After reading the guidebook, I felt like taking a walk around the city. But not just the usual one I take quite often, always following the same route, but through its old part. That is, mainly through the center, but in selected spots. The city is huge, so I couldn't cover everything, of course, but I was left with a ton of impressions and plenty to share. I roped Katya into it, and she agreed readily. Irinka also tagged along as a 'sidekick.'
I remember when Vitya and I were wandering around St. Petersburg in 2005 and accidentally stumbled into an old entrance of one of the many buildings from 'those days,' I suddenly felt St. Petersburg the way I saw it when I read Dostoevsky's novels! I remembered reading 'Netochka Nezvanova' about five years prior. It was a completely unexpected, stirring sensation that I hadn't planned on experiencing at all. But at that moment, I realized: I didn't come to St. Petersburg in vain! It was worth the trip just for that one feeling. It was unusual and great to experience it.
And today, I intentionally went to those places 'you can only read about in books' to feel the Africa of 'those days.' Ira and Katya didn't appreciate my initiative; they were sluggish and, without even walking half of what I had planned with me, they headed home. But I was flying (figuratively speaking)!
The day was delightful! Sunday. Silence. South Africa is a country of amazing paradoxes. People walk around and live from Monday to Saturday at the latest (sometimes even Friday). But on Sunday, the city empties out. No vendors in the center, no people. Most cafes and shops are closed. And for me, Sunday is the best time in the center of Cape Town. Because it's quiet. There are almost no cars, even. Walk to your heart's content, ride a bike in the middle of the highway. Freedom! The main thing is not to get too carried away, because even though there are few cars on Sunday, they are still there!
I was looking at these cute, tidy, colorful houses, and suddenly, images from the past that I had never seen before appeared before my eyes. I imagined how people walked here a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago; what these houses, which are so cute, well-kept, and truly 'like from an old movie' today, looked like back then. I liked old Cape Town no less, and perhaps even more, than its suburb, Simon's Town, where houses from 'those times, now shrouded in a romantic aura,' stand in a row on both sides of the main street. Yeah. It really paints a picture of some old African western with crooked houses, from the balconies of which terrified faces of black people peeked out. Those were slaves, tortured and having seen nothing in life but their slavery, looking out. There was no asphalt on the roads yet; carts were passing through the streets, kicking up clouds of dust—merchants were carrying fish and other food, emitting a very rich (and often foul) smell, baked in the sun.
White slave-owning masters (European colonizers) were scurrying back and forth. And they couldn't be liked by anyone: neither by the slaves they tortured without a thought in their heads to end it all, nor by us, if we imagine that we are seeing all this in black and white on a cinema screen. Well, of course, I don't claim to speak for everyone, but...
December 21st. Three months since I've been here. The halfway point.
