Hello - my name is Laura and my husband and I are hosting in the suburb of Melville, in Johannesburg, South Africa. My husband is from Germany and I was born here in Johannesburg. We have a daughter, living in Seattle and running her own Bakery right in downtown, making the most beautiful wedding cakes and special occasion cakes for the locals. This is our first time hosting, and so far, since August, 2018 we have had the pleasure of hosting someone from Lebanon, a couple from Toronto and currently a young gentleman from Berlin (my husband's hometown).
We are a very open-minded senior couple, fortunate enough to have excellent health (apart from the odd tweak and bump) and are seasoned travellers, having visited Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Brazil, Seattle, Holland, Berlin, France, the UK, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Peru, Cusco and my husband came to South Africa from Berlin overland in a Kombi making stops in many other interesting countries, including India and finally taking a boat from Mombasa to Cape Town after selling his Kombi. So we have some fun and interesting stories to share.
I am an avid reader, mostly fiction and I never travel without my Kindle or my weekly fix of crossword puzzles from a regular local magazine.
In addition to hosting, we have for the past 23 years been running a small construction company renovating kitchens, bathrooms and adding to or enhancing someone's property with another room or garage or carport. My husband is a trained Engineer and loves working with his hands - he is also an absolute perfectionist - I sometimes tell him he has the 'Midas' touch. I am totally involved (as I started the business before my husband joined me 13 years ago) in the entire project from the quotation/contract stage through to the actual handover. This includes, sourcing and purchasing the right materials, selecting the teams to do the work, ensuring that all material is on site at all times during production. I love getting involved in the finer touches such as helping owners to choose their tiles, or wall colours, or kitchen cupboards, etc.
We enjoy occasionally eating out, our favourite foods being Meditteranean, French or Italian. Alternatively, a good home cooked meal and a nice glass of wine go a long way to keeping us going too, as eating out can be quite an expense these days.
We live in a suburb filled with interesting and diverse people, from the young 'yuppie' to the 'old fox' with many interesting restaurants and things to do, and we are close to the city centre, Universities, Television centres, railway station (which is virtually non-existent these days) and Hospitals.
We got involved in hosting our Cottage by default, as a friend, who was badly beaten by her brother, approached us asking for a safe haven, which at the time, was only partially livable as, after our daughter left for Seattle never to return, we were not fully motivated to make the changes and alterations we wanted to, until then. So we embarked on a clean up, paint, polish, renovate, re-plumb, re-tile project and today we can proudly say our 1-bedroomed cottage is spacious, clean and bright - (see 'Separate Cottage on Private Property' on Air bnb in Melville, Johannesburg).
Good luck!
