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'Cause I'm leaving on a jetplane...
Mar. 24th, 2004 10:45 pmPicked up my passport today. Argh. The photo was awful enough in its original version, but the scanned, cut and holographed version in that passport looks even more awful, and I hadn't even thought that possible.
New passports have a funny smell about them. Too bad my old one was invalid; it had such wonderful seals and visa in it, and it didn't smell of ink and cheap paper. But the five years were over last summer, so now I have a completely empty, funny-smelling new one sporting a horrible photo of me. *sigh*
Spent most of the day at my parents', tidying up my room and packing my suitcase. It's scary to think that, three days from today, I'm going to be in South Africa; especially since I still don't know how the thing with the flat will work out. I don't really want to pay for it another month, but it looks like I'll have to. Damnit. My mother is really scared, though, because she's afraid something terrible will happen to me down there. (A young relative was killed in South Africa, a few years ago; then again, if you go on an evening walk all on your own in South Africa as a young, white, blonde woman, I suppose it is your own fault. Which doesn't make it any better, only more predictable, of course.) She also just plain isn't interested in South Africa, so of course it's hard for her to imagine anyone else might find it interesting. But it appeared in books I read as a child or now, and my philosophy teacher loved it (one of the few diversions in his orderly classes), and my dearest was there several times; and while I didn't actually expect to get there anytime soon and thought, until a few months back, that the "Southern Africa" seminar I took for Cultural Anthropology in my first semester was as close as I'd get anyway, I certainly wanted to. Some time. But it wasn't a place to visit: It was a place to read about, and dream about, a place of lions and elefants, poisonous snakes and mongooses, deserts and jungle; and a place where terrible things happened, a place of apartheid that only ended a decade ago, a place that you maybe saw on the news but not with your own eyes.
Something about it that fascinates the little geek inside me (beside being on vacations with a boyfriend for the first time and the landscape and the fact that I've never yet been on the southern hemisphere and all) is the fact that some of my past and present obsessions seem to meet in South Africa. I was really, really into scouting until I got too old for it, I guess; and lo - Baden-Powell got the idea while serving in the Boer Wars. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. One of the world instructors of Shôtôkan Karate, Stan Schmidt, is South-African. And the Renie and !Xabbu storyline of Otherland takes place there (albeit in Durban and not in Cape Town, which is where I'm going), too...
And besides, after weeks and weeks of only seeing Jörg for the weekends, it'll just be wonderful to have him and only him to me for ten days. Yes.
But of course, if anyone wants a postcard, I'll be a good girl and send some. Comment, or e-mail me if I don't yet have your adress, and I'll write...
- - -
( Ich packe meinen Koffer... )
- - -
New passports have a funny smell about them. Too bad my old one was invalid; it had such wonderful seals and visa in it, and it didn't smell of ink and cheap paper. But the five years were over last summer, so now I have a completely empty, funny-smelling new one sporting a horrible photo of me. *sigh*
Spent most of the day at my parents', tidying up my room and packing my suitcase. It's scary to think that, three days from today, I'm going to be in South Africa; especially since I still don't know how the thing with the flat will work out. I don't really want to pay for it another month, but it looks like I'll have to. Damnit. My mother is really scared, though, because she's afraid something terrible will happen to me down there. (A young relative was killed in South Africa, a few years ago; then again, if you go on an evening walk all on your own in South Africa as a young, white, blonde woman, I suppose it is your own fault. Which doesn't make it any better, only more predictable, of course.) She also just plain isn't interested in South Africa, so of course it's hard for her to imagine anyone else might find it interesting. But it appeared in books I read as a child or now, and my philosophy teacher loved it (one of the few diversions in his orderly classes), and my dearest was there several times; and while I didn't actually expect to get there anytime soon and thought, until a few months back, that the "Southern Africa" seminar I took for Cultural Anthropology in my first semester was as close as I'd get anyway, I certainly wanted to. Some time. But it wasn't a place to visit: It was a place to read about, and dream about, a place of lions and elefants, poisonous snakes and mongooses, deserts and jungle; and a place where terrible things happened, a place of apartheid that only ended a decade ago, a place that you maybe saw on the news but not with your own eyes.
Something about it that fascinates the little geek inside me (beside being on vacations with a boyfriend for the first time and the landscape and the fact that I've never yet been on the southern hemisphere and all) is the fact that some of my past and present obsessions seem to meet in South Africa. I was really, really into scouting until I got too old for it, I guess; and lo - Baden-Powell got the idea while serving in the Boer Wars. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. One of the world instructors of Shôtôkan Karate, Stan Schmidt, is South-African. And the Renie and !Xabbu storyline of Otherland takes place there (albeit in Durban and not in Cape Town, which is where I'm going), too...
And besides, after weeks and weeks of only seeing Jörg for the weekends, it'll just be wonderful to have him and only him to me for ten days. Yes.
But of course, if anyone wants a postcard, I'll be a good girl and send some. Comment, or e-mail me if I don't yet have your adress, and I'll write...
- - -
( Ich packe meinen Koffer... )
- - -
