD (Central Business District). In a city which has some pretty soulless malls and anonymous suburbs and a shamefully large amount of informal housing and derelict buildings, the CBD shines out for me as a place filled with history, interesting architecture, people from all walks of life. It feels like somewhere which is certainly on the up and in a palpable state of revival. Downtown for me is real city life.

View of the CBD from a bridge crossing the railway tracks

In our first week here I ventured out on my lonesome to explore the CBD and I actually landed in Braamfontein, mistakenly thinking I was in the heart of downtown Joburg. I can't lie, I was feeling kinda nervous. Everything at that time made me nervous. For the first time in my life I truly stood out as a foreigner and quite frankly the whole new continent thing was giving me some serious culture shock. In reality Braamfontein, just over the railway tracks from the CBD, is a really fun student part of the city, which has all of the most happening bars, lots of street life and some seriously hipster cafes. Back then having landed from Europe in the sterile Sandton bubble, Braamfontein's graffiti, rubbish, chicken shops, busy pavements, high density housing and lack of white people were an amazement for me - it was literally another city.

While I love Braamfontein for its great bars, cafes and nightlife (which actually kicks off at the weekend before it has even passed 6pm!), the CBD is still the heart of this city for me. Rich in variety and architectural splendour it has so much to see.

One of the most tourist friendly and prosperous parts of the CBD to walk around is Marshalltown, an area where you can really glimpse the former and present wealth of the city.

Chancellor House

This is the building where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had their legal practice and I wrote about it in a previous post so I am not going to go into details again. It is just a few blocks away from Diagonal Street where they sell a lot of blankets, heaters (I presume there will be fans and hats here in summer?) and other household stuff and interestingly you can also find a couple of Muti shops selling freaky things for use in traditional medicine and other juju stuff.

A Muti shop

Main Street and the chamber of mines

A short walk from the courts is the pedestrianised Main Street which has the lavish headquarters of numerous major mining companies such as BHP Billiton and AngloAmerican Gold. Many of the grand buildings here have facades with beautiful carvings relating to the gold rush and statues inspired by South Africa's magnificent wildlife. There are also some particularly nice pieces of public art, such as this statue of leaping springboks.

Facade at BHP Billiton

Main street is also peppered with relics from the mining industry such as old trains, stamp mills and pumps. It was from literally right under these streets that the first gold was mined a mere 130 years ago, leading to the swift creation of one of Africa's biggest cities. Main Street has many nice cafes frequented by local office workers (hence they are often closed on weekends) and even has a Woolworths Food (the posh South African supermarket). In nearby Anderson Street you can also find some of the nicest hotels in the city centre such as the Reef Hotel and the Mapungbuwe.

Random mining stuff

Library Square Gardens

A few blocks north of Main Street this square is another example of the successful restoration of beautiful historic downtown buildings. This is an area which was one of the very first to be developed in the city during the early gold rush years. The beautiful library at the heart of the square has recently been restored and is well worth checking out. With a large high school nearby the square is often filled with kids hanging out on their lunch breaks or playing while waiting for the bus. Looking over it is the Guildhall Pub, the oldest in Johannesburg and a great (and yes, safe) boozer.

The Guildhall Pub

Corner Fox Street and Loveday Street

A large part of Fox Street (running parallel to Main) is also now pedestrianised and has some big offices on it. It also has some amazing old buildings kept in very nice condition such as the impressive Old Standard Bank of South Africa building. Nearby you can also find the Post Office building (victim of fire a few years ago, awaiting restoration) and some other elegant civic buildings.

This could easily be somewhere in Europe...

The old Post Office

There are two very nice cafes here worth looking out for. Ma Bertha's -a very friendly new cafe on Loveday where you can get a huge plate of steaming stew and pap for 40 Rand. They even have tables and chairs right on the pavement in true European cafe culture style (i.e not roped off, but literally right in the middle of the pavement). The other is the much older Pinos, an Italian cafe with genuine Italian coffee, a very faithful clientele and a toilet which you have to be escorted through the kitchens to reach. It gets really busy here and is a very authentic recreation of an atypical Italian coffee bar.

Pino's

Gandhi Square

My strolls downtown often tend to start or finish here as this is the terminus for the Metrobus. Minibus taxi are still much more popular than the Metrobus as they are more reliable and take more complex routes - with Metrobus you can be waiting a long time or getting dropped really far from your home. But, that said I still enjoy riding the Metrobus back up north as they are double decker so you get a great view as you ride home.

Gandhi Square is of course named after the great Indian leader who worked as a lawyer in Johannesburg for many years. He has a statue on the square, but it is pretty small, blink and you might miss it. It shows Gandhi in his youthful lawyer years in court robes with some important looking papers.

Gandhi's statue

Back in the early 1990s Gandhi Square was a bit of a no-go area, despite being the main bus terminus for the city. There was a lot of trouble with crime and drugs, the lighting and policing was poor and people were constantly getting robbed here. Not so today however. The square is a hub of activity surrounded by office, shops, cafes and bars. It is very safe and is well looked after. It is also sustainable offering affordable business, retail and rental opportunities to the people who visit downtown the most. Much of the credit has to go to local entrepreneur Gerald Olitzki who worked hard to redevelop the area when anyone else with money had given up and fled to Sandton. You can read about him in this great article from 2010 by the Globe and Mail.

