It’s an institution!
Ask any local where you can find the best “brötchen” in town and they’ll point you to Willi Probst Boulevard Café on the corner of Theo Ben Gurirab Street and 12th Road. This bakery, deli and restaurant has been serving freshly baked goods since 1957. “Walvis Bay has always been a harbour town,” says Astrid Deetlefs, one of the owners, who grew up here. “The first houses were built around the lagoon. The harbour and yacht club came later. The fish factories were always on this side.”
Astrid tells of the origins of “the Probst”, as it’s known colloquially: “Walvis Bay was still a small town when I was in school. Back then, the bakery delivered its bread by bicycle. Each loaf was in a bag with the person’s name on it because everyone knew each other. There were sand dunes outside the building. At the back, where the municipal buildings are now, there used to be a soccer field among the dunes. We were right on the outskirts of town.”
Astrid and her husband Fred are the third-generation owners. They run the business with their daughter Daniela Jansen van Vuuren and her husband Marko.
“I can still remember all the German shops – the German butchery, about five German bakeries, and all the shops that sold imported German goods to provide for all the Germans who moved here,” Astrid says.
When supermarkets started to open in town in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the bakeries closed down, but the Probst survived and later expanded to include a restaurant and deli. Now it’s an institution in town where residents order brötchen, schnitzel and eisbein with sauerkraut for lunch.
Opening times: Weekdays from 6 am to 5 pm; Saturday from 7.30 am to 12.45 pm.
Contact: 00 264 64 202 744
“When I was younger, there was a train that ran along the beach between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund. In the 1980s, the railway line was moved behind the dunes because the high tide and sand often covered the tracks. When we went to the beach and heard the train approach, we would wave at the army guys as they made their way north. There was nothing between Walvis and Swakop. Langstrand was just a stretch of beach. You had to park next to the road because we didn’t have 4x4s to drive over the sand. We would run down to the beach and hop along on our towels because the sand was too hot to walk on!” – Astrid Deetlefs, co-owner of Willi Probst Boulevard Café