South Africa – Here I Come!! – Part I

Hello to all, and welcome back to my blog!

There are some people which won’t go and travel all over the world if no one will send them out of their country for business travels.
I’m not saying that I’m the kind of person which won’t go and travel without any business trips, but before I went to South Africa, I definitely didn’t think I’ll go and travel there.

Why? Where to start…So…Yeah…
Anyway…
I was sent to South Africa to a business trip twice, and both times were great!
I will tell you about the first trip to South Africa because on the second time I didn’t see any sunlight – Production time. Also, first time was for 5 weeks (4 weekends).

The town I was working in is Pretoria.

Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country’s three capital cities, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government (Cape Town is the legislative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital).

 

 

If you will travel to Pretoria in the winter, you will see purple everywhere!
During the winter, all of Pretoria is colored in purple by the Jacaranda tree.
Jacaranda is a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions.
The locals will tell you that the tree is Pretoria’s tree and all the other countries that have that tree as well, took it from them.
Even if this is true, I can understand why they did it.

Once you will go to Pretoria, you must go to the Union Buildings in order to see the whole city from the mountain. The Union Buildings located next to the Sheraton hotel and have huge and beautiful gardens. Inside the gardens, you will see an enormous statue of Nelson Mandela watching the city of Pretoria.

Inside the city, you will see a lot of European structures, as the government which has been elected after South Africa became a free country asked their people not to destroy everything that the white man have build. They didn’t want to build the city all over again.

In the Down Town, you can check out City Hall, Kruger’s office and a lot of other old government offices which ruled South Africa during the Apartheid.
My suggestion, don’t go out there in the night as you may not come back.
There is a lot of crime and homeless people. Better to go out in other parts of the city than to take a risk and hang out there at the night.

Stay tuned for the 2nd part of the South African blog!