Juist: The ever-returning vacation
We will not say many words when we meet again. How that is in a great love. What that is like, when you have known each other for such a long time that the year is long forgotten and you only remember that you were a child when you first met. I may smile and say, "Hello, here I am again." My old love says nothing. I only hear the wind playing with the rope, sailing and fenders in the harbor, and a few gulls, nothing else. Islands can not speak.
Back there. Back on Juist, like all years. The "Frisia" ferry has made crossing after one and a half hours. Two fishing nets rise up between the pieces of luggage in our wagon, and on the box full of apples that we have brought from northern dike, because fruit on the island already twice the cost, is the colorful ball. As always. I buckle the creaking car behind my old bike and slide next to my children's spa. Passing by the old station clock on which, when I was a child, the one-armed Watt Guide Alfred distributed real dried seahorses to the children after each exploration of the North Sea mud; Alfred Behring does not exist anymore, his son Heino and his grandson Ino now do the mudflats, and the seahorses after that are made of blue plastic. There, the telephone booth from which I called my friend at 16 to tell him that it was over now because I had fallen in love with the island again. The shoal pond, where the children are standing with their toy boats, where they always stood before, probably always will stand. "Two gerbils, look!" My son Fabian, 8, shouts excitedly. Someone rushes the two sleek animals by remote control over the green water. In the past, we used our sailing boats very carefully, at most a small battery engine hung on the hull, with suction cups attached.
Earlier. That's when my parents pushed me across the island as a baby with beach-suited wooden carts. Later, when I proudly told Ruth, our hostess' daughter, that I was a schoolboy now. When, someday, only Hippie, Karo and Blacky counted for one summer, the ponies in the stable of the horse rental company Gerd Heyken. When I belonged to the Volleyballclique with 13, 14 years, meeting point net at the beach playground. Every year we traveled with our parents from Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Hesse or Bavaria, and at night we celebrated beach parties. Even after graduation, as I counterbalanced the coffee pot and cake plate at the top of Cafe Strandkate, five hours a day vacation job for four weeks, and the rest was vacation. Then it stopped, the earlier on Juist. You did not travel with your parents anymore, and the world was so big and Juist so small. It was not until my daughter Svea was born that I returned to the "Frisia" ferry and drove to the island of my childhood. Since then, our summers have been smelling of horses again, tasting of salt, tickling like marram grass, sounding like wind in the dunes. Every year again. As sure as Christmas.
"There you are again!" Our landlady, Mrs. Schmitz, lets the laundry, which ties her from the long leash, fall into the basket and warmly welcomes us into the arm. "I'll see if Martin is there," shouts Fabian, grabbing the football from the wagon, jamming him onto his bike, Svea has discovered Hannah opposite the rubber thief. The Juist of the children is full of ever-returning friends. Holidays from the first minute. No strangeness, no bangs "Will it be nice?". Only a homely arrival. In pictures that you know. In moments that mean louder déjà-vus. The place you know inside and out has open arms. Outside, horses are trotting over the cobblestones, their snorts sound soft and warm. I look through the balcony window of our small apartment on the mudflats, the gentle side of the island. The waters sparkle in the meadows, while the sun's rays fight through the moving East Frisian sky. Surfers roll out their sails. A few hours earlier, Svea, Fabian, and I were still standing at the rail of the ferry, watching the summer as we approached; may pour it sometimes in torrents, sometimes the wind blows us from the bike or we may even sit in the beach chair shivering - Juist is simply summer for us.
Shorts, sweatshirt, no shoes. Juist is barefoot country. Five minutes to the beach, at most. The island is only 500 meters wide. Wooden walkways lead down into the sand. 17 kilometers of naked beauty. And in front a collar of colorful spots. "Moin" grunts the Strandkorbvermieter Focko Kannegieter. "Three weeks, and in front of the playground?" They never say much, the Juister. Some remember the faces of their guests. Welcome them by name.Remember her shingles worn on Juist, her bicycle vanished in the evening in front of the pub "Köbes", the upcoming graduation of the eldest daughter. Otherwise: "Where are you?" - "Oh, yes." With that, all has been said.
Kannegieter is moving a red and white basket, I sign and pay. Payment in advance, of course. I already knew Kannegieter as a child. As the son of the pension "Kolumbus". My parents and I lived across from each other, in "Kopersand", room 13, under the roof. Watering can, windscreen and shovel we have always left the same, in the store, for the next year. What you need stop in Juist, so that the sand castle around the beach chair neat fell, so you could sprinkle on hot days with North Sea water. I still see myself hauling stuffed pitchers to the brim today. And father's forehead red and redder under the sun and the effort of shaving. Castles are today only a few. Some say it is even forbidden.
