Taking the long way home

Today I am on my way to Nuremberg for the memorial service of a dear friend. She was someone who brightened my life through all the years I have lived in Germany, which will be forty-three this year. Even while I was on the ship, she was the first person I sent each blog post to in the morning. She managed to wait until I came back. These realities change my sense of time and tenderness. The fragility I have felt since returning feels even sharper now, having to say goodbye.

It is all part of seeing things through a different lens. There is something about being away that shifts how I look at the familiar. As I ride the train from Lübeck to Nuremberg, the autumn landscape passes by under grey skies. There is a particular kind of melancholy that belongs to Germany in autumn, soft but persistent, as though the clouds are whispering that winter is near. I have lived here long enough to find comfort in that colour palette.

The train moves with its own steady rhythm. I sip from my thermos of my favourite Darjeeling and listen to the whoosh as we travel in and out of tunnels. Around me, people scroll through phones, doze, or unwrap their sandwiches, and I feel quietly content to be one of them.

As some of you know, I am a devoted fan of the Deutsche Bahn, much to the disbelief of family and friends. In Germany, complaining about the trains is practically a national sport. But I still love them. From an engineering point of view, I admire what they manage to do each day, and from a human one, I think train travel is the best. There is reassurance in the rhythm of tracks beneath you and the scenery sliding past.

It has been a month since I returned from the MV Roland Oldendorff. It took a month to prepare for the voyage, two months to live it, and another to arrive home in heart and mind. The return is never immediate. The body lands first, but the rest drifts back slowly, catching up in its own time.

I don’t get flashbacks or dreams of being on board any more. There are no phantom sounds of engines or memories of sitting in my favourite chair on the bridge watching the sun rise. Those months at sea almost feel surreal now, as if it existed in a separate pocket of life. Yet it was real, that precious stretch of time when each day had purpose and space.

I still write to a few of the crew members. Staying in touch is comforting, not only because they helped me adapt to ship life, but because fate brought us together in that world. I like to think I can remain a small part of their lives as sailors.

Since coming back, I have changed how I travel. I no longer feel the need to fill every moment of a journey. I don’t open my laptop the minute I find a seat, nor do I scroll through news or messages. I just sit and look out the window, letting my thoughts drift, the way I did on deck. On land, the view is less dramatic, the horizon closer, but the practice of doing nothing feels just as necessary.

Perhaps that is one of the lasting gifts of the voyage: a slower way of moving through the world. The sea teaches patience. Nothing happens quickly there. You learn to watch, to wait, to notice. On the ship, I could sit in my camping chair on deck for an hour, doing nothing more than tracing the line where the sky met the water. At the time, I thought I was simply watching the sea. Now I realise I was learning how to be still.

The past month has been full of small readjustments. I am learning to live again on land, but differently. The ocean has a way of stripping life down to essentials, and I am trying not to add too many back. There is work, of course, and ordinary life, but I want to hold on to the calm that came from the voyage.

In a sense, the journey feels over now. The ship sails on without me, the crew moves to new ports, and the rhythm of land life has returned. Yet something has shifted quietly inside. Perhaps that is what every voyage does: it ends, but it also begins something else.

As the train glides south and the fields turn gold and deep brown outside the window, I have decided not to rush this arrival. Coming home, like going to sea, takes time. Between the tunnels and the tea, the stillness and the movement, there is space to sit, to watch, and to let the journey continue in another form.