For years we have booked package tours as a family. It was easy, it was comfortable, we didn’t have to worry about anything. Since Corona we have rethought, we are again – as before – on our own. And realize: it’s great.
“You deserve it” was the advertising slogan of a large German tour operator and I also nodded regularly and then transferred the deposit. We were in club complexes that were all called like the sailor stranded on a desert island from the novel by Daniel Defoe. Because we booked so often, a chilled bottle of champagne and a well-filled fruit basket were always waiting in the room.
In the evenings we danced in a circle on the chess board with our children to memorable melodies, our hands in the gray fin of a plush seal with sunglasses. Together with other parents of the casual polo shirt and summer dress group we sat at eight tables and of course we had the right outfits with us for the “White Night”. Everything was easy and relaxed, like the speeches by the club bosses before the shows.
A few years later we sailed through the Mediterranean in blue ships, viewed everything there was to see and dined with a view of the blue. In the evening, the cruise director, all in white, greeted the guests on board in the chic high-tech musical theater and always ended with the same sentence: “Whatever you do, do it with a smile on your face.” We did. However, the early meeting at the assembly point for the shore excursions was hard for all family members. “7:25 am at the on-board bar on deck 4”. Past. Corona initially caused club closings and the cruise ships bobbed far away from the ports at sea for a long time.
Island relaxation instead of the stress of appointments
So we rescheduled early on, we wanted maximum freedom despite all the restrictions, as I knew it from my childhood when you went somewhere on your own and went on vacation, like in Astrid Lindgren’s Saltkrokan stories. We rented a house on Sylt, drove off with our dog and our own fully packed car. The house made of reddish bricks with a thatched roof and its own garden looked promising, as idyllic as it was broadcast over the years from the north to your living room in the popular ZDF early evening series “Der Landarzt”.
When we saw it live, it was even more beautiful. The children cheered over their rooms under the wooden beam ceilings, the dog enjoyed the garden, my wife the fireplace and I the view of the dunes. In the morning we fetched fresh rolls from the island bakery Raffelhüschen and drove to the west beach after breakfast. Looking into the distance we sat in blue and white wicker beach chairs, squinted in the sun, listened to the sound of the waves, which one can never tire of listening to. The children played beach volleyball enthusiastically and knew everyone of their age on the beach in a very short time.
We didn’t have any appointments, never had to be anywhere at any time. We did not go to restaurants, it was too annoying for us with the mask, Luca app and daily tests of the children. Instead, we made sandwiches for lunch, fetched Langnese ice cream from the shack kiosk behind the dune, as in the past, and enjoyed the untimed freedom. We stayed as long as the sun warmed us, took off our watches, met acquaintances and chatted in the sand with no follow-up appointments. The children tried their hand at surfing, I read more books than in the previous year together.
It was like summer never ended. Corona? Very far away. When the sun went down, we also went down the wooden stairs with our rucksacks. A look back, tomorrow we would come again. There was cell phone reception upstairs, not down on the beach. Wonderfully relaxing, no calls, no push emails. No Instagram. Nobody missed it.
“Can we go on another vacation like this next year?”
We called the Lister Fischhaus, ordered dinner and picked it up on the way back. We dined in our temporary garden with sand on our feet and sunscreen on our faces. A couple of frogs croaked in the background. After dinner we went inside, at the large wooden table in front of the fireplace. The evening ritual was waiting: Monopoly, but in the Sylt edition by the department store icon in Westerland, HB Jensen. The edition of the classic board game, tailored to the island, puts you in a good mood, even if you are asked to pay for “wrong parking in Kampen” on the common field. I was finally broke when I walked the “whiskey mile”, formerly known as “Schlossallee” with my son. Delicious fun.
We had a flat screen TV in the living room, but we never turned it on. We didn’t watch the news, and the Olympic Games took place without us. We had our own. More important for us than election campaigns or vaccination quotas was when the sun rose the next morning and that there was still enough Dolomiti ice in the freezer. Every day the children fell asleep exhausted but happy and on the last day they only had one wish: “Can we go on another vacation like this next year?”
We parents didn’t have to think about it for long, because we also really liked the new freedom of completely self-determined planning of the day without eating or entertainment times. We won’t be returning to the package tour anytime soon. We therefore not only booked on site on the island for 2022, but also reserved our dream home by the sea for 2023.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
