My Birthday and First South African Soccer Game

So as ya’ll probably already know, it was my birthday this past weekend. For it I decided to go to the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, which is an area right by Rondebosch were I live. On Saturdays, there is an organic market I was told so I thought I would check it out since, you know, I LOVE food. Although I had been forewarned, when I got there I quickly saw this was one of the bourgiest, WASPiest, hipsteriest places I had been to of yet. It was also filled with probably the greatest amount of most white people I had seen. It was complete foodie heaven, but of course, as we all know, foodie things bring in the white privileged crowd and it was packed. In spite of the dramatic inequality this venue represents I wasn’t going to let myself get too down because I love good, inspired, quality food and I just can’t feel guilty about that. I should just be thankful.

 The market didn’t really have much in the way of produce but it had a ton of food stalls specializing in a bunch of things: sushi, Thai food, Paella, pizzas, Mediterranean food, curries, Belgium waffles (don’t compare to Cinci though), silly mini pancakes, crepes, there was local wine and beer, desserts, smoothies, I think there was Northern European stuff but I wasn’t familiar, basically it was sublime. I got this one dish that was a potato pancake with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce on top. It was incredible. Of course the meat version looked even better because it had bacon and smoked salmon on top as well. Here is a tally of what I ate in the span of two hours:

-potato pancake thingy

-mushroom kebab (amazing and quite filling)

-bloody mary (yum)

-mini lemon meringue tart (I could have made it better)

-a lemon mint smoothie

-countless tasters

To be honest I thought I ate more because I practically waddled the rest of the day from being so rotund. Then at night I went to this club and it was ‘whatever’ as I would say. Alas, birthdays rarely reach ones expectations in the end. At least I didn’t spend my 21^st over the toilet, unlike most of my friends.

The next, Sunday, I got to see my first professional soccer game. Apparently, the game was going to be at the World Cup stadium but U2 had just had a concert and I guess they couldn’t clean up in time (fucking Bono playing shows, prancing around pretending to relieve poverty and preventing me from going to the Greenpoint stadium.) Either way the teams that were playing were the Santos and the Chiefs. The Chief are the most popular team in SA and the crowd was a sea of yellow and black, the team’s colors. Having absolutely no previous knowledge about the game of soccer it was quite an educational experience. With the help of one of the girls in our group, Ore, I actually began to pick it up. Unfortunately though the game ended in a tie, which is all-in-all rather anti-climactic.