Following the Christmas celebration we were invited to join Kai and GG in Sylt, Germany to celebrate New Years. New Year’s on an island in Northern Germany? Who could say no to that!?
While Christmas was a pretty calm and relaxing couple of days for most of us there was a fun little germ that had gotten hold of Kai, who was doing a good job of hiding it. Christmas Eve and Christmas day he was feeling pretty rough but managed to be the consummate host through it all. This bug began to manifest itself in everyone else (except for GG, who conspicuously stayed not-sick the entire time…I smell conspiracy :) the closer we got to Sylt. Fortunately, it was just the kind of sick that stuffs up your head and makes you miserable enough to stay medicated with hot tea and decongestant (not to mention a Sam’s Club sized number of tissues)
Anyway, just for some context Sylt is a little island as far North in Germany as you can go before stumbling in to Denmark (as long as you can stumble and swim at the same time). This was to be a road trip so we would have a car handy. The drive is a few hours long…but it managed to nearly double because of traffic. Fortunately, we had some music handy for the drive (it is here I learned that Kai doesn’t like Country music…nobody’s perfect). Just like in the U.S., families will pull over to the side of the interstate when need be and let little Johnny take a rest stop so they don’t have to get off at an exit. However, there’s a big problem with people “rubber necking” when somebody is pulled over. Kai was driving and handled it better than I would have, and he was sick. Normally the timing part of it would’t have been as big a deal but there isn’t a bridge out to Zylt, you have to take the train, and trains leave on a schedule (and this is Germany, trust me, it’ll leave on time).
We managed to get there in time to catch one of the last few trains. This part was something that they had tried to explain to us before we got there but I didn’t have a good grasp on it. You pull your car up on to the train (either the lower deck or upper deck) and line up and it carries all the cars over. Other than new cars being shipped in the U.S. I had never seen something like it. It was pretty cool, unfortunately it was really dark at that point so we didn’t have a good view of the water as we crossed but it’s basically a thin land bridge between the mainland and this island crossed solely by train tracks. It was cool, but I had to wait and take pictures at the end of our stay because it was daylight then. It was a little eerie to sit in a car with no light on a moving train (especially when the driver plays a zombie game on his phone with the sound way up….thanks Kai :). It was during this part of the trip I finally gave in. The whole ride up from Frankfurt I could tell that I was slowly getting sick too, but hoped I was wrong. I hate being sick, I especially hate being sick away from home. Not for my sake, but for others…I get gross when I’m sick. Couple that with the fact that I also feel guilty about being sick on everybody else’s vacation (sorry folks).
So the current count is two, Kai and me. This is where things are going to get a little disjointed. I can’t remember the exact sequence of things we did ( I was on a lot of DayQuil-esque medicine, I’m lucky I remember half the trip) so I’m going to put some pictures up here and just tell you some of the highlights.
Sylt is a pretty cool place and looks similar to Martha’s Vineyard (a movie whose plot took place in Martha’s Vineyard was filmed in Sylt, that is how similar they look. It also kind of fulfills the same function in Germany). There are some pretty swanky stores there (Prada, Gucci, etc…) and some extremely nice cars. I’m fairly certain I looked suspicious taking pictures of and drooling over both new and old luxury cars (though to be fair the drooling could have been due to the meds).
Anyway, one of the first things that we did was take a drive around the island (we did one end one day and the other end the next). We started out on the Northern part of the island. One downside here is that it was winter, the grey skies didn’t make for great postcards but it was still impressive. The wind was incredible. It was a workout just to walk up the beach. It was beautiful though, and it was cool to be on the furthest most northern point in Germany (Our phones were showing a connection to towers in Denmark). The following day we took on the Southern end of the island, which is where the port is for stuff that comes to the island that doesn’t fit on a train. A mix of new and old all over the island but a common theme was a modern thatched roof (some areas on the island require it to keep the look consistent).
There were two restaurants that Kai insisted we visit so that we got the full experience. The first was actually a little place on the beach called Wonnemeyer that has really good currywurst (likely one of my favorite regular things to eat in Germany). So we walked down to the beach and then stepped inside just in time for the rain to start and then left right as it stopped. Good timing. The other one is Sansibar. There was a bit of a wait for this one, but it was worth it. Excellent food and we wound up with a really good view of the dunes.
All of this was in the days leading up to New Years. During that time some of Kai’s friends joined us and they too were sick, and at this point so was Amy. They could have quarantined the house we were in and spared the neighbors :) As New Years Eve arrived there were some traditions we had to make sure we got in. One of them is a game called carcassone, which is a little bit like dominoes, chess, and world domination all rolled into one. It takes a few rounds to understand all the rules but once you do it’s a fun challenge. Another is on New Years Eve you watch a short film called “Dinner for One”, which is a funny sketch where a woman is having her 90th birthday and her butler is forced to play the part of her four different deceased suitors who all have a place setting at the table. The poor guy has to both serve and drink each toast in their place, which gets harder and harder as the evening goes on. It’s pretty funny to watch, not sure why it’s a New Year’s tradition for Germans but it’s a good one.
Following the short film the last and most important of the traditions is to go and watch the fireworks at the beach. This is where the being sick part kind of came into play. Amy was one of the last ones to get what was going around while everyone else had started to feel a little better (I think I was just finally dried out of every ounce of snot my body could make…finally). Kai, ever the host, was pretty insistent that she go and she was just as stubbornly insistent that she wasn’t. As the dutiful husband I did what ever man does in this situation, I slid into the corner and watched from a distance :). I was going to stay with her while they went out, couldn’t have her ringing in the New Year alone. He finally convinced her to at least go and sit in the car so off we went. As the fireworks started she had one of those movie moments. “It’s (sniff) so beautiful (sniff) and romantic (really long sniiiiiiiiifffff) and I’m sick”. Poor girl, she was nearly in tears, but that last snotty sniff after the word “romantic” ruined it and got us laughing. We did eventually venture out and watch a little of the fireworks but after a couple of gusts of wind she was done.
All in all the trip was excellent. We left the next day by train back to Hamburg and then flew back to Italy. Never in my life would I have guessed I’d get the chance to do this kind of thing. It was a Happy New Year, sick and still celebrating.
(editor’s note: there’s stuff that got left out but I’m already at 1500 words, it’s a good thing I don’t do short stories for a living.)
You should collect all of these at the end of your adventure and get them published!