Sound of Loneliness.

Whale watching, garden care, cook for guests: the everyday life of the hermit Ernst on La Gomera has little in common with the bustle of his previous jobs in a Düsseldorf Grillbude to do. For years he lived alone in his house with Atlantic Ocean views - and conjures up tired walkers sumptuous three-course menus.

 

First heard on the asphalt. The road becomes a sandy road that winds curve to curve for miles through the rocky, only by cacti, agaves and some palm-covered landscape. The farther one travels, the more the surface is pitted. Then the path ends abruptly - at a precipice. At this point La Gomera, the second smallest of the Canary Islands, lost only very rarely someone with the car.

For here, where the road ends, the world begins by Ernst, whose last name "does not matter now," he says. It is a simple world, "without a lot of frills," says Ernst, "it is my world." On a plate, we read: "Welcome to the hermit! In 80 meters, herbal tea and cactus soup!"

Ernst sits on his terrace, fingert a cigarette from the box and igniting them. Ernst lived alone for ten years, half ruined stone cottage, set in a sea of green cactus dickblättrigen hidden. Without mail, telephone and electricity. With dogs and five chickens.

Maybe this place is one of the remotest of the entire island. And yet the man says with deep Lachfalten and the mighty mustache: "I am not
Outs, I'm a beginner in life. "Then he smiles, as belonged to him this panorama alone. And somehow, it is indeed so - it belongs to him alone, because nobody else is there, with whom he could share it.

The house stands on a hill. On clear days, you can far above the ocean to the neighboring island of El Hierro look, where the evening sun burnt up, where whales often pass them by. Since Ernst has a good telescope, it is often hours on his terrace. But now there are no animals to see. In the distance just digs the Express ferry, which connects the islands, a white foamy furrow in the deep blue sea, the noise of the engines is also up - to almost 700 meters - still clearly be heard.

Aloneness Learning

The noise is always such a thing, says Ernst, "began with the sounds of everything. They help you to understand your loneliness." If, for example, in the distance, hear something, you're mentally in this noise, so in the distance. But it is still completed, one is only in his own breath, in your own deeds So it's with you. "As I often am," says Ernst, who many simply the "hermit" call.

GAP AND LOCKE

Benne Ochs

Oliver Lück is to tour Europe. The young bitch Hovawart Locke and his mobile home, he travels first through the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Spain - and then always follow your nose. With blogs ONLINE Lück reported regularly by people and their stories.

But in the first few months of being alone was not so easy. "That I had to learn. I cried a lot," he says. And there were days, since he believed to be insane. "Because you do not hear, you hear everything," he says, "and I was quite shocked when the many sounds come from. Until I realized that my guts are."

From a farming village near Wels in Upper Austria with 18 Ernst came to Dusseldorf. He stayed 27 years, initiated many years, a grill bar with twelve employees. "The store ran really well, seven days a week, lunch from 60 to 80, a gold mine," says the 56-year-old, "but I had concrete in the head and came to a standstill, I needed fresh ideas." So he did what many talk about her life, but it would never do: He started a new life.

Actually, he wanted to Tuscany, but a friend told him of La Gomera, the island in the middle of summer in the Atlantic, the Aussteigertum celebrated as a second of the Canaries, where people volunteer for a few weeks back in caves, and then the independent nature of life call. Ernst grabbed the essentials together, had 40,000 marks in his pocket, his entire savings. He lived well, celebrated every evening in the pubs of Valle Gran Rey, the Valley of the King on the west coast, where many like the kings want to live, where many of "enlightenment" and "self-realization" is mentioned, where German is spoken.

This saved was gone. On a hike in the mountains but Ernst discovered the remains of a shepherd's house. A ruin, almost 30 years, she had stood empty. Eight months it took until he had found the owner. An old lady, who now lives in Tenerife. He renovated and leased the Walls with the feral land for five years, then for five more, and finally for life. Now he can stay as long as he wants.