THE PATRIOT

This is a true story about the triumph of the American spirit (and by “spirit,” I mean “stereotype”):

This morning we woke up early to get started on our vineyard tours at 10am. Now, Stellenbosch is much more…colonial than Cape Town and some of the attitudes are a little more colonial too. As in some people have huge sticks up their colon. Our wine guide was one such person. From the get go, it was very clear that he was not a huge fan of Americans, which is fine; I get it. But by the time we left Simonsig, he and I were no longer on speaking terms. He made some unfunny, Anti-American comment that wasn’t witty enough to dignify a response. So I didn’t give him one. He interpreted my disinterest as not catching onto his brilliance, and said, “That’s the second time today I said something that went right over your head,” I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer and replied, “Sir, I could run circles around your head.” (America: 1, Douche Bag: 0) Have I mentioned this is the first winery we visited? I should have known then that it was going to be a long war.

At the third vineyard (which sported a cheese buffet), the wine guide found a chameleon outside and after fondling it himself, gave us all specific instructions not to touch it. This was also fine, because I would probably be a little protective of a chameleon if it were my only friend too; I get it. After this, Danny was lingering outside to take a picture of the chameleon and the wine guide asked Brett where he was since we were waiting on him. Brett jokingly said, “He’s petting the chameleon.” Big, Mistake. Danny (who heard nothing of their conversation) walked back into the room where we are already seated. He sat at the end of the table opposite the wine d-bag and the fighting words began to fly:

Wine Guy: How’s the chameleon??

(Tense silence.)

Danny: He’s great.

(But he says “great” the way you would say, “I’m going to f-ing kill you in your sleep.”)

Wine Guy: Did you bomb him??

(Implying that as Amuricans we bomb everything in sight—I know I personally bombed 7 chameleons today, and it was a slow morning... this was the kind of witless remark that prompted me to end our budding friendship at Simonsig. Anyways, more tense silence…)

Danny: Ya, I bombed him. Then I made a cheeseburger out of him. But I’ve been in South Africa for so long that I decided to take a page out of your book and make him live in a township for a coupe of years first.

(BURN.)

(America: 2, Douche Bag: 0)

There was just no recovering from this verbal bombshell. At this point, I broke my oath of silence to stare into the depths of my wine glass and mumble something about “the legs on this beaut” and “liking my chameleons…like I like my wine” and Ellen threw back her wine like Napoleon Dynamite downing Gatorade. The rest of the evening was a little quieter and by the time he dropped us back off at SumbleInn, 3 out of 7 of us refused to talk to him entirely. We have to do what we can as ambassadors of American goodwill.

After that, we got a minibus back to Cape Town and immediately got ready to go over to Stiffy, Wado, and Jordi’s house. Now before you pat me on the back for having friends with names that come straight out of American Pie, I really can’t take all the credit. This is group of people that we met at Vortex trance festival when a representative from their group came over to tell us that they thought we were awesome. (America: 5,390,842, Douche Bag: 0) It was Jordi’s birthday so we went over to their place before going out. After hanging out there and meeting all of their friends, they called a van to pick us all up and take us out to a club called Bang Bang. Once about 12 people piled in, I thought that another cab was going to come because there was just no way we were all fitting. But they just kept hopping in (the driver conveniently had a whole playlist of house music pumping), until Connor and I counted 24 people crammed into this one van—all dancing and singing the entire way to the club. After this experience I am convinced South African’s are not only far cooler than Americans, but far better at geometry.

STELLENSLOSHED

We left this afternoon for wine country, a place not too far from Cape Town called Stellenbosch. We took the train there, which was a little longer and a little more hectic than we anticipated, but we made it there just in time for dinner. After we checked into our hostel, the StumbleInn, we went straight out to an amazing Lebanese dinner at Manoushes. I love rocket just as much as any other member of the arugula family, but the “Hezbollah Rocket Salad” did make me question this dining establishment for a second. But all the food was incredible, from warm flatbread sandwiches to the massive pineapple and mango display courtesy of Chef Jean. Stellenbosch is a college town so the waiter had several bar and club recommendations for afterwards. We were excited for a Thursday night out on the town after deducing that no college student actually believes Friday is part of the workweek, but the entire place seemed dead. We stopped in a bar called Terrace that is usually really crowded and the bartender told us that people are busy writing exams at this time of year. We decided we should take matters into our own hands and each one of us should buy the group a round, which probably would have been a good strategy if there were 4 of us… but there were 7. Two hours later when we had hijacked the sound system and plugged in Danny’s iPod to blast house music, played drinking games that all involved pounding on tables and yelling, created a new signature drink for the bar and christened it “The Stellenslosh,” I wondered to myself why on earth Americans ever get the bad rep of being obnoxious??