Report from Cape Town, Feb.14, 2009

Hello from Cape Town! Kate and I celebrated Valentine's Day today (as she reminds me -- our "first as a married couple") by going out to dinner at Bacini's, a "locals" Italian place on Upper Kloof St, in a cool neighborhood called Orangezacht. You gotta love a place where you can have a nice appetizer (grilled calamari), two entrees (fresh fish & a large pizza), and a bottle of wine for less than $30.

It has been a total whirlwind here. A brief recap.

• 16 days ago, movers finished packing up our place, in Berkeley and I had my last day of work in San Ramon.


• 14 days ago, we had our "house cooling party" in our empty house with about 50 of our friends swinging by. Some dear friends took care of everything, including catering and bringing some tables and chairs. It was such a great send off! The only regret was how little time we got to spend with some of the attendees. Kate got a bit sentimental at the end. (Me, too.)


• 13 days ago -- We check out of the Claremont Hotel, where we had stayed for the last 3 nights (in a great room with a San Francisco view). We head to the airport. Make goodbye calls to friends/family from the airport lounge. Though a bit sad to be leaving, we were in good spirits. Kate enjoyed her first flight in Business Class.


• 12 days ago -- arrive in Frankfurt around noon, and check into the hotel room at the airport for our 11 hour layover. (Nice that it was included with our airfare.) Took a train, explored downtown, old churches, and had wurst & sauerkraut at an "apfelwein" tavern. (Apfelwein is a kind of apple wine/cider -- an acquired taste.) A great experience. Still, that layover felt like the longest of my life. We got back to the hotel, and struggled to stay awake until our evening flight.


• 11 days ago-- arrive in Cape Town with 5 suitcases and 2 backpacks. A bit of quizzing at customs, but it was pretty painless. We found the driver holding a "Mr. & Mrs. Ed Hoffmann" sign. "Sam" took us out to his Mercedes. A bit of a struggle getting all the luggage in. We check into the "Hotel Circa" downtown -- nice modern place, a suite with a kitchen and a large outdoor deck.


• 10 & 9 days ago: We meet the "Welcome Home" people that Chevron hires to help us with our visas and finding housing. Henri takes on a tour of various areas, and a few apartments. See a few the following day. Getting a good sense of the options and areas, but not a lot of inventory to look at. We hand over paper work to start the visa application process.


• 8 days ago (Friday): Our car is delivered! While we knew Chevron provides us with a car while we're here, we didn't know what. it would be. A nice surprise -- a brand new VW Golf TDi (diesel!).


• They also arranged driving lessons for both of us. I've driven on the left before. Kate hadn't. Our "teacher" was Sam, the same guy who picked us up at the airport. Sam is kind of like a younger version of Morgan Freeman in the movie "Driving Miss Daisy" -- humble, soft-spoken, and very kind. He took us out, gave us good tips, coached us when we drove too close to the left edge of the road. In the end, he pronounced us both"excellent drivers". Kate is totally into it now. In fact, I haven't driven since our lesson. She's tooling around all over.


• A week ago (Saturday): drove some more of the areas, and spent time walking around prospective neighborhoods.


• Sunday - relaxed day. Went grocery shopping. Did a hike most of the say up "Lion's Head", the second most prominent landmark in Cape Town after Table Mountain. Amazing to do such hiking, and it was less than a 10 minute drive from our hotel downtown.


• This week was a blur. I hit the office full time. Kate split time handling affairs back in California (our house is not rented yet, for example), researching more about daily living here, and seeing a few more prospective apartments. Work for me has been exciting and very challenging -- so many new people, projects, acronyms and things to learn, but the people are great, and there is much work to do.


• Yesterday: I was heading out to lunch on Friday after a series of meetings -- very distracted and hungry. I'm surprised when I get to the lobby -- there's Kate! And she's dropping off something -- a boquet of flowers! I'm totally bewildered & flustrated. In great "foot in mouth" fashion, I say: "What are you doing? What are you trying to do -- embarass me?" (by making me take flowers back to my desk). The wrong things to day!!! Kate was less than pleased, and reminded me it was Valentine's Day tomorrow. Doh!


• So now it is the weekend. Kate has forgiven me. We had a great day -- found a great latte place, went to a farmers market, and had a nice dinner.

Other impressions:

• This is really a high energy city /area -- lots of people, lots to do, incredibly scenic.
• Weather so far has been beautiful, even hot at times. Because of it's location near the tip of Africa and where two oceans meet, we get some serious wind at times.
• Good newspapers.
• People are very friendly. Service staff, too, although they are not always as efficient or quick as a jaded American might expect.
• Not everything works as well here -- I've had to get my room keycard reprogrammed almost every day because it quits working. But you quickly learn to accept it. People here even having a saying here to explain it: "This is Africa."

We are really settling in -- and it didn't take long. The city is easy to navigate. Though you hear other languages around you, just about everyone speaks English. So it is pretty easy. The restaurants are great. Quality wine is cheap. Grocery stores are pretty good, and things are generally cheaper. What's not to like!

'Til next time....