View from the Pier

Claudia Scholler, 52, is the proprietor of Cortijo El Saltador,

I visited Claudia and Cortijo El Saltador on assignment and was awed by the silence and sparse beauty of the setting. I was also enthralled with the lessons of Claudia’s many sojourns, chief among them the courage required to step out of life in the fast lane and learn to listen to and be with yourself. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Claudia.

Claudia: The start is Hamburg. I’m really a proper city girl, born and raised in the center of a big, big city with no nature at all. I had parents who were not so happy with their marriage, so there were years and years of getting divorced. Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. I didn’t have brothers and sisters who could help me as a child coping with that.

When I was 11, we went on holiday to the North Frisian Islands, which are very close to Denmark. Next to the little hotel, there was an Icelandic horse-riding farm, where I was allowed to go on rides.

Back in Hamburg, it got more and more complicated with my parents, so they agreed that I would go on a holiday the following spring. I was 12 and I was going by myself. I guess a big part of my courage is because I was brought up so strangely, which you don’t realize as a child. But for me it was normal that at 12, I took my suitcase, took the bus to the train, took the train to the ferry, walked on the ferry. And then walking off the ferry, there was nobody to pick me up. I arrived on the island, and nobody expected me because they had forgotten about the booking. Because it’s a tiny island, I was brought to the riding farm. There was only one boy looking after the horses and a cleaning woman that came every three days. I didn’t tell anybody at home what was happening and stayed ten days on my own. Those ten days were probably the luckiest days I remember in that period.

Then the two brothers who owned the riding farm came back from Morocco where they had been travelling, and they couldn’t believe what they had done. So they sort of adopted me.

From then on I went to the riding farm every single holiday, working for free as a helper. When I finished school in Hamburg, I moved immediately to the North Frisian Islands, not really knowing what to do with my life. I knew I didn’t want to study, but I didn’t know much more.

By coincidence, somebody on the island offered me an education at a hotel—two years of practical learning, working in each section of the hotel, restaurant, bar, kitchen, room service, and so forth. So I thought, ‘I like languages, I like travel. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.’

We had to work the whole summer season non—stop, 18 hour days, seven days a week. But the hotel closed down in January and February. That January, 1978, we took an old VW hippie bus and drove all the way from North Germany to South Morocco. I was with three guys, three friends. I was 18. I was thinking I was the princess of that journey, but I was so chaotic. I was the one who always lost things. We all got points in the beginning, which we could lose only three, and my three points were already gone in South Germany.

I must say, when we reached Southern Spain, we weren’t the best buddies at that point because it was all very squeezy and small. In Seville we just jumped out of the car and didn’t even make an appointment when we would meet again. Then in Morocco it got slowly better. We drove through the whole of Morocco and reached the Ouled Berhill and there’s a road which takes you to the coast. Because the snow in the Atlas Mountains was melting, there was water flooding the streets, and we slowly drove through. Then with the dawn, unfortunately, we got stuck. The lorry drivers who came after us tried to pull us, and they broke the connection between the wheels. So it was decided that I had to be saved first. I got sucked underneath the van because it was a really, really strong current.

A lorry took us, and we had our passports, our money, a guitar and a bottle of Pernod. There was an old police station, and they gave us lodging. It started raining. And it rained and rained and rained. The policeman drank our Pernod and got really drunk. The next morning when it got light again, nobody was very relaxed. There was no street. It was all water. And so we walked back to the river, and the bus had just dropped into the river and was upside down. It floated a bit and then sank.

Monsieur Larby was the boss of the area, and he invited us to his clay house. They were a big, big family. They really had nothing. Water came from the river. No electricity. Eating was with the hands. The children were miserable. We, as hippies, with our three t-shirts, we were so rich. We gave away all our clothes. But that immediately led to us being given extra food.

The woman all had to be in the kitchen. I was the only woman allowed to eat with the men. The woman took me to the river. I had to wash the clothes for all the three guys.

They all spoke only Arabic, not even French. In the evening, in the dark with two, three candles, we sat around and they told us Arabian words, and we told them German words, and we laughed our heads off.

When the river went down after three days, somebody got sent on a donkey, and the donkey man brought the only person with a tractor. We pulled the bus out, and then the repairs started.

