Column for life: Get out on the water – wonderful! | life & knowledge

2023-06-30 19:00:18

What is really important? What touches us today – and will not go away tomorrow? It’s the things that have moved us since human existence: happiness, love, family, partnership, time, stress, loneliness, farewell, grief.

BILD columnist Louis Hagen*, Coming from a German-Jewish family, he sought answers to the eternal questions of mankind from poets, thinkers and researchers. And found a few answers that are amazingly simple – and yet can enrich our lives.

★★★

Treat yourself to a little vacation before the big one. I did it. It’s so easy, it’s so beautiful. It works like this: Rent a small motorboat – you don’t need a license up to 15 hp. The boats are called “Sunny”, “Emma” or “Wanda”. They look like the ones you see at the Formula 1 race in Monaco harbor (well, maybe not quite).

But I felt a little bit like that. If you go full throttle, the bow will move out of the water a little. I think of Hans Albers and his song: “Take me with you, captain, on the journey, take me with you into the wide, wide world…”

The world of my motorboat is Potsdam and the waters around Berlin’s Wannsee. The famous lido seen from the water: you hear screams of joy, you see children swimming towards you, flushed faces, laughter, high spirits. In general: If you want to forget your annoying boss for a few hours, that molar that hurts again, the outrageous increase in electricity prices – you can do it on the water, I promise you.

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The world of water will captivate you if, like me, you are a typical landlubber. As I sit back and admire the vast lots with their own docks around me, I overlook a stand-up paddle boarder next to me. My waves make you shake. She slips off the board, crawls back up – and laughs. I laugh back and know: you’re not a sea dog after all. And never will be. I call the lady a completely nonsensical seafaring joke.

It goes like this: “If I could, I would get a bottle of bowsprit from the port side and clink glasses with you.” She laughs again. Probably out of politeness this time.

* Louis Hagen (76) was a member of the BILD editor-in-chief for 13 years and is now a consultant at the communications agency WMP. His texts have also been published as a book and are available at koehler-mittel-shop.de.