I checked into the spiffy Sea Star B & B in the silent center of Juist and was about to enjoy the Eden around me when I realized something terrible: Sea Star had Wi-Fi.
And I had deadlines. A book, an article. Where better than this horse-drawn place to catch up? I’d work each morning and explore the island in the afternoons.
But then I found myself Skype-ing to New York, London, La Paz, and even Ouagadougou. I was so feverishly elsewhere that I didn’t even notice an odd, mustached German come into the room.
“The Internet,” he pronounced, without introducing himself, “has much information. But it’s cold. What are you doing with that little piece of plastic?”
Before I could respond, he barked: “Gar nichts! [Absolutely nothing] The two of us are small men. You work in vain. The big men don’t care.”
I gulped and explained that I was a writer, and I was going to do a piece about Juist.
He walked a couple of steps toward me, twirling the end of his mustache, and practically whispered, “Will they believe you in New York that there’s an island in Germany with only horses? Nein!” His whisper had crescendoed into a shout. “They’ll tell you, ’Du luegst!’ [’You’re lying!’]”
Christina, the Sea Star’s Estonian manager, stepped between us and asked this man—another guest, whom I’ll dub the Existentialist—whether he might be able to help her lift something heavy. She winked at me behind his back, as if to say, Go on with your work. I did. Skype, e-mail, sweating over a chapter.
I’m not usually stressed when working on a book; it’s more like eustress (as in euphoria), a positive intensity. But when I realized that an entire day had gone by without my having left the Sea Star, I began to curse the flat world for spreading my life over five continents when one or two would do just fine.
The Sea Star’s owner, sixtysomething Jörg, drank his way through the late afternoon, telling unlikely Cold War stories about his James Bond antics at the Berlin Wall 40 years earlier. Christina would sigh and shrug as he downed another cognac. He was depressed and would sleep for days. His wife had died several years back, and she had been the soul of the place. Now only Christina kept it afloat.
Gossip wove me into the Sea Star’s dysfunctional family: It turned out that Jörg had been just as depressed and helpless when his wife was alive. He’d inherited the Sea Star. Life had come too easy for him, and he’d never really become his own man. As Christina related all this, the Existentialist burst in, took one look at my laptop, and barked an order: “Urlaub machen!” (Literally: “Make vacation!”)
He then asked, “What is money?”
I looked at Christina and back at him. Not surprisingly, he had an answer. “Garbage. Toilet paper. Gar nichts!” His hand was shaking as if he’d just chugged five double espressos. “I have a titanium hand,” he said, unfolding an X-ray he’d stashed in his wallet and passing it to me.
“Doesn’t it take money to invent and install a hand like that?” I asked. Christina nodded. The Existentialist did, too, but quite gravely, and then he left the room to ponder that flaw in his philosophy. At that point, another guest walked into the dining room, a German who’d been an adjunct at Cornell for a couple of years. It was my second day in Juist, and it was raining now, so I couldn’t leave the hotel even if Big Brother Skype would let me. The academic and I talked eco-trends for several interesting hours; he insisted that German automakers had not only hybrid but also fuel-cell technologies “in the drawer,” but they were waiting for consumers to scream for them.
Even in eco-Germany, demand for SUVs rose 45 percent in the last three years. In 2007, Volkswagen’s CEO told DerSpiegel that German consumers want SUVs and that Volkswagen was simply satisfying demand. Perhaps, but they were also creating demand through a multibillion-dollar marketing campaign that equates big vehicles with big freedom.
Later that day, the Existentialist returned to the Sea Star and caught me working. He headed straight for me and slammed my screen shut, catching the tips of my fingers.
I winced in pain. Finishing off the job, he pulled the plug out of the wall and issued his command: “Make vacation!”
Enraged and indignant, my fingers smarting, I stood up to take him on. I was about to tell him that I would make vacation however and whenever I darn well felt like making vacation. We both stood 6 feet tall, and I was so close I could smell the sea salt on his clothing. Then suddenly all the energy drained out of me. The Existentialist was absolutely right. I must make vacation.
I stashed the laptop and pedaled a rental bike toward Juist’s westernmost tip, out of the town, through lightly settled transition zones, and into the wooded and grassland Ruhezones—the areas of strictest protection. The whole island was designated as a national park, and more than half of it Ruhezone. The bike trail ended, and I headed out through the dune trails on foot.
I passed dozens of Germans, arms swinging as they headed toward the tip of the island. Germans are fanatical about their forests. This explains the country’s excellent protected-area management. Germany’s forests are huge compared with most Western and Southern European countries. The Black and Bavarian forests have been declared national heritage sites and will, over the next decades, return to a wild state.
I grew calmer as I discovered a lake in the middle of the island and then got lost in another stretch of forest. Granted, Juist has none of the mythical humid German forests that inspired the Brothers Grimm. But watching the rosy-cheeked Volk wandering through this setting explained why they seemed so blissful while the hang-around-the-fort Existentialist, Jörg the Depressed, and always-connected me were so full of angst. It’s not enough to live parallel to paradise while still tethered to an unbalanced world. You have to get inside it before it can get inside of you.
I crested a bluff and saw the full expanse of the North Sea. On the beach, I bent down to touch a sunburst-patterned jellyfish. I listened to the wind play the reeds, the waves, and the wings of a sand-darter. And that evening, as I soaked in a saltwater bubble bath at the TöwerVital Wellness Center, I vowed not to open my laptop again as long as I was on Juist. I could finally appreciate why my Sea Star breakfast neighbor, willowy Ulrike from Bavaria, had been to Juist five times. When I asked her why she kept coming back to such a tiny place, she said it’s completely different every time. How so? “The weather,” she said.
Exactly. When you’ve slowed down so much that a different shade of sky blue qualifies as “completely different,” you’re in the Juist Zone.
