#Photography

As mentioned previously, Thorsten and I (a.k.a. “the Blogitects”: one blogger + one architect) recently got back from a roadtrip to the Northern Cape to celebrate my 50th birthday. I had never properly explored the Northern Cape, South Africa’s largest and least populated province, and passing the half-century mark seemed like a good reason to finally do it. After overnighting in a retro Campovan in Kameel, our first stop in the Northern Cape was Augrabies Falls National Park.

I last visited Kameel, a tiny hamlet in South Africa’s North West Province, in February 2020 as part of my (never finished) #10SouthAfricanTowns project. At the time, I was certain I’d be back in Kameel before 2020 was over; it’s a perfect stopover point on the way to the Northern Cape, which I planned to explore later that year. But then covid happened, of course. So I didn’t make it back to Kameel until last week – more than four years later – when I finally did that Northern Cape road trip to celebrate my 50th birthday.

I still haven’t finished telling you about my gallivant around Europe, which happened back in March and April and is fast becoming ancient history. I’m going to keep on peppering you with one or two European posts a month until all the stories are told.

For nearly three years, Thorsten and I have watched and listened to the exercise classes happening in Kingston Frost Park behind our Brixton house. We walked past many times and spoke to Dennis Dlomo, the coach, who greets everyone passing by and invites them to join. I heard the classes every morning and afternoon while typing on my laptop in my home office. But we didn’t get up the courage to actually join Dennis Dlomo’s Fantastic Fitness Club (the word “fantastic” is my own addition) until last month.

I’m struggling with this post. I keep writing stuff and then deleting it because I don’t know what to say about Hillbrow that I haven’t said before. I’ve been blogging about Hillbrow since 2011 (that first post was embarrassing though), and I’ve used up all the Hillbrow clichés. I’ve even created some clichés of my own, like “Hillbrow is hard to know.” I wrote that in 2017 and then almost used it as the title of this post, until I realized it’s super pretentious.

Thorsten and I recently spent three days in Munich, Germany, at the beginning of our whirlwind European trip. We went to Munich because it was a logical place to meet up with Thorsten’s kids, who live across the border in Austria, and because we wanted to visit Thorsten’s friend Susi, who was his schoolmate many years ago at the German School in Joburg. Susi lives with her family just outside Munich, in the quaint town of Pullach.