Airport arrival time in Detroit: 3:10 P.M, Friday, September 4.
Arrival time in Cape Town: 9:15 P.M., Saturday, September 5.
Let me preface this by saying that aisle seats rule and if I’m ever forced to sit in a middle seat on a trans-continental flight, please give me so much Tylenol PM I don’t wake up for 3 weeks. Anyway, South Africa is 6 hours ahead of Detroit, but that’s 24 real time hours of travel time. The flight from Detroit to Amsterdam went pretty well – I ended up sitting next to Lisa, a girl from Miami University (the Ohio one that like 25% of you reading this went to) who told her professors she had a job interview in California on Thursday but was actually flying to Paris for a week to hang out with friends. That made the flight go fairly quick, as she was probably the only other American college student on my flight. I didn’t sleep at all, but ended up watching the new Star Trek movie, which somehow I missed in theaters and is fantastic, and The Proposal, a nice romantic comedy that left me feeling completely homosexual. No it was actually pretty bad.
So we got to Amsterdam at around 7 a.m. and my connecting flight wasn’t until 9:45, so Lisa and I walked around for awhile and got some food and I marveled at how weird it was to see people who looked completely American, eating McDonalds and wearing Gap, but weren’t speaking English. We figured out that texting on my phone works – although apparently it costs like 50 cents a message, so don’t text me unless you’re dead or need the answer to a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire rerun question. The Amsterdam airport is kinda weird – apparently you get a customs stamp for flying to Paris, but I didn’t get a stamp for catching a connecting flight to South Africa, which made me pretty jealous because I wanted another stamp in my barren passport.
The flight to Cape Town from Amsterdam takes 12 hours and is awful. I watched the new Terminator(decent), He’s Just Not That Into You(exceedingly predictable), Yes, Man(kinda funny), and 4 30 Rock episodes. I still had 4 hours to kill after all that. I sat next to two mid-20s girls who spoke very little English, but I talked to them as much as I could. I spent an hour talking to a French woman living in DC who was flying to Cape Town for a cotton business conference, which was pretty interesting. I spent another hour talking to a Michigan State University supply chain management professor who was flying to Cape Town for 48 hours to work on a business deal with the University, then flying home. 44 hours in the air for 48 hours on the ground, all on MSU’s bill. He gave me his card and recommended a bunch of places to visit, so that was pretty productive.
South African Immigration is the biggest crap shoot this side of a Vegas casino. As many of you know, I bought a one way ticket to Cape Town so that I could buy a return flight to wherever I wanted. I wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to go, so I hadn’t bought the return ticket before I left. My plan was to see if something popped up here and I wanted to go on safari or travel to Europe with someone here rather than just by myself.
So when I got to the lady at the immigration counter, I handed her my passport and smiled. First thing she says is, “Take that piece of wood out of your mouth”, because I had a toothpick from the dinner on the plane in my mouth.
"You will now buy a ticket, and you will not get a good deal on it."
Great. She looked at my passport and asked what I’m here for and when I’m leaving. When I said I was interning and then leaving in November, she asked for my return ticket. Not having one yet, I was kind of confused, but told her I didn’t have one yet and that I was planning on leaving November 28 – within the 3 month Guest Visa time limit. She decided to find this answer offensive, and told me that in order to be admitted to the country I would have to buy a return ticket out of the country, and if I didn’t have sufficient funds to do this I would be deported immediately on the next KLM flight out. I argued for a few minutes and she wasn’t budging, so I followed this short African woman who spoke barely any English through customs and baggage claim, past the front door, and over to the ticket counter. A Dutch KLM worker in his mid-20s was behind the desk at 10 P.M. on a Friday night – obviously he was in a great mood. I explained my problem and he looked up flights out of the country, which it turns out are around 10,000 rand if you buy them on the spot.