If we needed a screw or some part we had to go to the next village, where there was a young mechanic who was a genius. Sometimes he was in the mountains and so we sat on the main road for hours and days playing backgammon, waiting for him to come on his motorbike. I was there three weeks.

The scariest thing was when we said we have to go, on our last day Monsieur Larby decided he’d take us out to town. We knocked on a door, and then there was this big discussion, because they didn’t want to let me in because I was a woman. Then they took us to a courtyard, which was a restaurant. They had these tagines, made of clay, and you put it on an open fire and then inside it cooks. It took hours, and when it came, he opened it, inside was all testicles and eyes. It was the cheapest food that could be bought no doubt, but still Monsieur Larby, for sure, spent money he should have never spent on us. It was horrible, and we all looked at each other and said, okay, go for it. You had to take again and again. The good thing was the bread they always made fresh was really, really good. We couldn’t escape without many servings, but it was such an honor.

It was very interesting because we were just stuck there. Before we were arguing and now this was a good time between us because there was absolute acceptance, this is the situation. From Hamburg, from the hotel business, and then into nowhere. I’m very grateful for that trip but it also has made me a difficult travelling companion, because I’m never upset about anything.

The whole situation was so extreme that I was never ever scared, whatever happened. Not about hygienic circumstances, delays, strange situations—it was a very, very deep, interesting experience.

Meg: What came next?

Claudia: After returning to the North Frisian Islands, I fell in love with an art history student from Hamburg, and so I moved back there and I went to hotel management school. I worked in catering and posh hotels, through the school. These were the years when Germany was very wealthy, and Hamburg has the most millionaires of all Germany. So doing that school you naturally slip into service at the Four Season Hotel, or when they have the special event in the government, they ask for trained waiters. I could make a lot of money.

All the big banks in Hamburg have their private floor where they even have a little restaurant. And if they sold the world, they needed waiters. So I got into very, very posh catering and I got into private houses of very rich people. I saw a lot—I was very, very curious. I also went into every single Michelin star restaurant and spent a lot of money. I was really like a puppy, being very excited about my profession.

Five years passed, and my boyfriend and I split. I did long, long travel—Thailand, Bali and six months in Australia, where I visited the people from that little North Frisian Island, who had emigrated there. While in Australia, I worked in Perth but also lived in the bush and got invited to a kangaroo hunt, among many other experiences. Australia gives you the feeling of being Alice in Wonderland after eating the shrinking cookie—everything is so much bigger there.

When I returned to Germany I met the second big love of my life. He had a big restaurant and also worked in advertising. We bought a big farm north of Hamburg. I started a little catering business. And that got very successful very fast. At that time, Hamburg was super conservative, it was black and white and very serious. My catering was called Art und Schnittchen. Schnittchen is a very German expression for a small sandwich, or canapé. We specialized in fancy food and fancy decoration and if the waiters were supposed to look like characters from a Tim Burton movie, voila, no problem.

I got the job of my life by the ex-chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. He was working for Die Zeit, the big weekly magazine and he planned to hold a birthday celebration for Marion Hedda Ilse Gräfin von Dönhoff, a renowned journalist and intellectual. They hired me as a caterer for 2000 people, with music, with Henry Kissinger coming. It was challenging, because there were people coming from all over the world—from the United States, from China, from everywhere. America sent people for security, so I was constantly going around with those people checking the space where the final event was being held. I succeeded, it was a lovely event.

Hamburg at that time was very decadent. People ordered the Caspian Caviar, the lobster, and the hookahs. I also worked a lot in alternative bars in night clubs. I saw events that got planned wrong and 50 lobsters got thrown away into the bin. I saw so much food disappearing into bins. Once I had a big insurance company as a client, and they had a special meal with chilled special-edition wine with the label done by Andy Warhol, and the bottle was $300, and nobody even looked at the label.

My boyfriend had a mid-life crisis, had affairs with all his waitresses, got deeply into cocaine, and lied to me. So although I felt something was going wrong, I sort of didn’t mistrust where I should have. And so we lost it all because by the time he confessed, the bank was deep into that house. It was a real big, big disaster and it was three hard, hard years. I was left with a Jack Russell terrier, a little van, and no money.

I had a pancreas infection half way through all that big drama with my boyfriend. It was very strong and I nearly died. I ended up with a good doctor and step-by-step he led me through. He always said trust your body, it will tell you.

