Bulawayo club hotel - deserves its own chapter!

This place is a colonial era hotel - most wonderful and truly posh. Check the photos as well to see all the different rooms and settings. Club itself is from 1895, it was founded as gentleman's club where they would socialize and do lots of business networking. This club has some very strict rules, quite many of them still being enforced. About some of them you can read down below. But this particular building was built 1935, at the time it would strongly show their capability and resources, to be able to build such a big and fancy building. It was turned into a hotel just a year ago - there are 16 very nicely decorated rooms on the third floor, rest of the house would be club member rooms, restaurant, coffee rooms, dining area, bar areas, conference room, balcony and so on.

Now a bit more about our evening. Got back from Matopos at 7:30. One of the nicest things here is that you are always approached and asked how are you doing and how the day has been :) It is all very sincere and nice. Once few sentences are exchanged they sometimes also get to the point, this time to ask what time could they expect us downstairs for dinner so they know to set the table :) How wonderful is that? Now the dinner - menu is just for a week. There is a complimentary soup served for all guests dining. There are 3 main meals in the menu (pork,chicken and fish) plus a desert. Food was first of all very pretty - the way it was presented was fancy. And of course it was very delicious as well. Sitting at this table one would forget that he/she is in Africa. It could easily be a restaurant located in London or in New York. At this beautiful setting we had the most interesting discussion about social and economical problems in the world, developing countries and the history of Africa. Those are the kinds of conversations I would like to have more often, those are the talks that get my thoughts running in different directions and afterwards I feel like I have just read 10 books in the last hour :D

Now about the bar :) We were warned previously (already in Harare) that the bar in this hotel is only for men and women are not allowed in there. We just could not believe it and we wanted to see how and if they actually would make us leave, we figured we play innocent tourists who know nothing about the rule. So here is the story of two white females in Bulawayo, the year is 2010:
We walk into the bar area, there are 2 white guys sitting at one of the round tables talking. All the staff is black. We approach the barman asking if there is a separate drinks menu and if we could have a look at it as we would like to have a drink. We make ourselves comfortable on the stools behind the bar. He finds the menu for us and steps a bit back. Nothing else, he does not say anything or make funny expressions or anything - so we figure all is fine. We order our drinks and he disappears to the back room/kitchen area. Few moments goes by and another black young guy comes towards us, leans over the bar and says quite quietly that unfortunately we can't have a drink here tonight. Now the conversation goes something like this:
him- ladies, unfortunately you can't have drinks here tonight
me- tonight? what is so special about tonight?
him- it is gentleman's night tonight
me- so if we come here tomorrow evening we could have a drink here?
him- no not tomorrow, but on Fridays and Saturdays you could
my friend- oh so no women allowed today is that it?
him- correct, no women allowed except on Friday's and Saturday's
my friend- so where do women have their drinks then?
him- there is another bar upstairs, but at the moment it is closed
us just looking confused- where should we go then?
him looking around- well, since it is past 10 already and the bar is closed you can just have your drinks here no problem (but don't tell anyone!)
my friend- but you know there are civil rights and gender equality nowadays!
him- but in this place are different rules and those will never change, never :)
Then the next 10 to 15 minutes we heard about the other rules of the club and what is done here and how it all works and where he is from and all sorts of interesting things :) It was a good talk - I learned a lot about the traditions and about the history. Ah the wonders of traveling and talking to locals - me loves it!