Johannesburg August 4th, 2012

Johannesburg….this was actually a return for Greg and I as we had arrived to the city first (before Cape Town) to do a bit of sightseeing and also an overnight safari at Pilanesburg. OMG, THAT was amazing!!! Aside from the gigs of course, the safari was the biggest thrill for the trip (well and the Peninsula tour of CT!). We had decided to go to Pilanesburg vs. Kruger (the biggest safari park area in SA) due to the fact it has no maleria. Yes, this was the end of winter/start of spring so the risk was low in Kruger but we both just felt it better to play it safe and I had read up that next to Kruger, Pilanesburg was the place to be so…

Well, first crazy thing was that we had 2 other people on the tour with us…a young couple…from MADISON WISCONSIN! 😯 (for those who don’t know, that’s the state right up north from Illinois so only a few hours drive from my house) We’re half way around the world and could have had anyone with us and we get neighbors, how cool is that? 😀  Next crazy thing was we never saw a lion! 😥 SA has “the big five” which is the 5 main animals to not only see on a safari but also in their country as each animal has it’s face on SA currency. We saw 3..Elephant, Rhino and Leopard. We’d been told Water Buffalo are hard to spot but even our guide was surprised we saw a leopard (he said they are harder to see too) and not a lion. Ah well, we saw a TON of other things! I had to keep reminding myself that we weren’t in a zoo or something…this was REAL! 😯 😀 Some favorites were the babies…mama and baby giraffe, mama and baby elephant, mama and baby zebra (saw a TON of zebra….and Kudu…hahahaha our tour guide laughed as we were all ‘ooo” when we first arrived. “You’re gonna see a LOT of zebra and kudu that by the time the tour is over, you won’t be impressed”. :lol:)  BEST part of the safari though…getting chased by an elephant! 😯  So we are riding along and the Madison wife all of a sudden says “what’s that gray over there?”  We stop and look closer and all of a sudden we realize we’ve come across a bunch of elephants.  Well, I should point out that the animals know it’s THEIR territory so they don’t care if you’re there or not, they’re going to do their thing no matter so they just kind of meandered over and into the road (our tour director, seeing how they were moving on an angle, turned our car around so that we were closer to them).  We watched as they stopped to eat from the trees, the baby found a plastic bag someone had left and started playing with it by lifting it up with its trunk and swooshing it around, dropping, then picking it up again to toss it around some more….SO precious!!! 😀  But eventually they all had made it across and moved along so our tour director turned us back right and started along again.  Somehow though, one of the elephants must have  decided to go off on his own because we came around a corner and bam, there he was.  We creeped up a bit and then stopped and of course, us being tourist, our camras were going. The elephant turned and was looking at us as he was eating from the tree and I had zoomed in so I could really see his face so was juuust starting to say “hey, it seems he’s looking at us” when all of a sudden he turned and started coming towards us. Immediately I was like “ooo, cool!” 😀  and snapped a picture (part at the bottom there is the passenger side outside mirror rim!) but our tour director put the car in reverse and started to slowly back up. Yeah….Mr. Elephant wasn’t satisfied so he started coming towards us a bit faster, ears flapping now (though he never tooted)….our tour director started backing up faster and the Madison husband said “um…what do we do if we run into someone coming along the road?” but our tour director just kept backing up. Lucky for us, not only did we not run into someone but the elephant eventually decided he had made his point and he veered off on a side trail but I grabbed video of it and to ME, it was THE highlight of the entire safari!!!! 😀