At the same time I got into Shiatsu massage, which led me to Chinese medicine and then element cooking, which is winter food and summer food, food that speeds you up and food that calms you down, and herbs. I got very curious about all that and discovered that it worked for me.

Slowly I decided everybody is living on too high speed and it’s not good. More and more I had an uncomfortable feeling. What if you take all of this away from the people? All the drugs, the unhappiness, the alcohol behind all that. I worked in real luxury and saw a lot and finally came to the decision I wanted to step out. They could give me The Oriental to manage but I literally don’t want.

In 1993, I found a place in Ibiza and I rented that for three months. Groups I had worked with in Hamburg followed me to Ibiza and everybody liked it. Groups of about 20 people travelled down for 10-day stays and helped me with that start. There were two big psychotherapy summer camps and one yoga group. The psychotherapy people are still with me here, they are really like family. I knew them before they had children and now their children are grown-up.

I didn’t like Ibiza, because it’s far too eccentric in summer and dead as a dodo in winter. I made the decision to go to Majorca in 94 and I immediately found an old house from 1778, really pretty, with antiques. It’s a beautiful island. Those were good, good years, it was a big success. I learned the language, flights were easy, it was all cheap. That house was a dream—it was like a youth hostel but in a Fellini movie location.  But the house was hard to run. It still had lead plumbing from 1778, it had hardly any water, no heating, and the winters in Majorca are long and dark. Then Majorca got so popular, all these famous people moved there, from Boris Becker to Michael Douglas and prices went mad.

In 1998, a friend invited me to Mojacar, in Spain’s Almeria region, which is the nearest beach town north of here. I immediately fell in love with this area, thinking this is exactly what I am looking for. And that’s how it all started. I wanted to create a safe place where people get high—class service combined with a simple lifestyle.

Meg: How would you characterize the landscape here?

Claudia: The first time I came here, it was winter, at sunset—I felt like I was in a western movie. I saw this desert landscape and I thought, “wow.” I didn’t know anything like it existed in Europe. There are no fences here. There’s an unbelievable silence. The largest planetarium in Europe was built here because there’s no light pollution. So you are so strongly close to nature here and it’s really this wide, wide, wide landscape.

I like the desert because I really believe that places like this, where you can find silence, are necessary. You are immediately confronted with yourself once you are here because there is nothing that distracts you. And 99 percent of my clients feel like it’s really an advantage and they come back. The lack of mobile coverage, no computer, no TV, no nothing. I really felt that the place I wanted to create would be perfect in this surrounding.

It was 1999-2000 when I spent three months here and tried to find a house.

Meg: Is there any history to the town here that you could share?

Claudia: The town has a very classic Andalucían history. It had a mosque and was called Lucainena de las Siete Torres, or, ‘of the seven towers.’ It was an old Arabian settling, and it had a wall around it with seven watchtowers. They sort of don’t value their Arabic past, but it’s everywhere.

They have something that goes with Flamenco, which is a spontaneous, singing poetry. The old men sometimes still do it. They sing and, in the moment, make poetry, it’s usually stories they tell about life.

From 1870 until the end of the First World War, it was a huge mining area, so they could make a living off that. And then after the War, the mines were not efficient enough so Almeria slipped into such a deep, deep misery. I have old neighbors who talk about these times. There was hunger. They made themselves shoes from grass. Franco had a lot of resistance from Andalucía, and so he didn’t help the people here at all, and that only ended in the 70′s. They’re really way back in time, and I think it will take two more generations to catch up. Slowly they discover their values.

There are villages with old water mills and it’s amazing—it must have been so absolutely beautiful when all that was running. Along the Rio de Aguas you can still visit all these water mills. One is an art foundation now, one is a desert technology project.

Meg: Tell me about buying this property.

Claudia: It is an enormous amount of land here. I never thought in my life I would buy 56 hectares.

The property was called Cortijo Cortez. The owner worked for the mines, and he abused all his workers, expecting them to work for free on his property. He had nine daughters, and he hated every single one because he was waiting for a son to be born. His daughters had a really bad reputation of getting pregnant at 12 and running away. When he died, nobody ever came back to his house. This is why the house was abandoned for 40 years. When I first saw the property it was completely in ruins with no water or electricity.

