Diary of a brave African traveller.

Flight of the White bus.

Diary of an intrepid African traveler.

Stoop: porch, patio, terrace

Braai: barbecue.

Lekker: nice, delicious.

Vorshond: sausage dog

Snoek,Bokom: types of fish

Franschhoek; Paarl; Wellington: places in S.A.

Day 1

Got up at 0900 h. Cold

weetabix for breakfast. We waited on the platform for around three quarters of an hour. I stared at the snack machine. It stared back. I had no change. Mum came with a nougat bar, and I dropped chocolate on the floor and didn't clean it up. Leaving

dad was...tender.The train ride took one and a half hours, and I listened to my custom playlist. At the airport, we were crammed

into a lift with about 20 other people. Put the luggage on a trolley 'cause the strap began to saw through my shoulder. At customs, we had to unpack everything. This was annoying. The stupid detector went off, which was unfathomable, for I had _no_ metallic objects, apart, of course, than my zippers.

We waited for 2 hours at the gate doing nothing. In the shops, I saw a copy of The Help. While boarding, a man in the first class line, which boards first, kept looking at our line, and at his watch. Does he want to be before us? Does he feel penistically challenged?

He was wearing a suit. Figures. Our plane was a little Boeing 737-300, and everyone speaks German.This is the smallest plane I've been on in my own memory. I'm sitting in an aisle seat, next to a man I don't know.He's german. The only thing to read was something called the Holland Herald. There's , obviously, a baby, in first class I think, that keeps crying. It's a sort of:

"Waaah-hi-hi- Waaah- hi- hi-hi"

and is very annoying. It becomes louder during taxi/takeoff,

where it starts to replicate my thoughts:

" Whhhyyyy. Whhhhyyy"Mh

The takeoff was especially loud and bumpy, and it took ages before the plane decides to defy gravity.

I seriously thought that we were going to run out of runway. I experienced positive G, and my ears blocked with pressure.

This plane doesn't have any TV (737). We just get a little plane and a map.

Stewardess is a bloke who gave me chocolate chip cookies and Coke.

I wanted 7-up. Got Coke. The overhead monitor says we are doing 5 km/s. Or something like that.

We're a bit further than halfway. This is a 45 m flight, after all. Soon, we will land in Amsterdam.

The landing started normally, with the pilot correcting only now his course at 90° to the runway. I felt a noticeable drop in power, and assumed we were starting to land. Indeed, the trailing end flaps descended and the ailerons remained still, but something was wrong. The ground was approaching alarmingly fast. We landed with a huge bang, and I said this was " The penultimate to a crash".

For God's sake.

In short, it was shite.

We taxied around for ages, looking for a place to park. I'm sure Amsterdam is beautiful, but it was night, and I saw nothing. Mum tells me the hotel is so old they haven't heard of the internet. Let's wait before jumping to conclusions. We bought food at a

Stop'n'plop'cause'yr'to'dropped't'shop shop.

Only to go round a corner and discover a mall like you've never seen before, restaurants and all.