A road trip to Ostsee

I just came back from a weekend trip to an island called Rügen in the very north of Germany by the Ostsee (Baltic Sea). I had a friend who had a friend who were staying with friends who were into a sport called kite-surfing.

I had been missing the ocean, the salty breeze and the sandy beach and wanted to see what kite-surfing was all about. So a few friends and I decided to go on a 4-hour road trip up north.

We left early on Saturday morning. It was rainy, but windy.

The island looked like a typical holiday destination, with lots of camper vans and holiday homes with names like sunshine apartment. I had imagined the island to have a lot of more visible coastlines, but there were lots of forests and trees and fields instead.

We arrived at the villa that some friends had already been staying in for a few weeks. Around 10 people had rented out a villa and were kite-surfing while working remotely.

I’d seen kite-surfing before from afar, but had never taken a proper look up close. The kites were a lot bigger and the strings that attaches the kite to the surfer was a lot longer than I had imagined. It was so windy that my eardrums hurt. There were so many surfers, and I could not understand how people weren’t bumping into each other or getting tangled.

The strong wind on my face reminded me of my favorite moment when I’m up in the mountains. Strong winds - they somehow always manage to punch life into me.

Kite-surfing looked like a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to fly and people were really flying. I was hoping I could take a beginner course in kite-surfing, but the instructor said that we needed at least 3 days for the course to be worth it.

Like surfing or rock-climbing, kite-surfing wasn’t just a sport, it was a lifestyle. People lived in camping vans, they traveled from coast-to-coast looking for the perfect wind and water. There were communities.

Recently, this notion of sport as a lifestyle had me pondering for a while. Every sport came with a lifestyle, the people, the community associated with the sport, and sometimes it’s these things around the sport that draw people in more than the sport itself. Which one did I want to be part of? Do I want to be part of one at all?

Since we couldn’t try out kite-surfing, we decided to take a stroll around on a beach. We walked and then laid on the beach just listening to the waves. I then started listening to the For the love of climbing podcast (my favourite at the moment) and fell asleep.

The sky cleared up towards the evening, and we had a lovely dinner together outside. We did a BBQ, I had my first Acro yoga session and we all walked out to watch the sunset.

The next morning (Sunday), I woke up at 5:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I decided to take a little walk around the island.

I ended up walking/running more than 13 km. I met some animals along the way and listened to a few more podcasts.

We packed our things and went to another beach and swam a little before heading back to Berlin. We grabbed some yummy Backfisch- Brötchen on our way back. A short trip spent in intensity like this always bring people a little closer. This trip reminded me of my time at surf & yoga camp in Morocco and got me wondering about how I wanted to spend my time outside of work while living in Berlin.

The end.