Sylt

I wake with a flinch. The clock shows 05:24 am. Despite my fatigue I fail to hide my imminent disappointment: my alarm rings in exactly one minute.

It takes a couple of days to gather oneself when the bittersweet symphony that the student life is comes to be replaced with the harsh reality of 9 hour working days and waking up earlier than your local sparrow. I thank the sun and its companions every single day for crawling out of bed at 4 am themselves, at least here on Sylt, where the term “north” gains a whole other meaning. This way, my bike ride to work at least allows me to bathe in the warmth of the first sun rays of the day every morning.

It is Friday, June the 28th, and although I as a university student technically shouldn’t care, I had wished my mother a happy last day of school before she left for work at 05:26 this morning and it has brought a wave of nostalgia upon me that very instance. The final school day has always been a moment of freedom, unconditional happiness and restless anticipation of the two upcoming months. Needless to add, the two sweetest months of the year. Even though I’ve been on summer break, working at a hotel restaurant on an island in the north of Germany since the end of May, today feels different. I still had to fold about 200 serviettes in every style you could possibly think of, but I suppose it’s just up to you how you choose to look at it. And in my eyes today, Sylt is a fairytale.

To be quite honest, the island is a bit of a fairytale on any other day as well, but I think I might be failing to notice since my brain probably just switches to recovery mode after a whole day of attempting to function in German. Yes, attempting is a keyword. I may have lived in Austria for a couple of years, but considering the fact that I took Spanish in school instead, it’s sort of left my German hanging. I understand my language struggles are all incredibly fascinating, but I just wanted to return to my original fairytale point and say that I’m thinking Snow White. It’s the bunnies with white furry paws sitting in the middle of quiet forest pathways and groups of birds dancing together in the fresh seaside air; it’s all so picturesque that it feels as though Sylt was under Disney construction. Who knows. 

For some, summer might only be at its very beginning today, for others, those couple of months might be filled to the brim with summer readings. I’ll make sure I’ll squeeze in some of my personal reads I proudly purchased in Blackwell’s for a 20 pound voucher I got as a reward for volunteering as well though, so no need to worry about my mental wellbeing. I’ve learned that 20 pounds can take you a long way. And despite the 05:25 alarm clocks, a long deserved break filled with good reads lies ahead.

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