HOW IT STARTED
I'm from a small town near Hamburg in northern Germany. By 2019 I was forty, working in digital strategy, mostly with Spanish and Latin American clients. The work was fine — the place I was doing it from increasingly didn't feel like home.
That summer I planned a road trip through the eastern United States. New York, Charleston, Savannah, Florida. Two weeks of driving, a few weeks of stopping where it felt right.
In Florida one of my booked stays cancelled three days before I arrived. I scrambled, found a place in Groveland — a small town between Orlando and Tampa — booked by a woman with a teenage son. One night, I thought.
The one night became six weeks.
A MISUNDERSTANDING WORTH CLARIFYING
I should be very clear: this is not a love story.
She was a friend who took me in when I needed somewhere to stay. We got along well. I helped her son with English homework. I learned how American small towns actually work. I went home in October.
In 2020 I came back, this time for three months. Then 2021. By then she had decided to move back to Spain — her family is from Catalonia, she'd grown up partly there. She left Florida and went to Alforja, the village near Tarragona where her parents had once lived.
WHY ALFORJA
I visited her in Alforja in 2022. I saw the village — eight hundred people, one square, one church, olive groves on every slope. I saw the Priorat behind it, the Prades mountains, the sea twenty-five minutes away. I felt something I'd been looking for without knowing it.
Early 2023 a property came up. A house called Mas Luna, on a slope just outside the village. Pool, garden, view of the hills. Quiet, but ten minutes from everything.
I bought it. I moved in on June 1st 2023.
NALA
Nala is a labrador, born in September 2024. She arrived as an eight-week-old puppy in November. She is now my colleague, alarm clock, hiking partner, and head of guest greetings.
She is friendly with everyone, especially other dogs. She has the kind of personality that makes you understand why people who don't grow up with dogs sometimes wonder what they were missing.
WHAT I DO HERE NOW
I still work — I run a small digital consultancy called Plan Digital Now. Most of my clients are in Germany or Spain, the work happens online. The work pays for the house and for Nala's food.
What's new is Mas Luna. One room, in my home. I rent it to people who want a quiet few days — or weeks — in this corner of Catalonia. I cook breakfast for myself, but I'll point you toward the bakery in Alforja that opens at seven. I work in the office; you work at the desk in the in-between room if you want.
It's not a hotel. It's my home with a guest room. That's the deal, that's the appeal, that's why most people who stay here come back.
