Cape Town

The other day I was fortunate enough to kind of happen upon tickets to a rugby game in Cape Town. My roommate takes economics from this graduate student who -- as well as being a snappy dresser and pretty good looking -- is a big fan of rugby and offered students a ticket and a ride there and back for the low, low price of R150. I paid up. Nevermind that football bores me to tears, I thought. Maybe I'm a closet rugby fan.

"Rugby", to me, has always sounded like an adorable sport where people run around pelting each other with marshmallows. Rug-by. I didn't really think that it would be so ... brutal. All the players look like cavemen on steroids who, in a testosterone-induced rage, could pound your face into a brick wall and remove your innards in two seconds flat. So having like twenty of them on the field at once -- whoa. What I thought was a group hug (how cute! Do they do this at the beginning of every play?) devolved into punching and sitting on people's heads. However, the South Africans beat the Australians (the Reds) handily, which almost made me forget how stupid it was that they sold their team name to Vodacom (yes, the team is officially called the Vodacom Stormers). Ugh. I'm not sure why -- perhaps my Roman forefathers and their love of gore -- but by the second half, I was kind of paying attention to what was going on and wasn't even too shaken when the 15th guy lay in agony, clutching his knee. Or when he tried to hobble off the field and no one helped him and he basically collapsed in a heap center-field. Tough love for those Australians.

South Africa won by a pretty narrow margin (Australia came back in the last five minutes) and the members of the audience decked in Australian flags left sadly, heads drooping. I felt pretty good, not just because South Africa beat them and it was pretty questionable there for awhile, but because I'd just had my first rugby experience. It wasn't as cute as I'd imagined. I did, however, eat something that theoretically was a hot dog and saw my first rugby match fight which broke out on the bottom floor of the stadium during the first half. All in all, I felt pretty initiated into the whole sporting thing and might even see a rugby match again, though "Go Vodacom Stormers" is way too many syllables for a legit cheer. Sell outs.

Then it was off to the hostel with a group of Europeans (mostly Belgian, I think?) from my dorm. Similar to my misconceptions about rugby, my knowledge of what a hostel was turned out to be completely wrong. I'll admit it -- I saw Eli Roth's Hostel, which turned out to be more of a porno than a horror flick -- but it nonetheless shaped what I thought a hostel was. So it was a bit of a surprise to walk to the Ashanti Lodge and see the cute little fish mosaics on the shower floors and the kitschy African art over the walls. It was definitely a little cozier than the Slovakian hostel from the movie. After meeting a German with dreads who volunteers in Kayamandi through the same project I'm doing (more on that later), the group of us went out to town. Apparently, Long Street is the Bourbon Street of Cape Town. Clubs galore -- and then a bookstore! Like a nerd at a kegger -- and then restaurants. After grabbing a decent hummus and chicken pie (they have so many croissants and unhealthy-but-nonetheless-delicious flaky pastries here) from a Mediterranean place down the street, we joined the Europeans at the Waiting Room. It was three or so stories and was supposed to look like someone's house (why yes, I do know several people with full-scale bars in their living rooms and balconies on their roofs overlooking the cityscape) and was kind of charming and played jazz and it was quaint. The best part, though, was that me and Alyssa met two guys from the University of Cape Town who offered to show us around the city. Also, the guy I talked to (in addition to having a striking resemblance to Seth Rogen) was an English and philosophy major and actually wasn't a pretentious jerk about it. Whoa.

The next day we went to Kirstenbosch, courtesy of Saul and Andrew (Andrew has a Mercedes. I might not know how to pick a peach, but I certainly know how to pick my friends) and saw the botanical gardens. We slightly hiked around the foot of Devil's Peak and enjoyed the scenery. Then, against the warnings of our Afrikaans teacher, we took the train from Cape Town back to Stellenbosch. Saul and Andrew assured us we'd be fine. "Just... don't look too American," our new South African friends warned us. So after changing out of my American flag t-shirt and removing all 20 of my "I voted McCain/Palin 2008" buttons from my purse, I figured I was all set. Alyssa and I bought our first-class tickets -- yes, I was kind of thinking there might be a juice cart and stewardesses in cute skirts; I guess I'm setting myself up for disappointment here -- and sprinted to Platform 8 just in time to board. Yeah, first class here is definitely not really first class. I didn't get any juice and there was not a stewardess in sight. The rampant graffiti would have made for an excellent black-and-white photo but also made it hard to see out the windows. However, we survived. And riding the train is much, much cheaper than taking a bus or taxi to town, so I feel like I might have a viable option for further exploring Cape Town. Go Vodacom(R) Stormers!