Seite - 194 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 1/2015

194 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Nataša Rogelja | The sea: place of ultimate freedom? writings of famous french sailor Bernard Moitessier, and it can be also related to the global adventure landscape of the 21st century. Apart from these symbolic foundations and modern technological developments, the physical environment of the sea should also be taken into consideration, as living on a boat and at sea is a specific bodily experience. The ethnography presented here speaks about the interconnectedness and symbiotic relationship of material and symbolic aspects of the sea, where both aspects are equally important and can mutually explain each other. furthermore, we can observe how different perceptions and experiences of the sea are not just present in a diachronic perspective, but can also differ synchronically according to the specific individual stories. Being involved in the bodily experience with the sea over longer periods and not just observing it from the beach or cruise ship in summer months, my interlo- cutors experience the different facets and movements of the sea, and they left or continued this lifestyle by resolving the tensions between reality and imagination. The experience of the sea as material substance has an important role in resolving/understanding this tension. The sea of my interlocutors is not just the benign, calm, turquoise summer sea or a sublime romantic sea, it is also a grey coloured place of winter storms forcing human bodies to accustom to the fluid cir- cumstances. Being involved in voluntary lifestyle migration and equipped with modern boats and navigational technology as well as with their skills, they however possess a high degree of control and cannot be compared with other contemporary sea experiences (such as illegal migrants’ experience) either (see Drissen 2004 on migrants’ experience of the sea). After decades spent at sea, or through the experience of ocean sailing, my interlocutors spoke of smelling the winds, recognizing the meanings and effects of the colours of the sky above the sea, hearing voices from the sea, they spoke of the relation between their mood and the movements of the sea, consciously or unconsciously amalgamating cultural images, their experiences, and the physical features of the sea. Others still were disappointed by the experience, or felt uncomfor- table and afraid. I claim that the sea experienced by my interlocutors is no longer a tourist sea (seen in a daylight on a lazy hot summer afternoon), no longer a “tremendous Romantic sea”, no longer just a physical matter or a youthful memory of holidays, but a collision of matter and fiction transformed by their experience as liveaboards - living, traveling and working on a small boat, floating on the sea. The sea that is pertinent to our debate is not just a matter or a cultural metaphor but is also a sea of human experience vis-à-vis the physical matter of the sea. On the ground of my ethnography I claim that in the contemporary context, the sea can still function as a place of freedom and escape, while (for my interlocutors) many initial imaginaries are transformed by the real experience with the environment. The wetness, the windiness, the limited space and other discomforts have to be taken into account, while new knowledge and skills can open new possibilities of parallel economic and lifestyle paths. following ethnogra- phic accounts, the sea as a physical environment offered refuge in times of personal crisis; it became a sanctuary because it is still difficult to conquer and control; a playground for heroes and a realm of adventure because it is unstable and unpredictable; as a place that is difficult to attend, it also became an invisible cloak for those who search for alternative lifestyle solutions or those who are pushed towards it in a variety of ways in the context of global modernity. In relation to the discussion on liminality, a few additional remarks can be made by using the presented ethnography. As noted by B. Thomassen and other authors of the edited volume Liminal Landscapes (2012), Turner‘s work can be pushed in different directions, also under-