Amrum on a Wednesday

Oops, already Friday night and here I am just blogging about Wednesday - my apologies, but it is not always easy to find some undisturbed time, actually, sometimes it is darn impossible.

My Tuesday ended with a dusk bike ride late at night, appropriately I started Wednesday Morning with a very early bike ride. Amazing that I was actually able to get up that early. It was rather peaceful, though I was surprised how many people were up as well. I had hoped for some beautiful morning sunshine from the East, but it was rather cloudy and I spent a lot of time waiting for clouds to move.







I ended the biking with a stop at the local bakery, but got a nice loaf of bread since we were not exactly thrilled by the bread rolls. The bread was good though. Since it was an interesting mix of sun, clouds and wind, we packed ourselves up and headed to the beach. The waves were super crazy and we had to jump in. They were perfect for body surfing and we had a blast. I anticipated for the children to be more apprehensive with the waves and scared that they might break their necks, but they were fine. Johanna stopped early, because she got cold, but the Soph and I kept going. I wish I had a water proof camera that attached to my head to film fun things like body surfing and Sophie's joy of jumping around in the waves. Sophie is able to live so completely in the moment and have such exuberance, it is gratifiing to watch her in these moments.

We had bought another stunt kite, one that is easier to get back up again after it plummets down and we had to try it. The wind was strong and it was so much fun. The kite almost lifted me up and when the kids tried it, they had to hold each other not to lift off. I am absolutely hooked on stunt kite flying, feeling one with the wind and the kite and moving it about, it is amazing. I was really tempted to get a really big one, but this small one (1.3 m) was hard enough to control. Today a lot of people went kite surfing, but I think I prefer terra firma under my soles. When we are back from our vacation, I have to take the kids to Newport to our favorite kite flying place.


Hanging out in the 'Strandkorb' was not as much fun as usual, the extreme wind was kicking up so much sand and on a beach that wide, the result resembles a sand storm and none of us found a liking of sand in the face and everywhere else. We went home to come back at low tide in the hope that the winds would die down.

When we came back it was even windier and even more sand, the rain in between had not helped that much. The only way to escape the sand is to swim, but swimming was forbidden, it was too stormy. The lifeguard station has flags to post conditions, no flag is clear sailing, yellow flag means a bit dangerous and red flag means no entering the water. They also have a black board where they post the temps, Wind speed and direction, high and low tide etc... and a nice quote of the day (lovely!)



We had another round of fish'n'chips and walked around town to take some pictures (it was still sunny every now and then), visited the famous and beautiful cemetery with the multitude of old gravestones that have life stories engraved in them. There is a book about just these old stones, which is so interesting, because the history of the people here is so unique, but they are impossible to get and it seems like a new edition is always just about to happen, but never really materializes. We had taken a church (St. Clemens) and cemetery tour on Tuesday, so it had a lot of meaning to us. Isn't it unbelievable, that the first part of the building was built in the 12hundreds? There used to be around 80 churches in the area I think, at that time this was all mainland, but a huge flood in 1624 turned this into many islands and drowned many villages and over 10.ooo people. Now the mainland is 20 km away (about 13 miles).



My mother and I went downstairs to the wine bar in our lodging. She had a coffee and I had some wine, another good wine from Germany that one can never get outside of the country. I wonder why the good wine does not make it to our wine stores in the States - I guess we have to export the good wine ourselves. It is a very cozy space downstairs, very authentic and original and quite inviting. My mother is not a person for a night on the town, she feels out of place and so we did not stay quite long. I felt a bit out of place myself, it is hard to explain, maybe because everybody was there with a group or people, their partner or family. My mom and I just did not feel hip and trendy enough. I also feel very self conscious in places like that, knowing that my appearance and the person that I am inside have such a discrepancy and people need to know me to see the real me. Especially in Germany do I have the problem that people think I am dumb and uninteresting because I am overweight. Of course they do not know about my medical problems, nor that I am actually a quite interesting and capable person. I get a lot of rude comments from strangers and very judgmental looks and I have never grown immune to it. It is strange how my mother and I are so similar in this aspect. Once we are in a conversation with people (and get a chance for a real conversation), people's first impressions get nullified. Maybe this is one of my big motivators for writing, to actually have a chance for a voice that is untainted by appearance. It is not completely different in the States, but not as strong as here, because Germans in general are very judgmental.

I always find refuge in nature and therefore another sunset brought the evening to an end on a good note despite my thoughts of loneliness and feelings of being misunderstood.