Gandhi Square

I think this huge banner on Gandhi Square pretty much sums up my feelings about Joburg's revival.

25.06.2013 Nelson Mandela - the Shadow Boxer

With the father of the nation and one of the greatest leaders of the 20^th Century now critically ill in hospital, I thought this might the right time to write something about Nelson Mandela's time in Johannesburg.

Madiba moved to Johannesburg in 1941 where he first found work as a night watchman at a local mine. He then moved to the Alexandra township and got a job in downtown Johannesburg working as a clerk at a sympathetic Jewish lawyer's firm. The building (just off Library Gardens Square on Harrison Street) housing the firm is now called the Nelson Mandela Building and has a school and various offices in it.

After completing his BA degree and embarking on a law degree at Wits University (which he sadly was not allowed to complete), Mandela and his friend Oliver Tambo opened a legal practice for black South Africans in downtown Johannesburg opposite the Magistrates Courts.

Chancellor House where Mandela and Tambo had their legal practice

As the only black lawyers working in Johannesburg they dealt with a huge workload and the offices were constantly filled with people. As arguably one of the most important places in modern South Africa's history it is now finally being recognised as the historical landmark that it is and is going to be turned into a museum. For the moment there are exhibitions in the windows which explain what Tambo and Mandela were doing here and how. Amazingly as recently as four years ago the building was half-derelict and occupied by squatters.

The corner offices face the magistrates courts where a striking new monument to Mandela was recently erected. It is based on a photograph taken of the young Mandela shadow boxing on a nearby inner-city roof. Boxing was very important to Madiba, it kept him fit and focused, he admired the self-discipline and strength it involved and under it all of course boxing was egalitarian - the colour of the opponent is irrelevant in a fight. Underneath the monument is a quote from Long Walk to Freedom about boxing.

The original photo on which the monument is based

"In the ring, rank, age, colour, and wealth are irrelevant."

As a seriously ill and frail 94 year old man, it is sometimes difficult to look back and imagine how Mandela was in his youth - especially given that most of the world only caught sight of him once he was released from prison and had already dramatically aged. Therefore this monument was a very smart commission. It shows Mandela as a fighter, as strong, focused, hands on and of course most of all young. It's striking and inspiring and I hope will become a place where people can remember the great things which he achieved and how hard the struggle was, long after Madiba is gone from our lives.

19.06.2013 Joburg antique and second-hand furniture shops, Newlands

Having just moved into a completely unfurnished flat for the first time in our lives, we have had our work cut out filling it up beyond the small amount of furniture we had brought with us from Moscow. Once we had the essentials (such as a fridge - they don’t even come with a fridge here!) sorted, we then decided to head off on a second-hand hunt to find ourselves some good quality extras. 

The Newlands area of the city - and in particular the workshop lined Long Street - came highly recommended and certainly didn’t disappoint.

With a careful eye and some good bargaining you can get some great deals. Our ultimate bargain had to be this huge wicker chair which we got for just 200 Rand (about 15 pounds). With some effort we even managed to get it in the car too (although we did have to drive home with the rear window totally obscured).

Some of the shops (such as the guy who sold us the chair) are quite junky, whilst others are seriously posh and have some very fancy antiques. In between you can find all kinds of random bits of cool bric-a-brac such as old-fashioned tills, street signs, art deco crockery, old wooden chests, strange brass figurines and random animal skulls.

Everything in this 'kitchen' is for sale

There are also a handful of carpenter’s workshops where you can get all kinds of high quality furniture custom-made, from bar stools and shelves, to dining tables and bed heads. We picked up this sturdy Oregon pine bookshelf and a cupboard for the TV made by some guys in a workshop with the crazy name Cowboys and Angels. They even varnished it for us before they delivered it. You certainly don’t get that kind of stuff in Ikea.

Retro Noah, one of the workshops dealing in custom-made furniture

Books and shelves

How I got there: If you are headed to Newlands, you really need to go by car. It’s not well serviced by buses (Melville’s e-tuk tuk is probably your best option) and you will inevitably want to take lots of things away with you. Incidentally, delivery costs between 100 and 250 Rand depending on what is being delivered where.

01.06.2013 Bar hopping in Johannesburg CBD

Gerald is a bubbly Johannesburg tour guide, who has also written a popular book detailing all the best that the city has to offer called JoburgPlaces. Gerald had the genius idea of combining drinking with touring the city centre and after a tough few days of moving chaos we certainly needed those beers.

Unfortunately due to a long and tortuous morning of getting involved in something we hadn't really thought we had signed up for (we were just trying to make the TV work, we ended up with a satellite...) we missed the start of the tour.

Here's where we went (excluding a bar in a gold vault in the Mapungubwe Hotel and Darkie Cafe which is opposite it). Note we travelled around in a mini-bus. According to Gerald it is now safe to walk in the CBD after dark, but it is not safe to cross the bridges:

Guildhall Pub

Corner Market and Harrison Street

Downstairs at the Guildhall

Reputedly the oldest pub in the city, the Guildhall first opened in 1888. The bar itself and the panelling surrounding it is all around 100 years old, while the building's facade, including a wrought iron balcony, is also an important historic relic of old Joburg.

