Day 31: Malmö to Travemünde and home

I went to bed early after a chat with Michael, a slightly introverted cyclist from Darmstadt.

Around midnight I was woken up by a super loud alarm sound. It was a fire alarm and all passengers had to get to deck 11.

As it turned out, this was no fire drill but a real fire on deck 7 and one could also smell it. The fire itself had been extinguished pretty quickly, but it took time until the smoke disappeared.

It felt like the crew had the situation under control.

After an hour or so we could go back to our cabins and I directly fell asleep again.

I was woken up by an announcement that we would arrive in Travemünde shortly. I got ready, had breakfast and met Michael, the introverted cyclist, on the car deck.

We had the regular cyclists conversation comparing our gear and when our time came, we cycled off the ferry together and then parted ways.

I was super happy that Max, my car, was still there after a month. It felt already like a piece of home to me.

Putting all the gear in was done in minutes and then I was on the German Autobahn heading south at around 8:30am.

It was interesting how driving is different in Germany compared to Sweden and Norway. Obviously the speed is higher here but with this also comes aggressive and competitive behavior. I also noticed how I slowly got sucked into this myself.

After some traffic jams and a lot of diversions I arrived home by 5pm and got greeted by our neighbor Michiko and later invited to dinner by our other neighbors Nadine, Merih and Jürgen. It felt very warm and comforting to be amongst friends again.

It reminded me that in the Danish culture there is the concept of “hygge” which means luck but also has some elements from the German term “Gemütlichkeit”. One aspect of hygge is that your neighbors are also your friends. From that aspect I am lucky to have a lot of hygge in my life!

Carolin was still on vacation with her mum and kids and would come late home only tomorrow. Can’t wait to see her again.

Also, it looks like our house has been struck by lightning in the past week. Many things like the washing machine are not working anymore.

So, I still have some silent time where I can reflect for myself. I am trying to not go into “busy-mode” for as long as I can. Let’s see …

Next week comes the phase of readjusting, i.e. trying to understand what I am actually supposed to do at work. I have observed in the last years that this can take weeks. But it is also a good thing because you don’t get sucked into the rabbit hole so quickly.

Next day, Carolin came home and we celebrated being back together. We sat in her new camper van for hours and talked, drank beer and ate ice cream. It felt wonderful!

Learning of the day:

If you ain’t got love, it’s all just taking score
If you ain’t got love, what are doing it for?
John Bon Jovi