Diary #2

MAY IN CAPE TOWN

Let me start with the reassuring and comforting thought that I've already caught the first hail shower. So you really don't have to be crazily jealous of me.

At most a little. Because about seventeen hours ago, I was still lying by the pool with a tower of fresh magazines from my oh so dear former colleagues with whom I was on the sun trip that Coty organizes every year.

I wrote about my first days here. But of course there was more. We went to Boulder’s Beach where you can spot some cheerful penguins from your beach chair. If you come back as a penguin in a next life, I would ask the dear Lord to be so gracious as to transform you into a South African specimen. Then at least you would spend your days in the sun, seems much nicer to me than at the South Pole. You just have to keep those tourists armed with selfie sticks away from you, but a peck with the beak in a cute calf seems to be a reliable remedy. I saw all of this happen from my beach chair and I was thoroughly entertained.

When I set sail from the harbor of Cape Town on a catamaran in the evening and got hit by a gigantic wave, I found it all a bit less entertaining. Fortunately, the sparkling wine (that’s African prosecco) flowed on the deck of the ship just as abundantly as the big waves that had just taken me down, and I talked with my dear colleague editors about life, dreams, and why women should be kind to each other.

The next day, I actually got a cooking workshop and rolled samosas and baked roti pancakes. That our hair then shone from the grease and we had to swim 47 laps in the pool just to feel anything like ‘hunger’, we didn’t discuss further.

When I had managed to stuff all those Lancaster products and my souvenirs back into the suitcase, there was still an African drum workshop on the program. And when I thought I could quietly enjoy my plate of African delicacies, I was taken by the hand by a dark man in traditional clothing to shake our butts in a little game. Thank God the videos that my travel companions made in droves all turned out to be failures.

We carefully documented the rest of the trip in an overdose of Instagram posts. And the memories are in my heart. Now just to hold onto that tan for as long as possible... But with all those Lancaster products, that's of course a piece of cake.

Are you still a little jealous jealous of me...