On Friday afternoon Emi and I swap a few messages. We sat our Abitur together and once made a bit of music, too. Unlike me, he was already a musician back then, and made it his profession. He lived five years in Scheveningen before moving back to Munich. He, too, is fond of sailing, and keeps his boat, Kalypso, in Volendam, north of Amsterdam. He’s in the Netherlands for the weekend, and the loveliest thing would be to meet up with the boats. But with the lock at Kornwerderzand still under maintenance, me on the North Sea, him on the Markermeer, and a ticket for Sunday’s night train back to Munich, there’s no realistic place to meet by boat. Quickly decided: we’ll meet in Lelystad. A town that has surfaced in my life again and again, always at one remove. A town founded in 1967 and planned on the drawing board. A town he can reach under sail with Kalypso, and I from Vlieland easily by public transport.
Saturday: first the little ferry to Harlingen, then the train to Leeuwarden, change for the train to Den Haag, as far as Lelystad. It’s a hot summer’s day. Along the line lie the countless lakes and canals, children with trees to jump from and rope swings. At the many level crossings there are, as a rule, more cyclists waiting than cars. (I could have mentioned it many times — so why not now? A small cultural difference between southern Germany and the Netherlands: people here cycle a great deal more, granted. The real difference: no one wears a helmet.)
The landscape rushes past, music in my ears. At Zwolle a group of strikingly orange-clad people gets on. Most of them seem to be couples around my age. With the beers for the road that seem obligatory for football fans, they’re on their way to Amsterdam to watch the football. So the World Cup catches up with me by land after all. Next stop: Lelystad. A planned town. Sprawling, a great deal of green space — probably part of why it’s so hard to grasp as a town. Whether it succeeded from a planner’s point of view or not, I couldn’t say.
When I arrive at the Bataviahaven, Emi is still busy running out his mooring lines. Good timing. Funny, to see him here, to hear him speaking Dutch. Apart from the curiosity of an amphibious vehicle that — fitted out like a ship, with navigation lights and cleats — drives through the harbour, it’s simply a good evening. The harbour is dark and quiet by the time reason talks us into finally turning in to our bunks.
After breakfast, a little short on sleep, I set off for the station. On the train it strikes me how much I value being out and about with nothing but the small, light 20-litre rucksack. I like to travel very light. On ski traverses just as much as on journeys. With the little rucksack I could carry on for another five days right now. That lightness is something I’ve rather missed these past weeks. True, the boat under sail is fascinating, a certain kind of freedom. But a whole boat — ten metres, six tonnes, forever at the mercy of the weather — that’s a different thing from the small, light rucksack.
When I walk from the ferry to Koraki on Vlieland, it feels like coming home again.
