A view towards the back to Table Mountain from Steenberg Wine Estate
My visit to Cape Town was, sadly, due to the passing of my grandmother, and while it was a heavyhearted circumstance that provided me with the opportunity to return home, I am glad that I got the chance to celebrate her life with my family, and to see my friends.
Something that nobody tells you is how strange it is going home for the first time. You've changed and grown in the time you have spent away, and developed a whole new life, and most of the everyday things in your old life have stayed exactly the same. The sameness in Cape Town felt in direct contrast with the immense change that I feel within myself, and I think, irrationally, I expected Cape Town to have grown with me. At times, while driving along familiar roads, and seeing familiar sights, the complete differentness of Tromsø in comparison with Cape Town made the last four and a half months feel like a disconnected dream. A good dream, but something that is unrelated to my old life.
Although Tromsø is considered a city by Norwegian standards, it has, in reality, a smaller population than the towns of Worcester, or Stellenbosch. So it took me a while to get used to the intensity of a big city again. At first I felt like a kindergarten teacher trying to keep track of a large class of five-year olds hyped up on sugar and caffeine; I'd never experienced Cape Town as a chaotic place before, but now it seemed a bit too much. I had forgotten what it was like to sit in traffic, or what it was like to have to deal with beggars at every robot (traffic lights to non-South Africans). For the first time in months I had to concentrate when crossing the road, and I had to remember to be safety conscious again. I found it incredibly frustrating that I couldn't just hop on a bus, or cycle to anywhere I wanted to go, and instead had to drive. I also forgot that everyone outside of Norway actually drives at a reasonable speed, and so initially I felt as though people were driving dangerously fast around me. It did, however, only take 2 days before I was back to driving like an aggressive South African; dodging pedestrians and swearing at taxis. And driving on the left side of the road came back quicker than the time it took for me to inhale my first plate of reasonably-priced sushi.
Ah yes, sushi... Something I was forewarned about was what it would be like to go home to a country cheaper than Norway with my newly-earned, very-strong-against-the-rand kroner. Having gotten used Norway, where one beer in a bar costs R120-R160, and a night out at an average restaurant for one person will set you back upward of R550 per person, paying R20 (12 NOK) for a beer, or R30 (18 NOK) for a glass of wine, or R500 (300 NOK) for sushi and drinks for 3 people at a restaurant in Cape Town, just feels like I'm stealing! So I took advantage of the spectacular spectrum of multicultural cuisine and ate all the awesome things I've been missing. In fact, I ate almost two thirds of my total meals for the week in restaurants, and I probably have mild mercury poisoning from the amount of sushi I consumed, but it was totally worth it!
A montage of some of the week's awesomeness
My move away and subsequent return visit definitely made me take notice of many things about Cape Town that I once found completely normal, or took for granted. I definitely forgot what proper rain and wind are. Tromsø has drizzle, Cape Town has torrents of water aggressively attacking you from the sky, usually accompanied by strong winds trying their best to remove the roof from your house. In comparison, what I've experienced in Tromsø is a pleasant light breeze. Nevertheless, the "winter" temperatures in Cape Town were rather nice and warm in comparison to most "summer" Tromsø days. I definitely found that my experience of temperature has changed, and while conditions around 30˚C used to feel hot, yet manageable, in Cape Town summer, when I got off the plane during my layover in Doha to 32˚C heat, I felt like I had landed in Death Valley during a heat wave.
Something else I had forgotten, or perhaps never noticed before, is how happy, friendly and positive South Africans are. On landing at Cape Town airport I exited the plane and was greeted by several of the ground staff standing next to the baggage trailers, waiting to unload our luggage from the plane, gumboot dancing on the tarmac, just for fun. On handing my South African passport to the immigration officer at passport control I received an ear-to-ear grin and an enthusiastic "welcome home", and almost every waiter I was served by during my stay was wonderfully friendly, cheerful and accommodating, a stark contrast to 90% of the service staff I have encountered in Norway. South Africans may not get much done, but we get not much done with a smile, which seems to be a very special quality.
However, something I definitely noticed more than I ever have previously is the amount of security in Cape Town. The security guards in many of the shops, who tape your shopping bags shut and watch everyone like a hawk, made me feel uncomfortable, when they never did before, and I realised that I have become accustomed to being trusted in shops in Tromsø. I also struggled with no longer having the feeling of being completely safe, a feeling I latched onto on arrival in Tromsø, have thoroughly appreciated since, and something I am very loathe to give up. It's a pity that these things are present in such a beautiful country!
All in all, living away from South Africa and experiencing a different place, and then going back home, has solidified for me that I am an African. I love living in Tromsø, and I find the lifestyle I currently have to be absolutely fantastic, but I realised that I appreciated South African culture more than I ever have before. And even though Cape Town and Tromsø are equally beautiful in their own ways (and I am fully aware of how lucky I am to have lived in two such beautiful places), the African blood in my veins, I think, will always draw me back.
A view towards Table Mountain at dusk
