Heading Home

Date: 11-04-2021
Position: 43°28,1’W, 008°23,7’W

Home. A place where I can go. To take this of my shoulders, someone take me home.

Home. What is a home? Home doesn’t have to be one place, it is the feeling of belonging somewhere, where you are accepted as who you are and it’s the place you can always come back to, when life doesn’t go the right way. But home doesn’t have to be a place, it can also be a person and when you spend time with this person you feel arrived. It depends on how you define your home.

And now we are heading home. But how can we be on our way back home, when I’m already at home? Is it possible to have more than one place, more than one person, where you feel absolutely safe and fine? I think the answer isn’t that hard, but you have to question yourself about that.

My answer is yes. Absolutely. I would say Germany isn’t really a home to me, but my family, my parents and my brother, the people I love and live with, they are a part of my home. I have spend so much time on this sailing ship and I can’t imagine a world without it. I honestly can’t remember my life before I left Germany and before I started this adventure. I call this sailing ship home. I have called it home for six months and it will always be a home to me. But it wouldn’t be a home to me, if there weren’t the people I got to know and learned to love for the last half year. I believe that I can be very thankful to have more than one home. More than one place, more than one person, I trust without any doubts and conditions. These are all parts of my home and I when I put the pieces together I get my whole home.
So I am coming home and I am leaving home at the same time.

I’m sitting here and I can feel the ship rolling. I can hear the waves bumping against the bulwark and the cold wind whistling. I can feel the sun on my skin and its warmth running through my veins. I watch the sea and what do I see? Water, water and much more water. Every time I stand there watching the sky get darker or the sun shining brighter, I am reminded of the luck I have and different emotions come over me like a storm. It is difficult to describe this feeling. I remember the very first day. I had no clue what this journey would hold for me and now I’m here. I can’t get control of the big wave of feelings flooding my head in this moment. On the one hand I’m very happy that I will be able to hug my parents again, but on the other I don’t want this trip to end. I hope my point is clear. It doesn’t matter which road I take, both ways have advantages and disadvantages.

I talked about this topic with many other students. Everyone deals with the fact of sailing home in their own way. It does bother us, but we know that we have to enjoy these last days and our life after this voyage will just be different. It will change for sure, but change isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes it is good and it will help us to become the person we want to be. As this adventure leads us on our path and back home we have to follow this path further, just in a different direction.

In the past few weeks all of us, the whole crew, spent more time with thinking. Thinking about our experiences, the time we had together and how it will be to see our families again. Some of us think about things they want to do when they are back and how they will manage their life. Go your own way, everyone says. We did. And we will.