by I took this photo in March, in Tangalle on Sri Lanka’s southern coast. But for me, it could just as well have been taken more than three decades ago. The wide beach, the long empty shoreline, the soft morning light, the footprints in the sand, and the ocean breathing calmly beside me — all of it feels timeless. When I look at this image, I don’t only see Tangalle in March. I also see myself as a 22-year-old, arriving in Sri Lanka for the first time, young, curious, and still believing that the world was much more peaceful and easygoing than it often feels today.
So much has changed since then. I have changed. The world has changed. Sri Lanka has changed too, of course. And still, something in this view feels the same.
A View That Feels Like Freedom
For me, Sri Lanka has always stood for freedom. Not the loud kind of freedom. Not the kind people talk about in big speeches. I mean the quiet kind of freedom you feel when you stand barefoot on a beach, look at the horizon, and suddenly your mind becomes lighter.
In Tangalle that morning, the rising sun and the quiet beach put a little distance between me and the worries I had brought with me.
September 1991 — My First Morning by the Sea
I still remember the first time I experienced a long and wide beach almost exactly like this one. It was back in September 1991, also in the early morning. For the first time in my life, I felt that tropical, strong, warm sea breeze on my skin. It was not just wind. It was something completely new for me. Something alive, warm, and full of distance from everything I had known before.
Only a day earlier, I had still been in my office in Munich. There were papers, routines, walls, schedules, the usual working life. And then, almost in the blink of an eye, I found myself standing on a tropical beach in Sri Lanka, so far away from all of that. I remember thinking how unreal it felt. One day Munich, the next morning this endless shoreline. One day office air, the next morning warm ocean breeze. One day everyday life, the next morning freedom.
I was only 22, far from everything familiar, yet I did not feel lost. I felt free.
Sri Lanka Then and Now
When I first arrived in Sri Lanka in 1991, the country was going through difficult times. The civil war was still part of life on the island, even if, as a young traveller, I probably didn’t fully understand its depth. Tourism existed, but it was very different from what it is today. There were no smartphones, no online maps, no instant hotel reviews, no social media showing you every corner before you arrived.
Travel felt slower then. More uncertain, maybe also more adventurous. You arrived somewhere and had to really experience it with your own eyes, not through a screen. Sri Lanka back then felt like an island of long train rides, simple guesthouses, quiet beaches, warm people, and beauty that didn’t need to explain itself.
Today, Sri Lanka has lived through so much. The civil war ended in 2009. The country suffered deeply from the 2004 tsunami, later from the 2019 Easter attacks, and then again from the economic crisis. Life has not been easy for this island and its people. Roads became better. Some places became more developed. Tourism changed. The world became faster, louder, and more complicated.
On this beach in Tangalle, the familiar morning light and sea breeze brought that first visit close again.
Far Away, Yet Somehow Home
Sri Lanka is far from my birthplace in Thuringia. It is also far from my current home in Mindanao. On the map, it is not where my life began, and it is not where my everyday life happens now. And still, every time I return to Sri Lanka, it feels like coming home.
Not home in the usual way. Not the home of childhood streets, family routines, or familiar language. It is another kind of home. A home of memory, emotion, and recognition. A place where something inside me quietly says: I know this feeling. I have been here before. I belong to this moment.
For the journey beyond this one morning on the beach, come along through the tea hills, temple bells and ocean views in part one of our Sri Lanka story, then continue with the second chapter of our journey.
More Places That Feel Like Home
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