But that was before, now we were back and since we had the day free before the gig, we did a day tour to Soweto and the Apartheid Museum. I had been really into learning about Apartheid, Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko etc etc when I was in High School so this was something I’d been looking forward to! 🙂  Upon arriving, we were given a ticket and told to see if we were “white or black”. 😯 As it turns out, they keep the ‘feel’ of segregation alive at the museum and there are literally 2 separate entrances depending on what your ticket says. Now there’s no one monitoring so it’s not like they make you stick to it but Greg and I followed. I got ‘white’ he got ‘black’.  And lucky for us, the special exhibit was this massive section on Mandela. OMG, that man! 😯  NO idea how he was able to overcome what they put him and his family through and still be such a loving and compassionate man. Such an icon and an example for mankind!!  After that (which sadly, we weren’t given as much time as originally promised and it’s huge so I could have easily spent a full day there but ah well) we headed out to Soweto. The things I’d read and pictures I’d seen from back in the mid/late 80s came to life.  Kind of a hard way to live but we stopped and mingled with everyone at a few places (as our tour guide said “I can take you around like the other tours but then you’re just SEEING Soweto. You need to EXPERIENCE Soweto and the only way you can do that is to actually get OUT of the car and walk around, speak with the people, try their food and drink, LIVE it”). He was right! First stop found us with a family that made their own alcohol. Well, I’m not a big fan of alcohol unless it’s got some other kind of flavor (ala pina colada or something and even then I don’t often bother LOL) so I took a pass as did Greg but another girl tried it. Then it was on to a place where everyone meets, buys their fresh meat and either takes it home to fix it, or sticks around for others to cook it for you and serve. Those who wait, visit, and there were some side dishes so to speak also (though I can’t remember what the stuff that looked like a cross between mashed potatoes and cotton was called). Again, I took a pass (main meat served was cow innerds 😯 ….ugh!) but Greg got daring. I couldn’t help but think “OMG, are you CRAZY?” and LOL, there was another American family on the tour with us who we’d been chatting with and whose wife shared my shock. “You’ll have to email me to let me know if he survives this”.  (for the record, he wasn’t feeling too well the next day :sad:) But it was really cool to see how everyone lives there, they were really sweet and lovely people who welcomed us openly and when we got back to the lodge to get ready for the gig, we felt like we had really experienced Soweto, just like our guide promised!

So the gig….well, no offense to Cape Town but I think tonight was better. We had been warned though. LOL, Greg and I booked some rooms at this African Lodge place…very authenticly decorated…even had a big teddy bear in my room (long story! 😆 ). So anyways, the guy who I’d been in contact the whole time for arrangements knew we were coming for the OMD gigs and happened to be the one who picked us up from our Soweto tour. We climbed into the car and he says “ya know, a funny thing happened last night. The bar I was in had a bunch of people talking about your gig tonight!” 😯 😯 I was like “no WAY! That’s AWESOME!” 😀 😀 so he laughs and says “yeah, well I joined in and said ‘hey, I KNOW that band because some of my guests are going.” 😆  So anyways, we talked about Cape Towns gig, about how the stage for tonight might be etc etc and then he says “well, tonight’s gig will definately be different.” I asked him what he meant and he said “Cape Town fans can be a bit, um…boring. Joburg fans know how to have fun!”. 😯 COOL! 😀 

So got to the venue and was happy to see that the stage was much lower than in Cape Town…phew! There were two guys spinning 80s tunes (I forgot to mention this for Cape Town but none of the gigs have an opening act. 😯 ) Gotta say, it’s a bit strange to come in, the guys play, and bam, it’s done. Very short night and tomorrow they go on at 6pm…yes, SIX! 😯 Shoot, they’ll be walking off stage before they would ever normally even THINK about going on! But as mentioned in the CT blog, we’ve learned quite quickly that SA cities close up quite early LOL.  So 8pm comes along and DS starts, cheers go off and slowly, Mr. H.#2 and Mr. C. come on (nice that there was a bit more light for them as DS had big yellow spot lights shooting across the stage and into the crowd so the stage was illuminated a bit more for them. 😀 ) Then the familiar sounds of Messages and up went a bunch of us…more than the initial crowd of Cape Town and pretty soon it was a good portion of the place. Tesla Girls went down well too and when they did Radio Waves, (which, just before they started, a guy with three drinks in his hand walked past so Mr. M. called to him and tried to get one of them for himself….didn’t work despite him saying he wasn’t joking…to which he then joked “gee, the service around here.” 😆 😆 ) a guy to my left had an enormous smile on his face and another guy to my left was bopping around so the fact it’s not one of the 18 hits didn’t seem to bother anyone at all. 😆

Next was HoM1 and Mr. M. went from side to side but when he got to stage left, he ended up shaking hands with a guy who was on his knees. 😯 NO idea what was up with that. I thought maybe he had gotten on his knees as a joke, like praying to Mr. M. (dude….SMS is later in the setlist. 😆 😛 ) but nope, he stayed like that!!! Eh, whatever floats your boat…he was enjoying it everytime I glanced over so…. 🙄 😆 Since the gap between the stage and front row was smaller, it was easier for fans to come up and slap his hand…and they did! 😆

When Mr. H. came up to do FLaD, the crowd kept cheering and then IYL had a great sing along! Mr. M. took his ear piece off so he could hear…it was definitely louder than in CT. 😀 It was right about now that I noticed an adorable little boy in the front row taking what looked like video with a phone. He had gone up by the stage to get some too but the security guard had him move back so then he sat down on the floor for a bit closer up to record..aww. 😀 He was gone by the end of the A&M trilogy but the cheers weren’t. I heard someone yell out Mr. M.s name when the windmilling had stopped and the smiles on all 4 guys was wonderful to see!

