By Dianne Tipping-Woods

Mid December, I left the balmy confines of Pretoria for the icy thrills of New York City – a city of superlatives, the world’s fair, the metropolis that never sleeps. Mid January I returned, infected it would seem by the sleeplessness of the city. Jetlag’s nocturnal wakefulness provided many hours for contemplation. Wondrous as my trip had been – I was happy to be back in Pretoria. Home. 

 As I lay awake, impressions of my trip – and my home-coming – played through my mind. Take a taxi ride to or from the airport. A yellow cab, one of New York’s grimiest, drove us to JFK through a soft and silent snowstorm. Another taxi, this time a mini-van (albeit of the more luxurious kind) drove us home from OR Tambo International Airport in the midst of a fierce highveld storm. Driving into Sunnyside, (my ‘hood - check it out), we passed many more people-carriers, pulsing with sound – just as iconic as their equally colourful New York counterparts.
 
To me travel is always a mixture of this strangeness and familiarity. It seems natural that we make sense of a new environment in terms of the things we know and love. That’s different to making serious comparisons between them. You can’t do that without doing some kind of injustice to both…or can you?
 
And with that thought in my head and, another sleepless night, a list began. Take vetkoek – the US equivalent would be the donut I guess. Both are basically deep fried dough. And yet saying that vetkoek is like a South African donut just wouldn’t cut it.
 
Hotdogs – surpassed by the boerie roll. Beef jerky – try Biltong!  
 
The Empire State Building – the closest literal equivalent in Pretoria would be the South African Reserve Bank (our tallest building at 150 metres). And yet the view from Fort Klapperkop, five minutes from the city centre, does Pretoria way more justice.
 
Broadway’s Pretoria equivalent would be the South African State Theatre. I’ve seen some amazing productions here and so much talent (In fact I saw John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Doubt at the State Theatre two years ago – and next thing I hear, it’s opening in New York *wink*).
 
For Times Square we have Church Square. With totally different characters they are both repositories of history and bear testimony to the changing times of their respective cities. Both have an amazing energy to them. 

Central Park - my whole city is full of trees and parks.

The UN - Pretorians are not always united, but we are diverse and the city is home to embassies and consulates from all over the world, as well as refugees, immigrants and everyone else ‘just passing through’.

The Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t have a literal equivalent in Pretoria. Our bridges are of a metaphoric and a social kind and many are still being built.
 
The Statue of Liberty? Our symbols of liberty are more modest perhaps at first glance – and manifest in the every day lives of ordinary South Africans. Each one of us carries a torch.

And so the list continues. You get the idea. Some of these comparisons might stretch it a bit. But as New York fades a little from my mind, and I start a new year in Pretoria, the city I call home,  I’ll be careful to see the strangeness in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. Perhaps the beauty of travel is not the new places you see, but new ways of seeing them. Who was it that said that again? He was either very wise or very tired (like me). I wonder what Frank will have to say about it all when he gets back home?