Three seas, one compass: Baltic, North Sea, Atlantic

There is a line that structures my biography, and it is not temporal, it is geographical. Three seas. Three kinds of water, three colours of light, three sounds. The Baltic was childhood. Amber in the sand after a storm, a yellowish light in late summer, the water dark, almost black, at depth. The North Sea was passage. It did not come to me as a beach but as a harbour — the Elbe carried its tides up to Hamburg, the salt stayed in the air, the ships came from all over the world. Fifteen years in beauty in a city that in November is so grey you can't see your hand in front of your face. And then the Atlantic. Wilder, colder, larger, louder. Once you have put your hand in the Atlantic, you know what ocean means, and you cannot mistake it for anything else. This entry, the last for this year, is not a travelogue. It is an attempt to answer a question I have often asked myself. Why does the word for sea sound different in every language, and why does it mean the same thing in all of them?