Every year again – Christmas in Sardinia

It's no secret: anyone who reads the ‘About me’ section of this blog will know that I'm ‘beyond good and evil’. Nevertheless, I am fully committed to my job and am happy to have all my limbs and almost all my senses intact. However, my friends advise me to look ahead. Some things happen faster than you think, as Bastian Schweinsteiger's dramatic fall from grace shows. Just 17 months ago, he was a world champion, and today he is facing involuntary retirement at Manchester United!

I therefore hired a youngster and took out something like reinsurance. Benjamin Rüdt is enthusiastic about the job, and in that respect he is completely on the same wavelength as me, as his subsequent report from the island for the Nürtinger Zeitung newspaper shows:

‘Pre-Christmas spring on the sunny island of Sardinia’

A dream has come true for me: I always wanted to work abroad, and this year I finally did it!

I am writing these lines for the readers of the Nürtinger Zeitung from Sardinia, which I consider to be the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean. Today, we have a balmy 22 degrees and glorious sunshine. A T-shirt is enough for me at work. In Nürtingen, my iPhone tells me, it's raining and a chilly 6 degrees. I feel like I'm in seventh heaven!
What brought me here? – The holiday homes of Sardafit!

Holiday accommodation that families from Nürtingen had also rented. My job is to get the houses ready for the coming season during the winter break and take photos for the website. But I don't want to talk about that here. I want to give the readers of the Nürtinger Zeitung an insight into Sardinia in the run-up to Christmas.

We are in Europe. Admittedly a little remote, only about 100 km away from Africa, but still: Christmas lights, as I know them from home, are omnipresent here. So when I sip my cappuccino at the bar in the morning, like a stylish new Italian, and eat a sweet croissant, Christmas carols are playing in the background. Babbo Natale and his reindeer flicker across the screens everywhere, accompanied by children's voices singing an Americanised version of ‘Jingle Bells’. I admit: I miss the German contemplativeness, the softly falling snow, the punch at Christmas markets ...

For a moment, I am overcome with melancholy. But then reality catches up with me: isn't contemplation more of an idealised image? A memory of times gone by? Where can we still find the solemn pre-Christmas tranquillity? What about the ‘softly falling snow’? Hasn't all this fallen victim to climate change, which has penetrated our hearts from outside?

I finish my Italian ‘colazione’. I don't have any work to do today. I've been invited to my fatherly friend Pino's house to bake Christmas cookies. The family, which numbers in the double digits, sits around the kitchen table and helps ‘Mama’ make Sardinian Christmas cookies. It's not a contemplative atmosphere, but a loud and cheerful one. But that's fine with me. It's wonderful to be in Sardinia among Sardinians!

Sunny Christmas greetings from Sardinia from Benjamin Rüdt

I remember accepting the same invitation a long, long time ago, sitting at the Flores' table, grating oranges, cracking almonds and thinking very much the same thing. How comforting! Perhaps I'm not quite ‘out’ yet?

Or is history just repeating itself? – Never mind!

For once, I will not say goodbye with the familiar ‘Adiosu’, but, in keeping with the occasion, with wishes for a peaceful Christmas and a happy New Year. Buon Natale!

Yours, Joachim Waßmann

PS. We can certainly use the ‘peaceful’ part! Why has the world gone so haywire?