"In the past, the water was closer," I say as we sit in the sun and let the white sand trickle through our fingers. It used to be the first row of castles around Northwest York. As children, we laughed as the waves ate through the sand and we splashed through their foam. Today, the path leads to the sea through many meters of limestone. The beach has become wider. Sometimes, of course, people ask themselves, why do you always go to the same place? Some in the family pension on the Riviera, others in South Tyrol on "their" farm? Is it convenience? Or to have the secure feeling, familiar ways to go, to find security? To be welcome. Arrive in your own past. Maybe a bit of each.
"Here I am!" I exclaim from Strandkorb number 1352 and wave as I discover my children on top of the wooden walkway. They come running. Barefoot, of course. You know Egypt, Australia, Bali, China. Some places liked them, not all. But Juist love her. Always. "The Children's Island," they say. Sometimes it was exhausting in the first years. Build ships, bake cakes, make sure that the kids do not eat any sand, calm down when the little ones screamed at the inn in the evening. Fear that they, just outgrown crawling, could run into the sea, if I wanted to close my eyes in the beach chair. Gone, all that. Now I have freedom instead of fear. And the kids a little world to try out what you already can. A fenced sandbox so to speak. Small, clear, recoverable. No cars, only horses. This Juist is also an adult island. It does not go lighter: everyone knows where to find the other one. You let go without losing yourself. A parenting dream. "I'm building a marble track with Martin," says Fabian breathlessly. Svea and I start running. The sand is warm, now it is getting wet. Frothy waves lick my toes. Ankles, calves, stomach. To fall, do not think. Head down, dive once. Svea wants to play pinball. I the dolphin, she the rider. Good for the muscles of the upper arm, I console myself. And bravely plow with her on her back through the water. The North Sea chuckles, I laugh. Home feeling. The sea, my girlfriend. Nowhere is it easier for me to feel with my children. To be so carefree with them.
Latte time. Warm bricks on the soles of the feet, as Svea and I with wet hair finally go down the few minutes from the beach to "Baumann's". The cracks of the stones, broken by wind and weather, are full of sand. A few years ago, the stones were new, healthy and chic. Terrible, I thought. The floor felt different under the toes. My juister world must have cracks. The patina of my childhood. Do not change anything. The Juister Gast - about 70 percent are regulars - is conservative. Preserving. But not always. The island railway first died, and for decades it had carted spa guests far from the pier by the mudflats to the station. You'll get used to the pier, a long jetty that's supposed to keep the silt away from the harbor, because the island community simply can not afford the annual dredging. The new, it will be old. The patina of habit, of memories will overshadow it. From morning to today to the past. As always.
"Lausi, look!" Svea yells suddenly. Delighted she runs off and hugs the shaggy head of a white pony, which is stretched in front of a small coach. Lausi belongs to Svea's summer, as Perdita once belonged to mine. Eve. Kiloweise sand in the hair and on the belly the first sunburn. We feed sausages in our small kitchen and think only of the Sanddorneis, later, in Heinos ice cream shop. Svea collects her holiday pay, Fabian already holds the hand.
Planning is unnecessary on Juist, no thought of sights to look at rushes through the hours. Time right, sometimes left, that's it. Time with Heino into the Watt, on a cocoa in the cafe "Wilhelmshöhe" cycle, in the direction of Kalfamer, where you can look for shells, which hold home for a winter long, many craft afternoons.Lying in the grass on the way to the airfield, watching the small propeller engines as they soar in the air, rock a bit, and finally hover over this most beautiful pile of sand in the world. And once in the other direction, a good eight kilometers to the end of the island Bill, rabbits scurry across the way, pheasants hide between the blackberry bushes, oh yes, the museum of local history is just on the way. In the "domain" raisin mares eat with thick butter on it. Watching sheep while dozing. Through the dunes to the sea, the wild and beautiful roar here. Feeling to be alone in this world. Robinson for a few minutes. As a little girl, I did not want to go to Bill. With the small children's bike, my parents in front, and if you were unlucky, it started on the way, as pouring out of buckets, and the headwind laughed a sneer in the face. Today, eight kilometers are a shrunken size. Twenty minutes maybe. And in the rain, we stop to sit, eat another mares. Does not have to be everything like it used to be.
Over the sea, the sun is just falling in a soft, bright cloud bath. On the shoal pond a motorboat and a ferry with lighting curves. I pay. Once again look over the dike. The Watt is silent, the seagulls on the bollards are ducking their heads. The evening carefully pulls a dark blue cloth over the island. Over there, Germany, as the Juisters call the mainland, is another world.
