Excursion to South-Africa (2009)

In March 2009 we organized an excursion to South-Africa with 16 students of Dutch of the FU Berlin. We spent one week in Stellenbosch and one week in Cape Town. The excursion was enabled through financial support by the DAAD.

During the excursion our group had the occassion to have a look at the classes of German studies of Stellenbosch University to get to know the activities of the department of Linguistics, Language and Communication as well as the department of Afrikaans and Dutch of the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town). At Stellenbosch University we were allowed to take part in the Neerlandistiekdag and to join an official dinner with performances by several authors.

The rest of the programme aimed to keep a good balance between Afrikaans linguistics, literature as well as the cultural and political history of South-Africa. There was of course plenty of attention for Dutch traces in South-Africa.
Here is an overview of our activities:

• Visit of the Afrikaans language monument, built in 1975;
• Visit of the Afrikaans language museum;
• Participation in the Woordfees, a huge Afrikaans language festival in Stellenbosch, with a lot of lectures and performances (Antjie Krog and Tom Lanoye a.o.);
• Visit of the Huguenot memorial museum;
• Tour at the District Six museum and optional Township tour;
• Visit of the Slave Lodge;
• Walk through the Bo-Kaap area and visit of the Bo-Kaap museum;
• Guided tour on Robben Island;
• Visit of the Castle of Good Hope;
• Day trip to Cape of Good Hope;
• Climbing the Table Mountain.

Of course we took numerous pictures of the excursion. Here is a small selection.

• Pictures taken by Ulrike Vogl
• Pictures taken by Janneke Diepeveen
• Pictures taken by Felix Fischer on Flickr and Facebook