Emden…. Never heard of it? Well this is because you are an ignorant person! No of course not. I admit, if my buddy Jan would not live here, I’d probably haven’t heard of if it either. Though it is an important town for Volkswagen shipping all their cars from here, the ferry to (f**king) Borkum leaves from here and it once was in direct competition to Hamburg to become THE German harbor. It didn’t. And if anybody asks me “where is that Emden you talk of” I just tell them “very top left corner of Germany”.
Side note: Did I ever talk about how we decided that we wanted to have a new mast and carry on? We sat down, Benni asked me “should we consider giving up”. And this was a legitimate question. Even without any research you still know that a new mast will most likely be as expensive as the boat itself was when we bought it. Would it make sense financially? No. Though the boat itself (without mast) has proven to be quite rigid. A new mast could make the whole thing a strong concept. So we discussed back and forth always mentioning, that we could have lost it all. Maybe a sign from Neptune to continue? In the end it was a simple question that made the choice easy – at least for me: Could I stand myself being back in “the normal life” and not having tried? No I could not. And so here we were – mainland Germany and on the quest to find us a new mast.
First things first – we needed to have a proper shower thus we visited Jan. He lives pretty nice with his girlfriend, directly at a canal. How is that? So you sit in their perfectly groomed garden, have beers at their private dock (yes), wave at passing boats talk of the good old days back in school and later shower your ass off. And just when you think “now is a proper time to leave” Jan states: “Oh didn’t I mention? We are going to a friend’s place for some drinks”. Well… why not. Why the fuck not. Let’s obliterate ourselves. We went by foot… and man Emden is beautiful. We were not even that drunk. It is sober-beautiful if you know what I mean. Emden treated us well. And it still does. So the next chapter will be: THE MAST (imagine a dramatic sound)
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