On the North Sea: Every majority needs a minority

During the night someone burned down the outhouse on the beach. Early in the morning, my four-year-old son and I stand as three huge tractors dig through the sand in an action reminiscent of the film “Real Steel” in order to lift the thing off the stilts and transport it away.

For my son it will be the biggest event of this North Sea holiday. And I think melancholically how he will talk about it in 20 years, perhaps his first memory and one that will connect us beyond our lifetimes.

For the vast majority, the island is there to relax. This morning we see the minority at work. There is work going on here. The people working wear long trousers and sturdy shoes. Sometimes they even smoke, which is how you can recognize the locals here - apart from a few stressed mothers from the spa clinics.

The minority works in order to be able to afford to live as a majority once the majority has left. The mudflat guide tells us where he has been. He knows the tides of all seven seas.

There are three SUVs parked in front of our holiday home with four apartments. Everyone has the same bike rack from Thule, which, according to ADAC, costs just under 700 euros and is good. My mother-in-law thinks our outdoor space offers little privacy, but we like to socialize. Our neighbors smile somewhat bashfully when we tell them that we arrived by train. Yes, that is, that would be possible, somehow, but, just, not - the train stops! Relief bursts onto people's faces that they don't have to do without a car because the train doesn't exist as a reputable option.

What we can't confirm for the outward journey, but for the return journey, as we squeeze into a replacement bus and shuffle to Husum. Just an emergency stop and someone would get very hurt. The driver, who is in the mood to chat, lives up to his responsibility and drives with appropriate restraint, and, as I said, we are happy to get in touch. In his words, he says what railway boss Palla then called “organized irresponsibility” in August 2026.

The suspicion is that the railway line is being renovated during the holiday season so that everyone gets to their work on time during working hours. You have time on vacation! Vacation time is also somehow minority time, but having to come to work is more suitable for the majority. And the entire train journey only costs just under 100 euros for all of us if we have a Germany ticket.

So: We're not complaining. We are happy that we can be here and then, if necessary, somehow come home again. On the island, we learn from occasional playground conversations, the men go home earlier. They earn pension points, the women are allowed to stay and hopefully will not be left in old age poverty at some point. We hear that no one cooks because no one wants to; which we interpret to mean that the women, who always cook anyway, don't feel like cooking, and the men still don't do it anyway.

Why break habits? The island works very well. And it might work even better if the last person notices that you can't do much when it's 40 degrees outside, not even shoot yourself properly.

On the island, people like to go to the sauna even in midsummer. All houses seem to be equipped with a new heat pump, induction, washing machine and dryer are standard, and filter coffee is served.

But my son says: Everyone has something, a car, a dog, we have nothing! After such outbursts about failing parents, one is grateful - that someone, perhaps a member of a minority, perhaps the youth - set the outhouse on fire and we were allowed to be there: with Bob the Builder live and in 3D!