Places of longing
Cape Town
The podcaster, photographer and author Lina Mallon usually gets on a plane south in late summer and enjoys the Cape of Good Hope for several months. 2020 she had to stay home.
It has now been exactly 278 days since I last looked up at the impressive silhouettes rising above the bay. 278 days since I watched the last rays of the day's sun fade and the city's nighttime lights awaken. I can't get enough of this sight that has made it onto so many postcards but can never do it justice: the Twelve Apostles over Glen Beach in Camps Bay.
When I first flew to the southernmost region of the African continent for a job in 2014, I remember saying to my travel companion at the gate, "Cape Town has never been on my bucket list, but it's supposed to be beautiful. Let's see how it turns out." It turned out to be a trip that stuck with me. And made Cape Town my second home. But from March 2020 the borders were closed and instead of flying down in September as usual, I was stuck in Hamburg.
They say that once you've been to Cape Town, you have held your feet in the chilly ocean, you give a piece of your heart to the place. In 2014, as I gazed out at the boundless ocean and into the indescribable light as we drove across Chapman's Peak Drive with our windows open, I knew this was true.
Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Freelance journalist Sinah Hoffmann has been spending summers in the lively city on the Mediterranean for ten years. Sometimes she stays only a few days, then again for half a year. Currently, she is left with only one thing: missing.
There are a hundred good places to spend your first evening in Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, I'm always drawn back to Café Hamalabiya. I come for the live bands that pluck the strings of their ud at nightfall in the Jaffa flea market. But also for the malabi. Because nothing gets me in the mood for the weeks ahead better than this milk pudding with brittle and syrup, which tastes as intense as the city feels.
For many, this wild, unbridled and excitable city on the Mediterranean is too much. For me, it's just right. Tel Aviv is my personal epicenter. Here I have fallen in love fiercely, broken up even more intense, written endless texts, and discussed fidelity on Bauhaus rooftops over anise schnapps. And I learned that chaos on the streets sometimes creates clarity in the mind.
I miss this feeling very much. Only one thing is clear right now: the borders are closed to foreign tourists, and I won't be able to travel to Tel Aviv for the first time in a decade. But I also know that in a city where passion or madness is always a question of perspective, life goes on with full force. And that is somehow calming.
Cabo de Gata
The Spanish reporter Juan Moreno is not a big fan of his country's Mediterranean coast – with one exception: a small magical region in eastern Andalusia.
I am from Spain, southern Spain to be exact. For this reason, for many years I have been asked regularly by my German friends which the best vacation spot on the Mediterranean coast is. They want an insider tip about an undiscovered corner. My answer is always the same: "Go to Greece." As much as I appreciate my home country, I'm convinced that Spain has ruined its Mediterranean coast: too many hotel resorts, too many construction projects, too many water parks and too many beach promenades.
But the truth is that there is definitely a tiny strip of Spanish Mediterranean that I love. But it's so untouristy that I rarely recommend it. It's a 50-kilometer stretch of coastline in the province of Almería, where my parents live. Cabo de Gata has been a nature reserve since 1987 and a biosphere reserve since 1997. If you've ever seen an American western, you know what it looks like: barren, desert-like landscape, 300 days of sunshine a year, cacti, esparto grass, otherwise there practically is nothing. No hotel complexes, no fun pools, partly no mobile connection. A place forgotten by tourists. There are a few guesthouses, a few restaurants, apart from that it is a place that even before Corona reminded of a pandemic scenery, because it seems somehow abandoned. Except in August, when it fills up with day trippers from the provincial capital of Almería.
If you want to travel back in time, get an idea of what Spain's Mediterranean coast used to look like, and if you're looking for a vacation devoid of events, head for Cabo de Gata. If it is possible again next summer.
You can read all of our authors' places of longing in the ADAC Motorwelt 04/2020.
Four times a year, ADAC Motorwelt offers information and service, reports, columns, tests and interviews with celebrities on the subject of cars, travel and mobility. The magazine is available in around 9,100 Edeka and Netto stores throughout Germany. Club members can pick it up free of charge by showing their membership card when shopping at the checkout.
