2. Day – Symi – Rasmus, you old turnip pig

Today, we can thank the wind god Rasmus for giving us moderate winds and a lot of sunshine for our first day of sailing.
Angelica, one of our skippers on the ship and our sailing companion, yelled the old sailor’s prayer in German: „Rasmus, altes Rübenschwein, gib uns mäßig Wind und reichlich Sonnenschein.“ She then passed around a bottle of Port wine for everybody to take a morning sip, including Rasmus.

That’s not the only thing Angelika taught us today: while sailing, she showed us how to do five sailing knots. Although each one of us had varying success with the knots, as a group we became more connected through the day.

As we sat at a seaside cafe in Symi island and a local with a mohawk served us frappes, our conversation came to some deeper questions. We discussed where we might go if catastrophe struck our homes, whether it’s responsible to have kids in the world we live in, and why in Europe refugees from some countries are happily accepted and others not.

Our discussion brought us to some deeper questions we’d like to discuss in the next days:
Why are we so lucky to have all that we do, and live a beautiful and peaceful life, while others face huge difficulties like war, social issues, natural disasters, etc?
How can we use the privilege we have to the best possible outcome?