Heading home… or not?
As soon as we arrived in Panama, the first people were whispering about the arrival at home and eventually, in Cuba the last ones were aware that we are now on the way back to Germany. We said to ourselves that we are having another two months, but to be honest: in this surrounding, time flies. I can vividly remember the moment we started our journey in Kiel. We were standing on the main deck and thought that the next six months are going to be endless – the next second, we were standing on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
March 11th • Münster, Germany
“Now we are almost heading back home over the north Atlantic ocean. How surreal is this!” This is what I thought during the last Thursday in Cuba. Yet the next day, I suddenly knew that I was going to be home in two days, not two months – I had to fly home for personal reasons. Two weeks later, I was laying on the ground in my own room, which is amazingly quiet, in my home in Germany. Home. The word was feeling somehow weird in my mouth when I said it because at the moment, the Thor wasmy home. I mean it took some time, but over the last minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months, this ship with its wonderful people that bring life to it slowly became my home. The first time this was clear for all of us as a group was after the stay in the host families in Dominica when we saw the Thor again. Out of nowhere, we were radiating with joy. In addition to that, everyone had their own little, personal moment during the journey, during which they realized that the Thor had become their home.
Thinking about it right now, I remember a special moment in Tenerife. We were walking through the city, exploring almost every inch – and important to mention – every ice cream shop when I thought: “Oh no, I forgot my money at home!” At the Thor, our floating home. And now my home is supposed to be in the cold of Germany again? In the first few days there, everything was extremely confusing, as if I had not been away the last few months and yet, everything is still so different. My house has not had the familiar smell, and I almost walked the stairs down backwards like the companionways. Now, after a handful of weeks back in Germany, I have almost settled in again and then – it meant, one more time: “Heading home.”
March 20th • Horta, Portugal
It is 9:35 pm and I am sitting in the messroom. Around me, there are many other KUSis. Some are playing very ambitiously Settlers of Catan, some are despairing on the computers and others are passionate about writing their diary. I am back on the Thor, with the persons that mean so much to me. Yet surprisingly, it is not the same as it was before. Some wooden parts of the ship have been varnished, we have access to almost unlimited amounts of milk that we can drink and the door from our galley has been decorated with different notes that remind us of a variety of moments. There are also some new insiders that I am not familiar with and memories that I cannot understand. Getting back to the Thor and feeling the same as before is a lot harder than I had thought. In my imagination, it would just work out right, like I have never been gone, and everything is easy but as I said, it is not. Till this moment, it has taken time to feel home again, and it will definitely need some more, but what I know now is that feeling at home does not depend on the surroundings, but instead on the people and the memories you make with them.
For now, despite that we are on our way home, I have learned that the time here on the Thor is valuable and we should enjoy it.