After one year on the island, the seasons are beginning to repeat themselves. It's the second spring on Corfu and I am starting to compare. With last year and the spring in Germany. I am beginning to identify recurring impressions, such as the swallows that are buzzing all around the house here to build their nests. I can see them circling far away, sitting on the telephone lines, almost like on a postcard from  days long gone. Everything is about two weeks earlier this year, as March and April were relatively warm and dry. A wonderful splendor of blossoms, lush green, fragrant jasmine and lots of bees which are much smaller than the bees in Germany. Are they wild bees or just another species? I don't know. It strikes me that insects, such as wasps or hornets, are calmer here and unaggressive. The "second spring" also makes me reflect on that very same somewhat worn out metaphor – and it feels a bit like that here. Making everything new again - just like the month of May.

One of my favourite poems by Eduard Möricke comes to mind:

"Spring lets its blue ribbon flutter through the air again, sweet, well-known scents forebodingly roam the land."

Foreboding... does spring know? How we humans react to it? The season of hope, of new beginnings, of recurring renewal. And yet it is different every time from the previous spring. Am I different? Here in this very spring? Which is much more like a German summer than a spring in the Bavarian Alps, where snowfall is not uncommon. I am reflecting, trying to get a sense of it. Yes, I am different. Very quickly the flip flops slip onto my feet. Actually, they were already on the starting line in December.

And no, many things are similar. My daily walk in the garden, the amazement, the feeling, the sensing and watching - every day, how buds turn into blossoms, how brown earth drowns under rampant green, blue, white and pink. Why is autumn not called „latecomer“? (Remark: this is a German wordplay as the direct translation for the German word "spring" would be "early comer"). This sentence alone makes me wonder how to translate it into English and I have to smile. I can't. Some things only work in their native language. The language of spring, however, is universal, all over the world, at least where it exists. I imagine it would be difficult not to experience a change of seasons at all. It gives us a rhythm that, like the stages of life, arranges the year like a dance. Spring is the strong expressive dance, explosive and gentle at the same time. The summer is probably something like a polka or even a tango, depending on the mood and geographical location - depending on the heat. Spring touches everything within us. And so the mind bubbles with new ideas, the body wants to move, everything wants to be noticed and absorbed. The scents are precious, as are the moments. Soon spring will give way to the heat and seamlessly transition into summer. The urging of spring is strong this year.

To implement that, which wants to be brought into the world - to pour new ideas into form and give them shape. And joy! The joy of being alive. To be able to feel it with all my senses. The "meaning" of life often reveals itself to me in such moments, in which everything culminates in this one point. Eyes closed, antennas extended wide, feeling the wind on my skin, the sounds and noises passing by - not holding on to any of it, being completely HERE. As part of the fabric of life, welcoming spring.

" Spring! Yes, it's you! It is you, I heard!“