A weekend in Jo'burg

Saturday
 
The Math lecture is finally over ! (I mean, still an exam to prepare and grade, plus a project that the students are working on now !). This means a little bit of rest for the weekend, starting Saturday afternoon - yes, I was teaching the last lecture on Saturday.

First I went to the Origins Center, located on the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand (a.k.a. "Wits"). The museum is mainly on rock art and the origins of mankind. In the museum, you see how "modern" mankind can be understood from its origins. The history of mankind is traced through the perspective of art, and more precisely rock art. It has some very interesting cave paintings (some are reproductions) dating back to tens of thousands years ago. Lascaux (which is still briefly mentioned !) looks quite young next to these. The oldest piece of man artwork has been discovered in South Africa : it is a very simple piece of rock with straight lines, and if I remember correctly it is 75000 years old. The point is that it means that at that time, those that we can now already call humans (homo sapiens) could store information out of their brain. There is also a nice section about the languages and the ethnic groups.
Overall, it is a nice museum, the visit is not very long and it is very central in Jo'burg, so, an easy thing to do ! Besides, the museum shop is really nice.

After the museum, I went to what seems to be the preferred weekend destination of the people here : a shopping mall. There are a lot of shopping malls in Jo'burg, they are huge. Personally, I go there mainly to buy food, and to walk around, but I'm not really fond on shopping anyway. So, I bought some food, especially a boerewors, the local sausage (very good, but I'm sure the one I buy at the supermarket is not the best one !!).

Sunday

Again a very nice winter day: sunny and warm during the day (freezing at night). The cold wind that was blowing on Friday and Saturday is not there anymore, so, time to go out ! I decide to go to the Johannesburg Zoo.
At a bus station on 7th street (close to Rosebank), I saw this mysterious writing :

I am really not sure what is meant by "France is bacon", I understand it's a reference to a famous pun "Knowledge is power, France is bacon" (where one should read Francis Bacon). But in the context of abortion, talking about bacon is interesting :-)

Then I headed to the zoo. At first, I just wanted to go walking at the Zoo Lake park, but then I thought I may just as well go the the zoo :
- positive points: it's a nice place, nice park, a lot of families go there, you can bring your pic-nic, you can see some animals (it's a zoo, after all)
- negative points: it's a zoo
I don't really like zoo's, especially in a country where all these animals (well, not all) live next door in the National Parks. But if you are in Jo'burg for a few days and don't have time to go to the Kruger, then the zoo can be an interesting alternative. Note that for the Rhino (see picture below), it is one that was hunted, it received 6 bullets and got its horn cut, but survived. The zoo is for this one a safe place, in a way.

So, I won't show too many pictures of these animals "in prison", because if you think of it, it's just like what you would see in any zoo in the world, and it's a bit sad. But I can't wait to go and see the National Parks !

African elephant

Rhino

Hippo

The lions sleep today

This one just woke up: I like the hair style (do I look the same ? :-)

Giraffe

I finished the day by a quick look at the African Craft Market (in Rosebank), not to buy, but to see what kind of stuff they have. It's a market with "traditional" stuff, clearly oriented for tourists and people looking for "authentic" souvenirs, and they have nice stuff. I understood that these are not only things from South Africa, but from the whole continent.