Well, Statues was beautiful as always but then something I haven’t seen in…well…a LONG time happened…Mr. M. didn’t sit for TLaC. 😯 He STARTED in a sitting position but then he got up to say “hi” to the people in the back, then asked us to start swaying our arms back and forth, talked to some people who had sat down by saying “you can sit down as long as you move your arms back and forth” but then the singing started so he ended up staying up. I thought “when is he going to actually sit? Um….OK, about time to go back towards the guys now so…I guess tonight was a stander.” 😆

Once done, the usual mindless dancing began again and I was happy to see a few people started to do a mild bounce. 😆 For SMS, Mr. M. made a joke that since it’s a casino, he doubted anyone was going to go to church tomorrow so come with him instead. 😆 Sadly, I couldn’t quite make out the goofing around between Mr. M. and Mr. H. tonight during Locomotion (despite trying to get some high speed pics of it. When playing them back, it looked kind of like Mr. M. moved Mr. H.s mic away but can’t say for sure, sorry. 🙁 )

When it was time for SotSS, I knew it was going to be great by the initial cheer and yup, major sing-a-long! Mr. M. took his ear piece out again and said we sounded brilliant (I concur as it was definately loud! 😀 ) and after we heard the “Mr. Cooper” intro and Mr. C. doing his own brilliance on the synths, another cheer went up for him and Mr. M. went over, got his attention, and gave him a thumbs up. 😆 😀  When it was done, Mr M. turned to Mr. H. with a “eh…eh…did you HEAR them? What a crowd” gesture and Mr. H. laughed and nodded a “yeah, I know, brilliant! 😀 😀 ” back. Maybe due to it being awhile since being at an OMD gig, I’m, er, out of shape but my cheeks were actually sore at this point from smiling so darn much…it was just a really wonderful gig and the guys looked so happy it was heartwarming. (and, as I was later told by another friend there…who wants to stay nameless….smiling for 30 minutes a day lessens wrinkles. 😯 Well, at 1 hour 40 minutes X2…we’ve just knocked out a weeks worth of wrinkles. 😆 😉 )

Sadly, this led us to Enola Gay….and Mr. M. hilariously forgetting the words. He goofed, then joked “you’d think I’d know the words by now eh? Ah well, if you know them, sing along!” and when the first verse was over and he was doing his bass part, he then rolled his eyes, made a face and a gun to his head gesture…awww….gotta love it! 😆 😀  When they walked off afterwards, the crowd started a “we want more…we want more…” chant but a couple crewman were fervishly working on Mr. H.#2s drums…..hmm…more problems perhaps? Poor Mr. H.#2 and his drums! 🙁 🙁 Got things going though because they came back out and just like a 3 strike out inning, WotMW, Secret and Electricity were over in a flash. The guys said their final goodbyes and promised to be back again soon and then it was done. It truly IS weird to have things end so quickly but while I was waiting for Greg to show up (he was a few rows back tonight), I saw Ryan coming towards me and got to give hugs and say “hi”. I had wondered if he’d be with them or if he was just their NA tour manager so wonderful to get a short chat. Also met a forumer (who said he hadn’t posted for a long time but hi to Mathew if you read the forum) and then that was that. We all sat and visited for a bit and then Greg and I left as we had a cab set up for pick up.

Just one more gig…sheesh, goes fast and tomorrow isn’t sold out yet (oops, forgot to say tonights gig WAS! 😀 😀  ) but I would bet money some of the fans who came tonight, buy a ticket for tomorrow. As I’m sure most, if not all of you know, it’s virtually impossible to not catch the OMD bug…can’t stop with one gig when you can have two (or in our case, 3). 😆 😉 SO glad these gigs are taking place and from the looks on fans faces during and after, I think we all are realizing how special these 3 nights are!