Magazine

Holidays and Holiday Homes: Interview with Axel Hacke

A con­ver­sation about the expe­ri­ences and chal­lenges of owning a holiday home, the dimension of vacation beyond the mere “recrea­tional setting” and the hap­piness of har­ve­sting olives.

by Anne in March 2022

We have been eagerly awaiting the new book “Ein Haus für viele Sommer” (A House for many Summers) by the German author and columnist Axel Hacke, which was published on March 8.

Using a mountain village on an Italian island as an example and from years of per­sonal expe­rience, he explores the topics of holidays and holiday homes as well as the rela­ti­onship between (long-term) guests and locals.

In his new book, he tells of his very per­sonal holiday adventure in a multi-faceted way, including the dif­ficult art of “dolce far niente”.

In an amusing, always precise, some­times also thoughtful style, Axel Hacke describes the expe­ri­ences and chal­lenges of one’s own holiday home away from home; but even more, he conveys what happens when we stop seeing our­selves merely as a passive part of a “recrea­tional setting”.

Mr. Hacke, in “Ein Haus für viele Sommer” you allow your readers to look over your shoulder as you go on holiday. Alt­hough “taking a holiday” is perhaps the wrong way of putting it…. after all, you are the owner of a holiday home. Or, as you yourself write at one point: The thought of “holidays away from holidays” has over the years come up from time to time. But you obviously have no regrets?

Axel Hacke: No, actually never. We some­times des­paired when we arrived and dis­co­vered that rain had poured into the house, that for the time being it was unin­ha­bi­table, and we had to look for a hotel. But through the hotel we met new people, made friends with the owners, are still allowed to use the pool there, and our youngest daughter learned to swim there. So: Out of many a crisis, some­thing beau­tiful and new has always emerged.

But one thing is clear: Holidays in an old house like this are dif­ferent from holidays in a resort; more stre­nuous, but also much more ful­filling. And it’s not really just about holidays. An old house like this is not just a holiday home, it’s too com­pli­cated and dif­ficult for that. It’s about some­thing else, more like a task.

In the epi­logue to the book, you state that the Torre – the holiday home that has been in the family for decades – unex­pec­tedly became an important part of your life. You also expli­citly thank your wife there; because only through her have you learned to under­stand the place itself, where you initially only wanted to spend your holidays. So, in retro­spect, are the respectful tre­atment of places – their people and cul­tures equally – and the deep immersion the true results of your decades-long approach?

Axel Hacke: That is, after all, the true under­lying theme of the book. At the beginning, I wanted to go on holiday as usual because I knew nothing else. But through my wife, who had been coming here since she was a child and prac­ti­cally grew up in the village, I rea­lised the dimension of this: that through the house and the village and the lan­guage, you get a com­pletely dif­ferent view of your own life. It’s somewhat dif­ferent to a standard holiday, it’s the dis­covery of another dimension of life.

And of course, you soon see the depths of the history of the place. It is then no longer just a backdrop for one’s own recreation, but much more. I believe that respect for the place is not merely a result of our time in the village, but on the con­trary the pre­re­quisite for it. If you don’t have this respect, you can still have a house there. But you won’t really under­stand any­thing, you won’t expe­rience even a quarter of what you could expe­rience.

I guess you could say that you have put down roots there over the decades, found a kind of second home. What do con­cepts like being settled and home mean to you?

Axel Hacke: Well, I am a very loyal person, in general. I’ve been married to the same woman for more than thirty years, I have had the same publisher, Antje Kunstmann, since 1990, I’ve lived in the same apartment for 28 years, I’ve had the same agent for 25 years, I’ve written columns in the magazine of the Süd­deutsche Zeitung for thirty years. And I’ve been going to the same village in Italy for thirty years. I can’t help it. I’m inte­rested in what develops in the depths of a rela­ti­onship, not on the surface.

At one point in your book, you wonder whether you would really have seen the whole world if you hadn’t seen the village. In other words, if you hadn’t been “bound” by chance and love to exactly this one magical place in the long term. Then you go on: “What you expe­rience is always less than what you missed”.