The first thing was to find out whether it was for sale. I went to the village, and asked about the house and they said, “Very difficult family.” The property had been sold twice previously and both sales fell through at the very last moment. But they gave me a phone number for Esperanza, which actually means “hope.”

I called Esperanza and it was horrible. I met with her and her husband in Almeria, and they looked like crocodiles on a sofa. Not one tax had been paid, not one paper was right, the whole property wasn’t measured—a disaster. The first decision I had to make was measuring the whole property at my own cost, but they still wouldn’t sign any papers. By May, it was game over.

I got very good advice from a friend who said, “Look, it’s all about honor.” I took a flight from Majorca down here. I went to the crocodiles and said, ‘There’s money in the bank. I talked to the lawyer, I talked to the notary, and they have all asked me whether you are serious people or whether you are taking the piss out of me. And, of course, I told them that you are serious people.’” They were up from the sofa, and they were shaking hands, and they are giving me extra papers.

Then a German friend, an architect from Hamburg, said, “You pay for the flight, I’ll come and give you the first plans as a gift.” I had it all drawn how I wanted it, and he did all the plans, and sent them to an architect here. She brought it all through the permissions, the architect chamber.

I got to know this young English builder. Graham gave me a lot of advice in general and ultimately became my contractor. We had a first meeting with the local builders and the first meeting with the architect, and then we said, “Okay. September.”

I was, of course, still living in Majorca, and we decided to look for somewhere to live in the village. We were at the end of the world, and we knew we would need a lot of volunteers.  The first ones came from Australia, Argentina, England, and Germany. They were friends, friends of friends, people that somehow heard about the project. They liked the idea of living for a period in Spain and I provided room and board for their labor.

We found a house that was enormous, it had three different stories and nine rooms, and it was cheap. We ended up living in the center of the village for two years with all these foreign visitors. At that point, not a single foreigner was living in Lucainena, so we were the daily soap. We were the first job for the local builders, so that they didn’t have to leave the village and go to Almeria. The young electrician from the village had his first job here. It was very innocent times, very, very beautiful times.

The villagers found us completely bizarre, but they absolutely accepted us because at quarter to eight we were in the cars and went to the building site. Because the locals were building with us, I insisted every Friday we had tapas and a beer before everybody could go home. It was a lot of fun, very chaotic.

I did the whole shopping for the building. I had to negotiate about the concrete and every nail, bought lorries and lorries of bricks. I was usually driving the workers over here. I was always the only female in the industrial areas, and the only foreigner. Then at lunchtime I cooked a meal for the building site. And if I had a little bit to spare, I was mixing cement in the afternoon.

During that time, I had also access to a big house in Majorca, where I could accommodate my long-standing clients, my main groups, I didn’t want them to have a gap. I went five times a year to Majorca during these two years and cooked for my groups so that they could do their summer camps.

Then the technicians came and said, “Uh-hum. Not one wall is holding the next here.”

And I said, “Did I hear right?”

So the whole house got pulled down, which I didn’t expect. But obviously, Graham and the architect, they did expect it. When I did the opening, I invited the entire village. The old guys still don’t believe that this is a new house because I respected all the rooms.

Meg: And throughout the whole two years, did you have moments where you really questioned whether you were doing the right thing, or did you have a conviction the whole way through?

Claudia: It was quite funny because when we knew the house would get pulled down, I knew then there was not a second choice. Throughout my life, I was always thinking, should I do this, should I do that—I always had a lot of different directions I could choose. This time, I knew not to even think about it, that I couldn’t even give myself the allowance.

It wasn’t always easy with all these young workers. Two years of communal living wasn’t so easy sometimes. But I always loved this property, and I always felt supported.

Twice in these two years I took my sleeping bag, went into the mountains, made a fire and slept next to the fire. I wasn’t afraid about the wild boars or anything. Not thinking much, just saying to the property, “I need help. I need to be charged up.” And I really felt like I was charged up. And on it went.

Meg: Is there an anecdote that you can share about feeling that you were accepted by the community?

