Twenty-two years ago, the sisters Annika and Hannah Jeibmann from Lünen, Germany, threw a letter in a bottle into the sea at the beach of Texel. Not knowing that that letter would ever wash up again, and even that they would see it again themselves. That is exactly what has happened now. Their mother was stunned: “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
It is not surprising that Annika and Hannah threw a message in a bottle into the sea as a child. When they were little, they always did that when they went on holiday to Texel. According to Museum Kaap Skil – where the letter is kept – the fact that that letter has been found is also not exceptional. What is special is that the senders have been traced, and that by a German newspaper.
An editor of the Ruhr Nachrichten wrote in August an article about the message in a bottle from ‘a resident of Lünen’ that was now in a Texel museum. “When I read the whole article, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” says the women’s mother. “This was about our now grown daughters Annika and Hannah. Our phone was ringing all day because people had read it and wanted to alert us to it.”
See in real life
Their mother then reported to the editor. That led to one second article. The article even included a photo of the then young girls with a message in a bottle in their hands. Then of course there was only one thing left to do: the family had to see the letter in real life. And that happened this week, when the German family had spring break.
They spoke to beachcomber Gilles about the find and, according to Kaap Skil, brought the newspaper articles to complete the story. ‘A very special event to reunite a letter in a bottle with the writers after 22 years,’ says Corina Hordijk of Kaap Skil.