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I really felt South Africa this visit. Since our move to Australia 12 years ago, I think my understanding of SA has been a bit narrow. We used to go back very summer holiday (not as often now) and visit the same familiar places and see the same people. Since we moved I haven’t really seen any new places or met many different people, so my perception of the country was limited to summer days at the beach house, a suburb in Cape Town and a small town in the Klein Karoo. When talking to Elize before her visit, I had to admit that I didn’t really know much about SA apart from my relatively small and safe bubble, even having spent half my life there. On this visit I tried to be a bit more independent, even though my parents seemed to be convinced that setting foot out of the door alone nearly anywhere in SA would result in certain death. The first 2 days was lovely, Elize was also in Cape Town (cheers for the photos!) so we took the bus around the peninsula, walked around Hout Bay, took a freezing dip at Clifton beach, ate mexican and climbed through the clouds up Table Mountain. I had some quality family time over easter at the beach town where I spent the majority of my summers, ate a lot and ran trails along the ocean. I also went for two beautiful hikes in the Overberg mountains which also has a view of the ocean: perfect. On a longer hike I was lucky to catch up to two girls and chat with them which made the hike even nicer. My family also went to the KKNK, an Afrikaans culture festival in Oudtshoorn and we saw some great Afrikaans plays and a memorable opera performance. My last week there I was back in Cape Town. It was lovely to just spend time with my family and be there for my cousin’s birthday - little family things that I usually miss out on. For the first time I took a train in Cape Town (it was so fine, I think I had this irrational fear instilled in me), took buses around, hiked up Lion’s Head by myself, went for another freezing dip in the ocean, met up with old friends, went for trail runs in Tygerberg Nature reserve. It was great.

 I’ve been super busy since coming back to Austria, will write about that soon.