We sat up on the balcony overlooking the library square and the Nelson Mandela Building (the place were Madiba first got a job as a legal clerk at a Jewish firm). Most of the locals tend to sit downstairs at the bar. I've actually popped by here before whilst strolling the inner-city and can confirm that it's got a proper bar buzz in the post-work hours, is safe and the owner is lovely. There's also karaoke on Thursdays (I haven't been...yet).

I read that back in the 1970s the Guildhall was the bar of choice for foreign correspondents working in the city. It was reputedly a bit rough at the edges, but an essential venue for journalists getting their teeth into reporting the madness of apartheid and swapping war stories. How things change.

Reef Hotel 
(not to be confused with Gold Reef City), 58 Anderson Street

The funny tower on the right is all that remains of a grand old Joburg building. It was demolished to make way for a new bank HQ, but the project fell apart after demolition and now it's just a car park.

This is a lovely business hotel, with outstanding staff, very close to the main mining headquarters (hence the name). The restaurant on ground level does an excellent lunch buffet deal on weekdays for local office workers. Meanwhile upstairs there's a very respected gourmet restaurant where they train youngsters from poor backgrounds to become top chefs.

We headed all the way up to the roof (currently only open for private parties) for our drinks. The views from up there are incredible. Hopefully they will open it up soon as a proper bar. It is seriously one of the best 'sundowner' locations in Johannesburg.

Great Dane

6 De Beer Street

After picking up my poor husband (who had only just escaped the TV fiasco) we went to Great Dane, a very popular student joint in Braamfontein. It is next to Kitcheners which is probably my favourite bar in Joburg right now and has a similar crowd. The Dane was absolutely packed and everyone was dancing to Cee Cee Peniston's 90s house hit Finally, even though it was only 7pm. A proper party place filled with outrageously hip looking African students.

Parktonian Hotel

120 De Korte Street

For our final drinks gazing out over the lights of Saturday night Hillbrow, we went to the roof of the Protea Parktonian Hotel in Braamfontein. Again I think this place is only open for guests and private parties and again they are really missing a trick.

As this was our final destination we all had a Springbok shot (mint liqueur and kahlua) and listened with amazement as Gerald explained to us the ins and outs of how downtown Johannesburg fell into decline and why business and upmarket living is now spread across the 'northern suburbs' instead. I'm not going to go into the whole incredible story here, but in a nutshell - this city is changing all the time, and in the CBD things right now are only changing for the better.

24.03.2013 We arrived! What are we doing here?

Almost exactly one year after my husband applied for a new editor job at Bloomberg in South Africa, we finally arrived to start our new life in Johannesburg.

 When you are an expat people always like to ask you why you decided to up sticks and start anew abroad. Well for us it was a combination of needing to escape the chaotic Russian life (and the brutal Russian winters) after many years and seeking new opportunities in other exciting emerging markets where English is the official language and the sun shines a lot.

Getting drunk after picking up the visas in London - finally!

It took us so long to finally move largely because the South African visa system is very complicated (and I'm saying that knowing the Russian system, which expats constantly moan about). It takes a long time to get a work permit approved here (if you get it approved at all). My husband left his old job in June 2012 and took the summer off before starting at Bloomberg in October. In the meantime we prepared to apply for the visa in Moscow and track down an insane amount of documents. By January 2013 our initial visa application had finally been rejected by the Moscow Embassy and I’d left my job at In Your Pocket guides. So we huddled down in Edinburgh, Scotland while my husband worked out of the office there and we reapplied for the visa in London.

Suddenly in mid-March our visas had been approved, our belongings had been shipped off and we were on the next (business class - niiice) flight to OR Tambo.

Alright, I know I look like a total dork here, but it was really fun being in the business class. Seat goes up, seat goes down. Seat goes up...endless entertainment. Also cold beers in a real glass, nice touch

Now we are here, there’s a lot to get used to. For me it’s mostly strange not knowing my way around. Having spent years writing about tourism, entertainment and leisure in Moscow and St. Petersburg I had a street knowledge far better than the average taxi driver. Now I am back at square one and really struggling with the inner distance calculator, not to mention the street names and areas. Joburg is a sprawling city, and much of it is devoid of major landmarks to keep you on your way. Public transport is tricky (more on that later) and of course half the time I don’t really know exactly where I want to go anyway.

Another incredible sunset from the balcony

The easiest things of course to get used to are the weather and the people. The weather is gloriously sunny and warm (especially after winter in Europe) and the locals are almost all approachable, friendly and helpful. People walk at what I like to call ‘African pace’ - i.e not too fast at all, which suits me perfectly and wine is especially cheap and good. The sunsets are gorgeous and fantastic nature and wide open space are all within easy access...I could go on and on

No question there’s a lot to like here and I am sure once we have the home, transport, friends and social life sorted out, not to mention a job for poor old unemployed expat wifey me, we are going to love this place. 

 

Feeling pretty darn lucky to be here!