Now keep in mind this is a modern airport, and I’m standing there with my laptop in my bag. I asked rather forcefully at least 10 times if I could use my laptop to buy my own ticket, only to get shot down faster than Oklahoma’s national championship hopes. At this point I was pretty pissed – rightfully so, since I told both my advisor at MSU and people here at the internship program I’m working at that I was flying in on a one way ticket, and no one said this would be a problem.
Obviously I understand the situation and why a return flight is necessary, but you’d think someone would have told me ahead of time when I was telling them my plans. Fail on my part, but I was still very angry no one in an advisory position for this trip bothered to fill me in on this minor $1500 American dollar detail. I could have bought a $400 ticket to Athens off studentuniverse.com on my laptop, but no, since I came in on KLM I was forced to buy a KLM ticket out of the country. So I bought a 10,000 rand ticket from Cape Town to Amsterdam, walked all the way back to immigration, got my passport stamped and back, picked my bags up, walked back to the ticket counter and filled out a ticket cancellation form, which says I get a full ticket refund – minus a 250 Euro penalty – in 6 to 8 weeks. Yea, probably the best way to enter a country possible. Welcome to South Africa!
The best part of this entire situation is that Megan – the other girl from MSU going this internship program – got through immigration without getting asked for her return ticket at all, and got a stamp by saying she was interning and leaving Nov. 28. She showed the most basic paperwork imaginable – a slip from Connect 123 with emergency contact info on it – and she got into the country. Meanwhile, I get Nazi immigration official with a stick up her ass who sticks me with a $1500 plane ticket. I hope no one I know gets swine flu, but since I don’t remember her name it doesn’t count as knowing her… right?
So Megan and I hopped in a cab to our apartment building on Roeland St.
The kitchen in my apartment looks like this.
I spent the entire time talking about the Confederation Cup last June with the cabbie, who shook my hand and insisted that I have a fantastic time in Africa and that we didn’t have to tip him at all and that he really enjoyed our company when we got to Roeland Street. I got up to my room, found a note from my roommate Tom – a senior at USC who has been here for about 3 weeks, so he knows the town pretty well – saying to call him when I got there. So I put my bags down, figured out Tom was at a nearby bar with a bunch of other interns, and hopped a cab at 11:15 P.M. to a Cape Town bar after having flown across the world and been traveling for over 24 real time hours straight. The rest of the interns all seem really nice and like we have similar interests. The bars we went to were very reminiscent of college town type bars with a younger crowd. I was pretty wary of pickpockets – apparently last week my roommate got his cell phone stolen out of his pocket at a bar across the street – so I just took 100 rand and no credit cards or ID with me to the bar. It was a nice way to shake off how angry I was at having to buy a ticket and then canceling it immediately just to get through immigration, and was a good way to meet a large group of interns here.
I ended up staying up pretty late, and went to bed around 4:30 A.M. Cape Town time – 10:30 Ann Arbor time – and woke up around 11:30 feeling pretty well adjusted to the day.
View from the treadmill.
I think staying up all night on the flight really helped me adjust quickly to the time difference, as my body was so exhausted that now it thinks its on normal time. We’ll see in a few days when I get into a regular schedule if it actually is, but for now I feel fine. I went grocery shopping, ran on the treadmill on the 20th floor of my apartment building while I stared at Table Mountain and the city in front of me for 45 minutes because it’s rainy today, and haven’t decided what to do tonight yet.
I start work on Wednesday, and have no idea what I’m doing in the meantime. This was a nice verbal diarrhea post – my word count is pushing 1600, but whatever. I hope you guys have a better feel for how my trip is going and what its like here – if I missed anything or you have any questions or comments or think my writing sucks, leave me a comment and I’ll let you know. You can also feel free to email me at jack.robenalt@gmail.com or get on AIM (Jackus189) or Skype (Jack.Robenalt). I’d love to hear from all of you!
More later when my job starts and I have actual interesting things to say.
Fall 2009 in Cape Town 