Holidays (Part 1) – A Study on the North Sea

Right… where do I begin? Hmm… probably that we travelled on a ferry that sails between Lithuania and Germany three times a week. It’s a huge white boat that can carry more than 500 passengers and God knows how many cars and trucks… better not to think about it, as my limited knowledge of physics always makes my brain spin – how did we manage to float???

It’s supposedly the biggest ship in the Lithuanian fleet and therefore it’s named Maxima, although my dad says that the previous ferry he used to work on – Gloria – is 40 centimetres longer. Well, maybe it is, but I don’t think that this matters, when you stand on the six’s floor and look down into the water…

Most of the journey we didn’t see anything, but the Baltic Sea. Occasionally we’d spot a boat, so far away that it would look just like a dot on the horizon, but it got more and more interesting when we entered the outskirts of Kiel.

We were greeted by several lighthouses and lots of yachts and we could immediately tell that it must be one of the main maritime centres of Germany. (Later on I found out that the Olympic sailing competitions of the 1936 and the 1972 Summer Olympics were held in Kiel.) Having learnt about navigation I could only sympathise with the captain, as the traffic there was really heavy…

In Germany we stayed in between Kiel and Hamburg, in a little town called Meldorf. Well, it’s actually a village with a population of about 7000, non the less it’s cute and every Friday has a big market where you can buy delicacies from the North Sea (didn’t go there this year as we had some arrangements in Hamburg).

The North Sea is a lot different to the Baltic and always attracts my attention. First of all they have floods! I can’t even imagine turning up on the beach and finding out the there’s no water…

Another minus - in the region where we stayed, there are no dunes! You climb over a hill covered in grass and find more grass… Well, this can be explained – these are flood banks that clever Germans started building in the 11th century (back then they were only 40 centimetres high, now they reach 8 meters!).

The other clever thing they do is let their sheep on these hills so that they would trample the grass down and make the whole construction stable. I love sheep, so I have to say there’s something positive about the North Sea.

The green grass might look good in photos, but I prefer lying on hot sand and not sitting in a basket, oh, and I also prefer to wear my bikini! They say do in Rome as the Romans do, but I don’t think I would ever dare to demonstrate my naked body the way Germans do – they have no changing cabins, so just take everything off and go for a shower to wash the sea water off! (No photos to illustrate that, I’m afraid… just the crazy basket.)

I might be moaning a lot, but I can think of one more positive thing - they have lots of crabs and shrimps in the North Sea! Several years ago in Wales, amazed to how easy it is to catch crabs (and then informed that I shouldn’t say anything like that as somebody might have other ideas) I never loose the opportunity. This time just on a string with a bolt to weigh it down and some German cheese to lure the strange creatures, I managed to catch two at once! (No worries, both went back into the sea.)

It might seem that the holidays in the small town on the coast went pretty slowly. Yes, we did watch the sunset and yachts returning to the harbour before the gates were shut, we walked on the beach and observed some wild life - but just one night. In reality we managed to pack a lot into our five days!

To be continued...

De Cuba Garden

To my mind this is the best outdoor restaurant in Lithuania. I love their colourful garden! The plants look really happy here and I think that if I ever get to the stage, where I can finally build and plant on my piece of land (mad Lithuanian regulations...) I will strive to make my garden similar to this.

By the way, the designer, who made it happen, is British!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I can finally say that I’ve been to the beach this summer! And I can tell you that it was quite rewarding… Well, I have to use the word ‘quite’ because not everything was perfect – the sun was shining, there were no clouds, the sand was warm, even the sandwiches, that we’d brought, tasted nice (I guess food always tastes nice outdoors), but… the water of the Baltic was still too cold…

I had my camera and was looking for some models. Suddenly some seagulls caught my eye.

Most of them were flying round the dunes – spreading their wings widely and then diving down. I was too far away in order to see what was happening, so I decided to move closer…

It turned out that a real life drama, probably worth to be shown on Natural Geographic, was taking place right next to the bent grass. Loads of bugs were happily enjoying themselves in the greenery and didn’t even anticipate that someone might be after them.

At first the seagulls thought I looked suspicious, but later on they had no problems flying around me and doing their dirty deeds.

Some of the photos that I took will be used to make a present for my friend, who’s getting married in August. She used to live on the coast, but now moved 300km away from it, so hopefully they will remind her how great our beach is! She’s also been fascinated by the book by Richard Bach ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’, so I’m sure it will be something personal and very special.

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Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection. Richard Bach