Namibia: Windhoek

We wouldn’t have gone to Namibia if it wasn’t for our friends, Claudiu and Nina, from Emotions by Motion, who organised this trip.

Windhoek airport is tiny and when we landed we were suprised to see a couple of VIPs: a large plane from the US Air Force and, right next to it, Ion Ţiriac’s plane (who is a passionate hunter and apparently Namibia is a frequent destination for him).

On the way to the hotel we started noticing the Namibian traffic: people travelling in the trays of utes; very calm drivers as, despite the ubiquitous slow speeds, nobody seemed to be annoyed and there was no honking. We found the crossroads interesting too – all lanes arriving in the intersection have a STOP sign and a number next to it (with number of entries). This means that all cars have to stop and then enter the intersection in the order of arrival (we later saw that many crossroads in the USA use a similar system). We noticed that many properties had barbed wire around them – apparently to protect them from baboons that don’t fear humans (any more) and often descend on the outskirs of towns in search for food.

Downtown Windhoek is quite colourful. We’ve noticed a few stalls selling Tshirts with various dictators’ names and also one that had Vladimir Putin advertising sunglasses.

The first night we stayed at The Weinberg, a hotel in an old building that has been renovated. Both the rooms and the common areas look very nice, with manicured, stylish green gardens.

A walk around Windhoek was fairly short as we wanted to visit a couple of museums but most of them were closed – the reasons listed were either renovation or (still) COVID! The only one we could visit was the Independence Memorial Museum, which looks like a massive coffee machine with a statue of Sam Nujoma – the Namibian equivalent of Nelson Mandela – in front of it. It looks quite propagandistic and shiny, is located on Robert Mugabe Ave, and was built by a North Korean company.

Across the road from the museum there is Christuskircke Church, a Lutheran church that had some interesting stories behind it. In the 60s the clapper of the main bell came loose, smashed through the window and fell on the street; in the late 90s, a tourist noticed that all the stained glass windows were installed with the sun protection on the inside – they have since been restored and turned around.

Not far from Christuskircke Church is the Zoo park, with its Schutztruppe Memorial which is controversial and will probably be removed in the future as it has an Imperial Eagle at the top and celebrates German soldiers who died in the Nama uprising. There is also an elephant column here, as when they built the park they found tools and elephant remains dating back to the Stone Age, making it one of the earliest evidences to elephant hunts in that time.

We walked up the hill and around Christuskircke church again, on the other side, to see Tintenpalast, where the old government used to be and now houses the Parliament. The name means Ink Palace as a reference to the amount of ink bureaucrats use. Parliament gardens are very nice and beautifully manicured but unfortunately no visitors are allowed.

From Tintenpalast we walked back past the Independence Museum to see the Genocide memorial at the entrance of Alte Feste. This is another museum that is also closed, and allegedly in its yard there is an equestrian statue called Reiterdenkmal which also celebrates fallen German soldiers (we couldn’t see it). There were lots of very colourful lizards (Namib rock agama) on the rocks nearby.

We had to really pay attention where we stepped as there were lots of holes in the pavement.

We also went for a drive through the Katutura suburb, which used to be a township under apartheid, and is where many black people still live (and where Sam Nujoma used to live). Apart from the colourful houses and variety shops we saw the local version of Hungry Jacks.

While we waited to have the tyres fixed to our hired car we were entertained by a young kid who was directing traffic from atop a shopping trolley at a junction with non-functioning traffic lights. All the drivers obeyed his instructions and no incidents occurred!

We got to see Windhoek once again before leaving – from up high this time around: the Skybar roof top bar at the top of Hilton hotel (we were quite disappointed thought that they had no Angostura bitter to make Rock shandy which we got to really enjoy on this trip).