We said Goodbye to Shetland on a grey-green Monday afternoon whose melancholic colour setting exactly mirrored our mood. 

It was not easy to leave this place which had already conquered us so completely. 

While the ferry slowly navigated out of the harbour I stood at its platform and watched the houses of Lerwick passing by. I seldom found it so hard to leave a place.

As I told you some time ago I'm not a proven sailor and some days before our departure I started to watch the forecast. And for me as a newbie-on-the-sea, the weather was not promising. Wind force 8 forecast really freaked me out. And the captain promising to make our travels as comfortable as possible (as possible?! Eeek!) didn't help. When the vessel reached the open sea and started to go up and down, and up and down, I really got terrified. Really. But I can assure you: they serve hefty soup on such vessels for a reason. Real sailor food. After some hours the vessel became steadier and the wind decreased a bit, so that I could reward myself with a drink and a knit. The clouds drifted apart, just in time when we passed Fair Isle.

My memories of this passage will always be related to anxiety, the taste of beer and the sound of clacking needles.

While writing this post, I've really got in the mood for novels about sailors and the sea, so any recommendations are welcome! :)

Next stop: Orkney Islands!

Lerwick at night

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
(Vincent Van Gogh)

Lerwick and a little bit about everything

While writing this post, with candles and Christmas music in the background, our Shetland summer seems so far away, so surreal, that I have to remind myself, that I actually really was there...

For the time we were in Shetland we stayed in Lerwick, the honest, unpolished, lovable capital of the Shetland Islands. It can, at the beginning, seem edgy and gruff and with a grey sky, drizzling rain and all those grey houses, it's not, ahm, jovial, at first sight.  There's too much wind to grow (m)any trees or make it easy for flowers to bloom. It's a city between two Seas, both powerful, feisty giants. That is what it's made of, and that is what shapes it, I think. But only at first sight. It's a place that will never leave your heart, if it entered it once.

Also because of the people. Despite of being a small island, a place very remote and with a rough climate, the people are welcoming, open-minded, communicative and just so lovable... you can stroll through the streets, you will be greeted like a local, invited to tea or driven when there's no bus coming or there just is no bus, or you can sit beside someone who is playing the violin alone in the harbour and just listen... Sometimes we were so astonished about the friendliness and helpfulness of the people there, that we noticed how unused we are of that. Of this friendliness that is not attached to any conditions... the sceptic big-city-self.

I tried to take something of all this with me, to keep it in my heart and let it not be washed away by Berlin's full underground, it's roaring cars, running people, loud buzzing. To sometimes pause for a moment and remember.