Joburg - Perhaps SA's true friendly city

Eish!! has been quiet for the past 2 days. Yes, it's only been two days. I took the family for a quick trip up to Johannesburg. As a born and bred Capetonian, the thought of going to 'Joburg' for anything other than business is a rather odd one and while I have made a fair amount of business trips to the city, it has probably been close to 20 years since I have made this trip for anything other than business myself. So it was with a fair bit of trepidation that I agreed to book the plane tickets and organise accommodation.

All this said, let me state that we really had a great time. The Joburgers, Gautengers, Vaalies, whatever they are called nowadays, are a great, friendly bunch of people. Everywhere we went we were greeted with a smile by people in jobs that they clearly seemed happy to have. The levels of service at all our touch points was far superior to that experienced here in Cape Town (a city centred around service industries, apparently.) The beauty of it was that there was no way that anyone we dealt with, other than the hotel clerk, could have known that we were not locals, so this is just the way it is. So kudos to Joeys we left your city very impressed, proud to be South African and, in fact, feeling a little more African.(perhaps that last comment needs it's one post)

Now, if you can organise a little less traffic, some green grass (in the winter), the removal of some of the roadside billboards, a little more oxygen in the air, more chilled drivers, some sort of beacon that indicates North, a real mountain and a little bit of coastline (the valley of the waves does not count, in fact it's in another province) then you may just have the perfect city.