Leaving On a Jet Plane

This, for many of us, is where Jo'burg ends- OR Tambo airport. This is not a drive out on the N1 or N3 for parts unknown: it's a blunt nexus of steel and escalators, and a food hall like 20 roadside petropoort fast food outlets rolled into one shrieking neon kaleidoscope.
Amid the thronging lumpen jetset is my growing diaspora of friends, who've chosen lives of winter snow, safer places for kids, nanny states with far less crime.
For all the joyful hellos and crying goodbyes airports play stage to, they're such brutal places. Airports should be built like cathedrals, swooping heartspaces of rejoicing or solace- not the steel halogen-lit lonely places they are.

Just finding a quiet place to chat and catch up in the airport is nigh impossible. We tried The Spur, but the hordes of shrieking sugar-crazed toddlers seemed bent on enacting a riot in a maximum security prison.
Deciding we were not Spur people, we moved over to Fournos Bakery. It's sterile, and lit brighter than a dentist's chair. I do recommend the coffee milkshake though. It's loaded with enough caffeine and sugar to turn you into a crazed Cape Flats gang member kite-high on tic.

Sad and sugar-buzzed, I drove back into Jo'burg. With all its flaws, it's my home. Joburg's more than skin deep- it's in my veins. Here's to 2010, and another year in our mad, bad, 'n good city.

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What Others Said

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Richard said
on 14 January 2010

I actually like the airport...I associate it with the excitement of going away on long haul flights to interesting destinations; even local journeys, Cape Town, George, Durban, have been relaxing and filled with anticipation.  I check in early and then find a pay to enter lounge in the departure area, local or international, where I chill out, read, drink tea.  Then I board and the adventure begins..

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Nolene said
on 14 January 2010

Bwhahahaha I know the feeling everytime I enter that god for saken place! But your description of it had me in hysterics! Thanks for the laugh!