4. Blog | Leben, Events und mehr

4. Blog | Life, events and more

Loadshedding

„So, now the last seam and then this chain link is also finished“, Urs thought to himself on a broad daylight working day. But suddenly: Zack! Power gone!
Oh yes, there was also the loadshedding. A big problem in South Africa:
In South Africa, as in most countries, there is electricity, and has been for a very long time. If a generator for a large part of the city is broken, it is left broken. Inconceivable in Switzerland, but here in South Africa it’s everyday life. „The people in Africa don’t know the word maintenance,“ Andy explained to us. So they don’t repair these generators. What follows is a shortage of electricity. Some workers employed by Eskom (the largest electricity producer in the country) even demolish the equipment to protest that they don’t earn enough money. Well, this is certainly not the right solution.
This is why loadshedding was invented in 2007. The consequence of this is that for certain times throughout the country, certain regions have no electricity – because they urgently need to save it. So at some times of the day there is also radio silence here in Northriding. There are various stages with 8 being the highest. If this comes into effect, we have just 10.5 hours of electricity in a day. But fortunately we have never experienced this. Often stage 3 or 4 applies. Currently we are even lucky and are at stage 2. Here you have 2.5 hours per day no electricity available. We also experienced some days where the power never went off at all. To look all this up, there is an extra app that anyone can download for free. But how do we solve this problem at work or at home?
At BJHB, however, this „bang, power gone“ scare is short-lived. After all, in the workshop we are connected to a diesel generator that kicks in after a few minutes. In the office, the waiting time is only 2-5 seconds, because we are connected to batteries and therefore practically do not notice the loadshedding.
At home, Andy has since new also bought batteries. These are charged as soon as one has electricity. If the electricity is gone, a device automatically switches over so that the power is taken from the battery. Here we have basically only the WLAN connected because the batteries do not last forever and so we never run into problems at Stage 4 or 5. So we are well prepared for homeschooling.

First Bühler-Event

Pilanesberg

On Sunday morning, 09.10.2022, the annoying sound woke us up from our nice dreams at 04:45. But we got up relatively easy, because we were very motivated. Today is our very first safari tour in South Africa. Since Sandra is currently on vacation in Italy, we left only three of us with packed sandwiches and drinks at 06:50. The destination today was Pilanesberg – Urs and Rouven’s first national park. The reason for this early day wake up was that we had to drive about 1.5 hours and you see most of the animals in the morning because it is much cooler.
At 07:30 we were now at the entrance of the 572 km2 national park. We bought the tickets, emptied our bladders and we were inside. After just 3 minutes of driving we could already spot hippos in a lake and we could hardly wait to see what else we would see.
The time passed and from zebras, to wildebeest, to impalas to rhinos we could see everything until we finally ate breakfast in a small restaurant. The overnight stays are always outside the national park, but the restaurants are inside the park.
Strengthened we continued our journey and photographed, photographed and photographed… So we saw from the rest of the day still giraffes, very many elephants, a lioness (which was very far away and dozed in the shade), various bird species and monkeys. From the Big Five we are still missing two – the Cape buffalo and the leopard. Furthermore we are still missing the cheetah and the crocodile, both of which we have set as our goal. Hopefully, we will see them in the Kruger National Park. Andy told us that he has not seen so many elephants in one day for a long time, as today. We kept seeing them sporadically, but the highlight was when we watched a large family of about sixteen members drinking. And on the way home, we saw another one also making do at the water’s edge or in the mud. The Pilanesberg also has breathtaking viewpoints, which we of course did not miss. As we drove home around 3:30 pm, Urs and Rouven realized how beautiful and unique the nature of this country is. Not only the animals, but also the sunsets are just beautiful.
At home we unpacked everything and ate something together before we went into the horizontal position – as Urs says so nicely. Below you can see a gallery with all the pictures from this exciting day.

Gold Reef City

BMW-Event

New day, new experience. This time the worldwide „50 years BMW M Motors“ event was just around the corner. We said goodbye to the house early again and headed towards the „Kyalami Grand Prix Circut“. But we were not alone. In front of us was a tow truck, which transported Andy’s BMW. Because at this event there were also competitions. On the one hand there was a car race and on the other hand a big exhibition with „Oldtimer or M-Model“ BMW cars. Andy participated in the latter and was very excited about this day. He had been working on this car, more precisely on the „325i Shadowline“ model, in his workshop for 5 years and was hoping to win a prize today.
We had to reserve tickets in advance and send in our ID with additional photo. What for we thought a few days before. But when we arrived, we slowly realized: As already mentioned above, this was a worldwide event, which was celebrated very big. It also took place in Germany, among other places. And as soon as we drove into the area, there were also some cars at the entrance and caused a traffic jam. The whole thing at 07:30. We picked up our crew wristbands, got back into the car and drove to the exhibition area. Again there were a lot of cars and in the tent next door we could already see the first race cars. Andy drove his BMW to the showground, cleaned it one last time (like most of the other participants) and it could start. During the whole morning, the jury checked every car on the smallest detail. One jury even had a cotton swab with him, with which he went into every groove of the car. Since the checking went on for a really long time, Urs and Rouven scampered through the area and watched the racetrack as well as another event. Just next door there was a drift event and of course RedBull was there as well. It was impressive to see how you can have a car so well under control. Urs and Rouven as well as all the other spectators were just thrilled. After that we walked on, ate sandwiches, talked to Andy etc. At 13:15 the car race started, in which a friend of Andy participated. Even though it was not a professional race, some drove really very well and especially very fast. There were eight laps and some had to end the race early because they had a flat tire, for example.
Then after the race the prize giving was announced. Immediately we ran back to the exhibition place. First the prizes from the exhibition event were given, followed by the prizes for the racers. In fact, Andy was awarded and received the prize with the best „Show and Shine“ car. We were overjoyed and so happy for Andy. Of course he was also very happy and accepted the prize with joy.
Afterwards we talked for a while until we took the car back to the tow truck man who loaded up the beauty. In the meantime, Urs and Rouven went to get the car we drove there in the morning. With everything loaded up, we headed home and left the area. It was a great day and we thank Andy very much for taking us.