Young and Beautiful

Earth Day slipped past me, unnoticed as we enjoyed the glorious rays of sunshine by the harbour. This is happiness, if only temporarily: the feeling of easy conversation, of trusting those you are with to be yourself.

Once at home the National Geographic's Instagram feed gave me this:

Don't you worry about it

No one has a clue what they are doing. What the point is. And yet most people pretend at it so well that it intimidates the few who are ready to admit they realise no path is final, no choice set in stone. As a tween I wanted to be a chef, then a marine biologist, then a lawyer. When I started studying, I still had notions of becoming a lawyer. Luckily, what I felt was bad luck intervened at the time and I was presented with a way that I was not even aware of.

2015 is the year of big decisions that weigh heavily on the heart and mind at night. After this place of friendly people, water and small universities, where do I go? What do I do with my stuff? WHAT IS THE PLAN SABINE. And always, always this question, ghost-like behind everything I do: what do you want from your life?

I don't know. I honestly don't know what it is I want.
I want to learn. I want to teach. I want to make it better, not worse.
I want to spend Christmas with my mom and sister. I want to get to know places, not merely travel them. I want a room full of books. I want a dog (or 2) again. I want to smell yesterday, today, tomorrow in spring. I want to have my own space. I want to have things but not be bound to them.
I want to find a place that again feels like home.

The light woke me. 4.a.m., that dreaded in-between-time where night has not yet ended and the day is still waiting to start. My sister was lying next to me, sound asleep, missing the spectacular sunrise. In winter the light hides away in other corners of the planet, but when summer comes so does the day: the sun rises at about 4.30 and only sets at 22.00. It is strange to me to have either really short days or really long ones because I am not accustomed to such extremes. In summer this is lovely, with long evenings spent at the harbour sipping drinks and contemplating what life will bring next.

In a week I'll be heading home for almost two months, so I looked at the photographs from when my family came to visit. Their suitcases were filled to the brim with things for me: Chutney, glorious glorious bottles of chutney. Proper rooibos tea. Beskuit (rusks), baked by my mom. Marula jelly. Custard powder. Biltong. A section from The Sunday Times. And tons and tons of my clothes.

And now that the flight leaves in little more than a week I am planning my gifts carefully. Who would enjoy what? Would the gift break in my bag? Will it melt? Mostly I have settled on chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate.

Although I am bubbling over with excitement it is also strange to leave here now, just as summer has blown in for a few weeks. When my mother and sister were visiting, we had a few nice days where we explored Glücksburg by boat and on foot, and were also lucky enough to go aboard the Alexander von Humboldt II. Now on to exploring my hometown :)

The Okseø islands

Glücksburg

Alexander von Humboldt II

Plansch

Yesterday I woke to dozens (hundreds?) of boats leaving the harbour at the same time. At the moment the Rum Regatta is taking place and it is a sea of masts when I look outside. When we were little and living in Geneva, my mother booked a summer sailing course for my sister and me. It was horribly traumatic. I think my sister did everything as I sat somewhere in the little boat praying for us to go slower. Somehow my sister must have been really good at sailing or interpreting the wind or whatever it was that made our boat speed away from the little group of about 10 tiny sailboats. But that is where my sailing experience started and ended.

Now I have the best view in town and can watch what happens on the water without getting out of my pajamas. After having lived far away from any great body of water for most of my life, it is quite a change to have it at my doorstep: when we don't have class and the weather is sunny, we'll head to the beach to tan and swim. When I go for a walk, I walk around the harbour and watch others strolling along the water's edge. Somehow, it is life at a different pace, not measured in kilometers but knots.

Red Bull Student Boat Battle

Strawbear

I never got what one does with rhubarb. They were strange celery-like stalks and I imaged them to taste horrible. Like celery, only with a red hue. Then as I got older maybe I was more inclined to test other ingredients in the kitchen, and thus I once bought a bunch of rhubarb in Fruit & Veg for R15. I think I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, not quite trusting the stalks to taste like anything edible on their own.

Rhubarb syrup?

Rhubarb season has started here and I embraced it completely. I made rhubarb and grapefruit syrup, then rhubarb-strawberry jam, then a jar of rhubarb compote and lastly a wonderful rhubarb panna cotta tart that looked and tasted incredible. I had rhubarb coming out of my ears by the end of it, but it was worth it. Everyone complemented the panna cotta tart and I ended up using the left-over champagne from my birthday with the last bit of rhubarb syrup as a cocktail, which worked really well. And now when my mom and sister come in three weeks I am totally super prepared for breakfast :)

Step 1 for the panna cotta

Rhubarb in the oven with WINE? Hells yes. 

This was super easy. And delicioussss. 

The tart bottom chilling in my window sill. 

Badaboom Badabang. 