If I have cor­rectly understood it, is this a sug­gestion to the rea­dership, that we define our sup­posed hap­piness far too often in terms of quantity? Your assessment of “doing nothing” still reso­nates with me here…. while on holiday, many tra­vellers would simply con­tinue the rest­lessness of their tightly sche­duled working day, only in a dif­ferent form, as you note.

Axel Hacke: We don’t want to miss any­thing because we are inu­n­dated with new oppor­tu­nities day after day. We want to have ever­y­thing and some­times forget what we have and what we should perhaps be dealing with in a more meaningful way, instead of always accu­mu­lating more, always looking for new kicks.

A week in the Mal­dives doesn’t do much for me. What I expe­rience there I can pro­bably also read about or have someone tell me about. But if I go to a certain village for decades, then I get to know the people there, their stories, their way of looking at life. I also get to know the hard­ships of everyday life in another country through a house of my own, even if that is some­times a nui­sance. And that makes my life much richer than one or two weeks in a resort some­where.

Hypo­the­ti­cally, since you are not entirely free in your choice of holiday: What places, what kind of holiday would have suited you?

Axel Hacke: Well, I’m a bit older now, my youngest daughter has also gra­duated from high school and is leaving home. We no longer take holidays with small children, at most with the grand­children, and that will perhaps mean that on the one hand we will spend even more time in our house. But on the other hand, we can also just drive around for a few weeks in Italy, France, the world. And that’s what we’ll do. Is that a holiday then? I don’t know. I’m a writer, I always have my work with me, I often sit in the hotel in the morning and write. For me, holidays and work are not com­pletely separate.

If you dare to make a pre­diction about how “unbridled tourism” will develop in times of sus­taina­bility and climate dis­cus­sions – what hope do you see?

Axel Hacke: I don’t know, I’m not a tourism expert, not good at fore­casts and rather a pes­simist anyway. You see what’s hap­pening in Venice, for example, nothing has improved there, basi­cally it’s a tragedy: this kind of tourism where people don’t really want to know any­thing, aren’t inte­rested in any­thing deeper than taking a selfie in front of San Marco. That may sound pompous, but what can you do? For many it is cer­tainly a great expe­rience, but it also des­troys so much.

Greed is always at the top of the list; how can you fight it? And how can you blame the people who live off it? Not everyone can have a holiday home some­where – or if they do, what does that lead to? There are vil­lages in the south that are dead in winter, there are no more inha­bi­tants, ever­y­thing is empty because people only come to live in their houses at weekends or on holiday. And is it really so dif­ferent on Sylt?

What is the signi­fi­cance of archi­tecture in your life? Are there buil­dings that have amazed you and made a lasting impression?

Axel Hacke: Archi­tecture already plays an important role in our family. My father-in-law is an architect, as is my sister-in-law and my eldest son. My wife is not, but she still knows a great deal about it and has a tre­mendous feeling for it. There’s a lot of talk in the family about it; of all of them, I’m the one with the least idea. I didn’t grow up with it either; my upbringing was dif­ferent, more lower middle-class in its entire view of the world. And I have never built a house myself; in Munich I live in a rented apartment.

But I have learned to allow myself to be cap­tured by the magic of certain spaces, by the Gothic cathe­drals in France, by the inge­nious staircase of the Alte Pina­kothek in Munich, by the room in the Brand­horst Museum in Munich where Cy Twombly’s Lepanto cycle hangs. And of urban spaces like the enchanting piazza in front of Syracuse Cathedral or the Piazza Navona in Rome. The fact that people can think, imagine and then create such things often blows my mind.

And regarding your own holiday home, how well can you live in some­thing that is not perfect and has evolved?

Axel Hacke: It’s great, even if some­times exhausting. We have cursed a lot, but ulti­m­ately such an old house with its secrets, its history, the uncer­tainties and simply also the aura is some­thing enorm­ously sti­mu­lating to the ima­gi­nation. The old house is not just a house, it is a kind of family member for all of us, a strange old uncle, whom everyone loves and who has a few age-related weak­nesses that can be trou­blesome. But all that is great for a writer, of course.

