The Rest I Need Is Not Quiet

For me, rest does not always mean doing nothing. Sometimes it begins when the daily routine disappears and I can simply enjoy the people around me.

Our family holiday begins in a way that does not sound very relaxing.

At 6:30 in the evening, I have a football match. After the match, I will go home, get into the car and drive to Croatia with Julia and our two-year-old son, Jaron. We plan to leave at around ten o’clock and drive through the night.

The journey will take about eight hours. I will probably drive the whole way.

My preparation is very easy. I need shorts, T-shirts and underwear. That is more or less everything. I can pack my own things quite quickly.

Jaron’s luggage is the special one. Julia prepares the things he needs, and my job is to put the heavy bags into the car. Before a family holiday, there are clothes to wash, bags to organise and many small things to remember. The days before the holiday can be more exhausting than a normal week.

We do not have a special dinner on the evening before we leave. We do not open a bottle of wine to celebrate the beginning of the holiday. I do not slowly enter holiday mode.

I play football, get into the car and drive for eight hours.

A Holiday Without a Plan

We are travelling to the area around Pula in northern Croatia. We will stay in a very large house with a group of about fifteen people.

Every family will have its own bedroom and bathroom. We will share the kitchen and living room. The house is big enough that we can spend time together, but when somebody needs a little break, they can go back to their room.

I like this idea.

We booked the holiday only three or four weeks before travelling. For me, this is much better than booking a summer holiday in January or February. When you book so early, you have to wait a very long time before the holiday finally happens.

I also have no big plan for what we will do in Croatia.

A friend has already found a five-hour boat trip. Maybe we will join, but I am not sure whether Jaron will be happy on a boat for five hours. We will decide when we are there.

In these situations, I am very spontaneous. I do not need to organise a big adventure for every day. We will be close to the sea, and we can visit the city when we want. We can eat, drink, talk and spend time together.

That is enough for me.

The Mayor challenged me about this. He asked why I would drive eight hours to another country if I could meet people, eat good food and have good drinks at home.

The answer is the daily routine.

At home, the routine is always there. In Croatia, everything will be new: a new place, a new house and a different view. We will not have the same jobs and tasks around us.

For me, this change is the nice thing about a holiday.

A fantastic holiday does not need to contain many activities. In the best case, I come home feeling relaxed. I have had a good time with the other people. I have enjoyed good food and good drinks. I have also had a little free time from being responsible for Jaron every minute, and hopefully he has been easy to handle.

When these things happen, I am happy.

Making Monday a Good Day

Croatia is a family holiday, but I also have another kind of rest ritual.

My Stammtisch normally meets on Monday evening. We usually start at around 7:30 or eight and stay until ten or eleven.

Monday is a very good day for the Stammtisch because Monday is normally a bad day. The weekend is finished, and everybody has to start working again.

But then we have a great evening waiting for us.

During the day, the first messages arrive. Who will join us? What time will we meet? Later, we sit around two tables that have been pushed together. There is no agenda. The topics simply arrive, and the conversation flows naturally.

We talk about what happened during the weekend. We make jokes. We tell stories. Somebody may have been at a wedding or experienced something interesting. We share the latest information from our lives.

The conversation, the people, the humour and the drinks all belong together.

When I leave the Stammtisch, I normally have two feelings. I am a little sad because the evening is over, but I am also happy because, in the best case, we have had a great time together.

The Stammtisch changes my Monday.

The Conversations About Nothing

Once a year, the Stammtisch becomes something bigger. We travel together to Mallorca.

For several years, it has been difficult to find a date when everybody can join. One person has no time, then another person has no time. This year, it looks possible that the whole group can travel together.

I am very excited about it.

Normally, I hate mornings. But when we drive to the airport for the Mallorca trip, I think I will be very happy—maybe a little too happy—even if it is very early.

It is difficult to explain what makes this trip so important.

Julia may ask me what we talked about. My answer is often: nothing.

We do not spend the trip discussing important subjects. We have stupid conversations. We laugh, tell stories and have fun. From the outside, it may look as if nothing meaningful is happening.

But that is exactly why it feels so good.

During the rest of the year, we are correct people. We work, take care of our families and carry a lot of responsibility. We have appointments, decisions and things that must be done properly.

On this trip, we can leave those points behind for a short time.

We can only live our life.

Of course, this kind of freedom should not belong only to us. Julia also has opportunities to travel without me and Jaron. She has planned a trip to Berlin with my brother’s wife, including a Tokio Hotel concert. While they are away, we will stay home with the children.

They can let their hair down too.

This Is the Key

At the beginning of my conversation with The Mayor, I was tired. I had played football the day before, and apparently I looked tired too.

But when we started talking about the Stammtisch and Mallorca, something changed.

The Mayor noticed it. He said that talking about the trip had made me more alive.

I told him, “This is the key.”

Rest does not always look quiet. It is not always sleeping, sitting alone or doing nothing. Sometimes the body may still be tired.

For me, rest can be a new house near the sea. It can be fifteen people sharing a kitchen. It can be a Monday evening around two tables. It can be an early flight with old friends and a weekend full of conversations about nothing.

The important thing is that, for a little while, the daily routine disappears.

And then the energy comes back.