Claudia: Oh, yes. Because of a personal threat which started very stupidly. There was a huge property over the next mountain for sale, a thousand hectares. Some international investors bought it for no money and put one of the biggest solar installations of all Andalucía in these mountains, and they bulldozed everything, all trees—it was for crying. They put an electricity line all the way down to the coast. It’s very horrible because it wasn’t necessary. I got so upset but again, I always get help at the same time. A really big lawyer from Almeria visited and we nearly started a little revolution here. The mayor gave me the town hall room, the lawyer came, the old neighbors came and everybody was against it. We agreed, on Monday we will drive down to Almeria and go to the lawyers and start the process. But a spy was in the audience and by the next morning one neighbor had accepted money, and then all the others went along. It was a very weird chaos and it got very, very ugly for me.

With a Dutch journalist, I went up a hill from where you could see the dimensions of the destruction, and suddenly all these cars came and blocked us in. One of the two shareholders of the property yelled and yelled at me. Then he said, ‘If you don’t stop making trouble, we will cause you so much trouble.’ I wasn’t really threatened, but I always expected to find the dog dead or something ugly like that. They made a path through my land without any permission, they even bulldozed over it, which in the end came out.

The one son of the Cortezes who didn’t sell to me, he’s my neighbor. Although the property is registered as mine, he charged money for using my path from that company, saying ‘the German, forget about her, it’s mine,’ and took 30,000 Euros. And that’s the closing saga with the Cortez family.

So I created a cultural association and now everything gets denounced under that name. I realized if I have a cultural association, I might as well do something. So for three years, every summer we have had three concerts and a big art exhibition, which is open to the public, in June, July and August.

Suddenly one day three months ago, the women’s association from the village called and said, ‘Look, there’s all these foreign women now in the village, and we don’t know them. We thought, if you agree, that we could do a big meeting at your cortijo with all these women, come for tea in the afternoon.’

It was so funny because the English women who had moved here said, ‘We have such a bad reputation. For a tea we would have a sherry, but we should probably not do that because the idea of Spanish women having drinks is frowned on.’

Sixty women came, and I never saw so much cake in my life. We had it on the outside terrace, the tables were really nicely done. The old ladies from my neighborhood had all these homemade liquors. It was such a beautiful event. So something is happening, you know.

Meg: There’s been a shift.

Claudia: Even if things are tight, they always help me, I must say. So I decided as long as they help me, as long as they greet me, as long as they don’t want me to go then I will stay.

Meg: We passed ‘Little Hollywood.’ I read that Indiana Jones was filmed here. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Claudia: All the Spaghetti Westerns were done here, Bridget Bardot was here and Faye Dunaway. There’s a very nice short film festival once a year, it’s international and really done well. They usually invite one of the old big stars. Tarantino was here once, and I think Jim Jarmusch was here. All the sets are still there.

I do a four-hour desert walk with my clients and it leads us to abandoned scenery where we can take photos. It’s still very, very beautiful. I had a fashion shoot for the first time from Amsterdam, and they wanted desert. And they sent me by e-mail this script thingy with photos with an idea of what they wanted. Then I did a bit of preparation. There were seven people, the photographer came from Paris. He was nervous for half a day. “Ooh, I’m a freelancer and da-da-da.”

A woman from the fashion company who came from Amsterdam said, “My boss said something is going wrong in China, and something is going wrong in Portugal, and I have to answer these 17 e-mails.”

Then she said, ‘You know what? I’ll take my chances. I’ll just say, not possible. It’s only three days. And the problem in China will be still there in three days.’ And they had the time of their life. I was so proud because I was a bit worried about them. I thought that this might get really complicated. And it was very, very sweet. They calmed down more and more and cuddled the animals and wouldn’t even leave the house for the meal. They made me cook and really, really enjoyed it.

Meg: Can you characterize your guests?

Claudia: Middle-class and upper middle-class. A lot of people that are sick of the speed of their normal life, and they absolutely enjoy that fact that they say, “You can’t reach me or I have to walk up to the mountain.” So it’s all people who say that they have all the luxury at home and that they enjoy the luxury of having nothing here. Good food and silence. And a lot of people say that when they step in here after 15 minutes they feel very welcome and very at home. I like it because now that’s what I really want to offer. I find people are not always easy but they are always interesting.

