I’m in Weilheim in Bavaria at the moment. Not exactly where we planned to be at this time. We left the ship close to Offenburg for a few days so that Markus could attend his father’s funeral and help his family to get things organized. A sad and tiresome business.

For me it is an odd situation, since I am a total stranger to the family, but Markus keeps saying how much he appriciates that I went with him, so maybe I am doing some good here.

We will head back to Offenburg on Wednesday with a stop in Munich to collect Kurt, who will accompany us for 1 1/2 weeks. I haven’t met Kurt yet. Another thing I am sometimes a bit nervous about, all the additional crew members who travel with us for parts of the way are friends or relatives of Markus. I have met most of them by now, at least once, but still I have no idea what it will be like to live with them in the relatively confined space of the boat.

At them moment the whole situation feels pretty depressing, but I hope that my mood will change as soon as we are really on the way south.