Why I Write This Blog August 30, 2025
We had a wonderfully long sleep today! What a blessing that was. The past few weeks have been quite turbulent, partly due to this stubborn virus I caught that keeps flaring up and honestly giving me some really difficult days. Especially combined with work.
Work hours are never the same, and we don't have fixed shifts, so there's nothing to really get used to. The hours depend on when the different ships arrive and can start as early as seven in the morning or not until late afternoon. You simply don't know beforehand. That certainly brings its challenges!
On top of that, you become a bit cautious around cruise ship guests when they're coughing or when the crew members are constantly disinfecting their hands. By now we've learned that many of these ship cruises bring along some virus or illness, and of course these travelers would never cancel their long-awaited journey – they've been looking forward to it for far too long!
For us it's really a challenge, not just for us but also for their fellow travelers, because you're constantly at risk of picking up something. I just hope I'll end up like a kindergarten teacher – eventually immune to all the germs and viruses floating around in the air!
Of course you have to arrive early, and for early shifts that means getting up at 4:30 or five in the morning, because I simply need a certain amount of time with myself before I can leave. I just can't jump out of bed anymore, throw on clothes, and go. I need at least an hour and a half to get ready. And then I still have a good 40 minutes of driving if everything runs smoothly.
The season has been going on for quite a while now. And when you add to that the exciting time of training and the time I spent at language school taking my module tests – it's been a really intense year and it's not even over yet. You get pretty exhausted. Interestingly, I need an incredible amount of sleep these days. Whenever I don't have to work, I actually manage to sleep between eight and ten hours. And I really enjoy it.
Sometimes we go to bed at nine in the evening and we're completely wiped out. Now that Michael has exciting new tasks ahead of him, it's also important for us to rest now. He's now taken the wonderful position as vicar – what an exciting development! That means he's now a flexible substitute and has to play the organ in all three churches whenever needed.
He'll also occasionally fill in for Anne at the nursing home, where she leads a lovely service on Thursdays. It's going to get really exciting now! And he's still working at the day school once a week. We'll see how we manage to fit it all in.
I'm looking forward to really taking things easy over winter and recovering.
What was particularly wonderful this week: choir practice started again! What a warm, jubilant hello when we all saw each other again! I really felt how warmly I'm accepted in this loving community. The heartfelt hugs and the radiant joy I felt from some people at seeing us again – that was really touching and uplifting.
That day I had already joyfully decided to cut my hair the next day, and I announced it enthusiastically. I talked with Annette about coming by her place to get new glasses that would match this drastic change from hair that went almost to my bottom to a short haircut.
She was really happy that I would be coming to her! We did it the very next day, and she was completely thrilled with my new hair. I'm thrilled with it too, by the way! And not just me – my dear husband also finds me enchanting with the new cut.
The short hair gave me a wonderful boost! I'd been feeling a bit down, and this fresh new look really pushed me back up. I hope this beautiful, positive energy lasts for quite a while.
There's really a lot going on here. And yes, it's not always sunshine and roses. It's sometimes quite challenging, and often you're standing there having to be creative. But I suppose that's part of the adventure.
What's missing are the long-established connections. The missing piece is that familiar friend who's known you for a long time and with whom you can just relax and be yourself. Rest. That's still a small challenge after this short time.
Everything you want to express, you can't yet say fluently in Danish. That's really tedious. To have those deeper conversations, you actually first have to use a translator and then figure out how to maybe later share with a friend here what you just translated. But by the time you've done all that, you really don't feel like it anymore.
That's the point where it just becomes too much.
Yes, I can discuss a lot with my dear friend and colleague Danni, but each of us has our own life, and you can't constantly pour your heart out to everyone. And besides, you don't want to constantly expose your inner self.
Summer in Denmark is interestingly different from what I knew as summer in Germany. Here, the activities you do all year round are completely scaled back, and everyone enjoys the precious summer time mainly with family and friends. Of course some people also travel to wonderfully distant countries.
I would have liked to do that too, but with this exciting seasonal job it's simply not possible. And we haven't built a family here yet either.
We certainly had some beautiful, valuable times with our dear friends here. But above all, we had a summer this year that was full of intense work. And precisely when it could have been most beautiful, this stubborn virus plagued me and threw me quite off course.
Because I suddenly couldn't function properly anymore, I developed an unfamiliar fear that got in my way as I was recovering. I suddenly became afraid of not falling asleep, and also afraid of not waking up in time. The result was that I really couldn't sleep properly anymore. I wasn't really tired either. I was simply awake, but it was a strange kind of wakefulness. It was being awake in complete exhaustion without tiredness. I can't really describe it properly. And that really weighed on my psyche.
I know I'm not completely out of this yet, and I'm hoping with confidence that after the season I'll be back on my feet completely. In any case, I won't drive to work again without a minute of sleep like happened a couple of times, do my work, and then drive back home. Those were impossible feats. But somehow I managed them.
Now I've told quite a lot about things I didn't actually want to go into such detail about. I was actually trying to get to something quite different.
So back to the beginning: This morning while I was sitting with Michael in the wonderfully warm sunshine having a cozy breakfast, I got a lovely message. The message was from dear Karin S.
I haven't heard from her in far too long and I was incredibly happy! I've been asked often why I write this blog. And now I know exactly why I write it with so much joy. I write it for wonderful people like Karin S. So that we stay connected. So that we remain in warm contact despite this great, spatial distance. So that we never lose sight of each other.
Dear Karin, I was so happy about your heartfelt, warm words! It really did me good and warmed my heart to hear from you.
I wish you all the love and good in the world and sincerely hope that we (of course including the little one ;-) L.) can embrace each other again one beautiful day!