Sometimes at the end of a long course, the last night I say I am not going to cook, and make them walk into Lucainena. I tell them we all going to eat on the square because then you have an idea that you are also in Spain. They all love it, but they’re all with their iPhones. They became like zombies, nobody talked to each other. Although they just did an intense psychotherapy course, they fiddling all the time with the bloody devices. I think not a single person among us is that important—to be so over-equipped and so over-informed.

I had a guest who ran away, a big, big advertising guy. His friends rented the whole house, and he arrived, and his heart started beating. He was afraid of the silence and of the wild and he had to leave. He panicked, and nobody could talk him into staying here. All these friends came here to be together, to do hikes, and because he was frightened, they went to the coast and booked into a big hotel.

I also saw in Hamburg when people got seriously ill or had serious problems, all the speedy people have no real close friends who have time to help them. It’s a miracle that we function like we function. So I think everybody should get a glimpse of what happens if you take everything away. That’s scary. I still find it scary.

There are people who love it. There are people who can see it as an adventure and you can see their progress. There’s one guy who comes three times a year. And there are people who don’t want to face their problems and they are the most difficult, especially if they are couples. It’s hard for couples who are not happy anymore because there’s no way to escape that here.

Meg: Tell me about your pets.

Claudia: The dog is Helga, which is a very German, ancient name. The cat is Katz because he’s so full of himself. And the other cat, Valiente –the name is a Spanish word for value. In Spain it’s a big compliment if you are a survivor. The biggest compliment a Spaniard can say to you is ‘eres muy valiente,’ you have a lot of value, and you are a fighter in life. And with his three legs, I thought this is a good name. For example, I heard it from friends, about ‘building up that ruined guesthouse.’ Against all bad circumstances, reaching what you want to do. If you go through difficulties, if you just go for it.

Meg: Tell me about your interest in the environment.

Claudia: In my personal experience when I was unhappy, I could always feel much calmer in nature. If you are living like I do, you come back to very basics—good food, good company, a healthy environment. It’s the only thing in the long-term that makes you happy. It’s not the consuming. I would like to try to offer people to find calm and healthy living on as normal basis as possible so that people can enjoy it without feeling guilty. It also feels so good that my place is only running on solar energy, and that it does function even if there are loads of people, a really great experience for me as a city person.

I love the whole hotel business. I love the cooking, and I love everything that goes with it, massage, Chinese medicine. I think there are some things that make sense because they are like a circle. You can do a lot about food, about nutrition to make people feel well. And I deeply believe that you should eat seasonally. You shouldn’t, in Europe, eat the bananas from Costa Rica, and that it doesn’t make sense to eat tomatoes in winter when they cool you down. So I’m quite experienced with cooking for others, since ’87, 33 years of cooking for people in groups, which has included vegan, vegetarian, sometimes under extreme temperature. So I really find all that interesting, what heats your body, what cools your body.

Meg: If you had a wish for your guests’ experience and what they would leave here feeling or thinking, how would you describe that?

Claudia: I’m very proud if they trust. I offer all these little things. I say, shall we try this and this type of food. I think you could do with an osteopath treatment. And if I see that people trust and just go for it and then every day are a little bit more loose and happy, that’s absolutely enough for me. These are also the people that repeat. And it’s very lovely with all these people that repeat because it’s also very easy for me, because they have found what my concept is and consider it relaxing, healing. And sometimes I get e—mails saying people do little steps in their life back in the cities. I did yoga for the first time, I had an osteopath treatment for the first time, I learned about that food. I really like that. That it has a tiny, tiny impact. I really like to do it for them, but it shows me that I’m not completely wrong with my concept. I can sleep better, I’m not that afraid, and things like that. It’s beautiful, I find.

Meg: So do you feel you will stay here? You’ve traveled a lot, you’ve moved around a lot. Do you feel this is your destiny?

Claudia: I had a time where I made a lot of trouble and brought myself into danger. I had to step back and think if it was worthwhile because my roots were not here. I would like to stay here as long as possible, but if I had to leave this, I would like to join some sort of environmental organization and give my part to save the world.

Slideshow: Inside Cortijo El Saltador

For Meg’s blog essay on her visit to Cortijo El Saltador:

http://www.viewfromthepier.com/2010/11/19/11192010-2/

For images of Cortijo El Saltador, the Tabernas Desert, and other sites in Spain, see:

http://www.viewfromthepier.com/travel-photos/