Since you have cer­tainly seen a number of hotels on your reading tours over many years: Are there things that are indis­pensable there from your point of view? Or cir­cum­s­tances that drive you com­pletely mad?

Axel Hacke: I actually love hotels, and I also like the luxury there. I like the grand hotels that have a history, the Park­hotel in Bremen, the Euro­päi­scher Hof in Hei­delberg, the Nas­sauer Hof in Wies­baden, but also newly con­ceived ones like the Speicher 7 in Mannheim, where an excep­tional hotel has been created in an old harbour warehouse. What really dis­ap­points me time and again is how utterly soulless the expensive luxury hotels that belong to the big chains are. I’ve been there maybe twenty times, and when I check in for the 21st time I am asked again by the recep­tionist if I have ever stayed here before.

You write in “Ein Haus für viele Sommer” that you are certain that as a non-local you will never become part of the place. That sounds rea­listic. And yet a little sad. A little later you take us, the readers, with you to your first olive harvest and share with us the euphoric fee­lings it gene­rates – despite all the hard work. Can one say that these expe­ri­ences could be sym­bolic of the ups and downs of a “holi­daying” holiday homeowner?

Axel Hacke: No, I don’t think it’s sad. It would in fact be rather bad if you thought you were becoming a part of the place like a local. That is hardly pos­sible, and why should it be? I know people who like to suggest that to them­selves, always telling you how well they know the mayor, “Ah Gianni…, yes­terday he was telling me …” That is a bit silly. The inte­resting thing about our village is the com­plexity of the rela­ti­onships, the old locals who only know their village, the young people who have now seen the whole world, the tou­rists – and then people like us who also belong to the village, but in a dif­ferent way.

In Italy, too, I am who I usually am, and some­times a little distance is perhaps not a bad thing. The olive harvest – with this an old dream has come true. When I was a child, I always spent my summer holidays in West­phalia on my godfather’s farm. Since then, in a corner of my heart I’ve always wanted to be in the coun­tryside and be able to harvest some­thing. It could have been cherries in Chiemgau or apples on the edge of the Elm, a range of hills near Braun­schweig, where I come from. But olives in Italy are just so much nicer.

Have you made any decisions in con­nection with your holiday pro­perty that you would strongly advise potential holiday homeowners against? Or asked the other way round:
In your opinion, what definite incen­tives are there for taking the risk of owning a holiday home – despite all pos­sible adver­sities and the initial naivety of an amateur?

Axel Hacke: You just have to know what you’re doing. You say quite rightly that it is a risk, and for that you have to make a con­scious decision, for an adventure, for some­thing that cannot be com­pletely planned, for some­thing that will have an impact on your own life, not only for three weeks, but pos­sibly for decades, perhaps forever.

A holiday home is dif­ferent to a hotel, but that’s a given anyway, it’s banal to say that. You have to really want it, you have to love not only the house but also the place, you should learn the lan­guage, be really inte­rested in the people there and want to under­stand some­thing. You need the respect and curiosity for some­thing dif­ferent that will stay with you, at a deeper level of under­standing, but which will enrich you enorm­ously. And you should know that it always costs more money than you thought at the beginning. And also, it means more work. Both, actually.

I didn’t know what I was getting into, by the way. After all, I didn’t buy the house, I never decided to buy it. I just fell in love with a woman whose father had the house, and now we have it. There was no other way, one day it was simply part of my life. The old house is a family member, as I said.

---

Axel Hacke lives in Munich as a writer and columnist for the Süd­deutsche Zeitung magazine. He is one of Germany’s best-known authors; his books have been trans­lated into num­erous lan­guages.

Illus­tra­tions: All pic­tures are by Thomas Wec­zerek and have been repro­duced with kind per­mission from the book “Thomas Wec­zerek. Bilder und Plas­tiken”.

Axel Hacke: “Das Beste aus aller Welt” [“The best from all over the world”]

Con­tro­versy – I (don’t) want a holiday home!

Interview: Ulrich Stefan Knoll, March 2022