Float

Today the surface invites the quiet observer to

paint it by numbers,

to assign a 6 to the metallic-sheen-parts

and an eleven to those that get glimpses of sunlight. 

Most of it would be covered by a 44, 

hovering somewhere in between navy and Midnight Blue. 

Outer Space streaks (officially colour 414A4C) occur

where the water grates against itself. 

Monet might have added swishes of dirty white 

(my colour seven) 

or swatches ranging from bone to apricot
to the tops of hundreds of restless little waves. 

Some days you can see the bottom of the harbour, 

with water so clear that it doesn't even have a number,

only a change in the 'opacity' of the layer. 

Not today though. 

Today hues fit like puzzle pieces for milliseconds

before the entire wheel has to be reinvented.

The first days of spring

It had been unusually lovely the entire week. But we were preparing for a group of international students to arrive so I could not revel in the loveliness outside, instead spending most of my time in front of the computer. 

And then D-Day was upon us: the planes were landing, the students disembarking and hopefully all our planning would work out. A beautiful sunrise set the tone for an exhausting but fantastic day. We left Flensburg at 8.00 and drove to Hamburg, where I was dropped off at Ikea (yay Ikea!) to buy bedding for one of the students. I also went to town in the material section because I want to make myself some curtains. Our one roommate is moving out soon as well and she brought most of the kitchen utensils with her, so I bought two mugs, a whisk and new sheets for myself. 

Then I took the bus into the city and received a message that one student had missed his flight and would therefore land 4 hours later. My colleague was already at the airport and could thus leave earlier, whilst I had more time to kill and would bring the last two students back to Flensburg by train. 

I ended up getting out at the main station and just walking around. It is like my friend G. said: when the weather is no longer dark and brooding the population changes switches its personality. Everyone stops hibernating and heads out to soak up the sun.

After the exam period and worrying about all the arrangements for the international students it was soul quickening to get away from Flensburg and just walk around by myself without the pressure of having to discover the city. Luckily I had my camera with me so I just walked around, bought myself a sandwich and chilled by the Alster. 

The moment of repose did not last long because thereafter the days have been rather stressful: Thursday we spent the entire day at the airport and the entire weekend was filled with activities for the students. This next week is also dedicated to wading through the bureaucratic nightmare that is Germany. 

Additionally, the weather has turned again and has soured the atmosphere. No longer are people walking around joyfully and basking in the sunlight. But at least the Hamburg day has given me hope that spring is in fact coming, slowly but surely. 

Where the Humans Eat

As part of a group project on youth culture for university I went vegan for two weeks. On day 13 I cheated by drinking shots of Bailey's (it contains cream). The vegan experiment in itself was challenging because it was quite time-consuming to buy products that contain no animal by-products. Also, I missed cheese and butter and non-70%-chocolate.

But in itself the project wasn't life-changing. Rather, the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer was. I had never before really thought about the conditions the animals were kept in because they aren't treated terribly at my uncle's farm. Sure, he probably sees his animals as a business investment, but I like to believe that he enjoys working with the animals and does not torture them. The farms Foer describes have nothing to do with farming: they are factories designed to produce as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, without consideration for the pain and suffering of the animals that constitute this produce.

I also wrote about this on our eating-vegan-blog, called Eat Your Vegetables. The articles in German are by my fellow students, and the English ones are written by yours truly. The video above is one of a few by restaurant chain Chipotle in the States, whose Food with Integrity program supports ethical approaches to farming (click here for my post on factory farming).

Although I won't say that I am a dedicated vegetarian now, I will admit to being more conscious of what I buy and generally don't eat any meat here. In SA, that might be different because I know the animals are treated better (depending on where you buy your meat from, naturally). In general I think it is not necessary to label your own food consumption too much. Instead, I wish more people would read Eating Animals and be more aware that as consumers they have the power: if you want to buy the cheapest produce, you should know how the animals are treated in life and in slaughter, and then reassess whether the life of another living thing is worth the few moments on your taste buds. For those of us with the means to buy whatever food we want I think this is the most important realisation: you are choosing what to eat, and thus dictating production.

Little Talks

Driving to the airport there are two signs: Arrivals and Departures. But I feel like I have neither really departed nor arrived. I have landed, not arrived. My luggage is here, my things are here, but all the emotional baggage remains lost somewhere between here and home.

It is a strange in-between. Maybe it is just being-20-something and realising that at some point I need to find my own life. Today I made an appointment to go to the dentist for a check-up and it felt like an enormous achievement. My mom had always done it for me. I never realised how much admin it takes to be an adult. 

Hopefully with time it will get better, both the becoming-an-adult part and the not-feeling-like-this-is-home part. In the meantime I am a tourist in the place where I live. 

Arriving at Glücksburg

This is Denmark, apparently. 

The next day I walked around the harbour with my roommate because it was such a lovely, clear day after weeks of dappled rain.

I live in the blue house :)