On one of our last day trips in South Africa we´ve visited the beautiful small town of Paarl which name comes from the word Pearl and dates back to the first white person who reached that little town.
Paarl is known for two things, the Paarl Rocks, that I will talk about in another post and the Afrikaanse Taalmonument that I will show you today.
DIT IS ONS ERNS
We are serious
The monument was built in 1975 and is dedicated to the Africaans Language which was declared a separate language in 1925 and replaced the Dutch language. To be honest I did not understand much about for what that monument stands for because of the simple reason that I was blown away by the monument itself. When we planned to go there I did not expect such an impressing monument.
What I understood is that every tapering convex and concave structures stands for influences of different languages and cultures that formed the Africaans language.
- bright west - the European heritage of the language
- Magical Africa - the influence of the African continent on the language
- the bridge – between Europe and Africa
- Afrikaans – the language itself
- Republic – declared 1961
- Malay language and culture
As it is with almost every language on our planet, this is quite interesting but needs a bit more time to understand it. As a german I understand the language in parts due to the similarity to dutch, but not enough to communicate.
Anyway lets get back to the breathtaking monument and its many different structures. Through a tunnel you can get inside and on the other side of the main monument.
From inside the main monument, that is hollow inside, you got a pretty cool view that reminded me of the Star Wars movies. Actually the whole monument has similarities with buildings from the Star Wars movies. Due to the hollow construction you can hear your own echo and make a lot of nonsense
That monument is one of these places where you can take hundreds of photos from all different angles and it always looks different and unique. I really loved to look at it and was very impressed by it. Once again we were really lucky as we were the only ones due to being early. Sometimes it pays being a german and always being early. :)
But not only the monument was fetching to look at, the views onto the surrounding mountains from up there were great as well. The weather was perfect that day and we had excellent visibility.
On one of the photos below you can see one of the Paarl Rocks in the distance that I will show you in the next blog.
Paarl Rock in the distance
The whole area of the monument is quite huge and perfect for a stroll. Several benches invite you to sit down, relax and enjoy the breathtaking view from up here. There are also several hikes starting from here as well as from the Paarl Rocks a few kilometres away.
Who does not want to sit here and soak up that view?
As you can see we saved some of the coolest places for the end of our trip. Believe it or not, although we were in South Africa for 3 whole months, we only visited Table Mountain on the very last day. That was an awesome decision as the weather could have not been better...but more in my next blogs.
YOU WILL FIND THIS POST ON PINMAPPLE AS WELL
[//]:# (!pinmapple -33.765410 lat 18.943474 long Afrikaanse Taalmonument in Paarl d3scr)