I came back to the farm in autumn 2024 for the olive harvest.
That was when I saw the food truck for the first time — not as an idea, but as a physical thing being built. We painted it, constructed parts of it, set things up from scratch. And the question that had been sitting quietly in the back of my mind since the summer got loud enough that I finally said it out loud: I need to figure out what I bring to this.
Back in Vienna after that second trip, the answer became clearer. Food. Pizza specifically. Which meant I needed to get serious.
I bought a professional pizza oven.
The reactions were exactly what you'd expect. Why would you spend that kind of money? Don't you have better things to invest in? Buy a house. Put it in stocks. And honestly — they weren't wrong. From a purely logical standpoint it made no sense.
But I didn't want logical. I wanted to make pizza.
So I bought it, and the practice became serious. Emilio and I talked through every problem. The textile company faded quietly into the background — not a failure exactly, just a thing that had served its purpose of proving I wasn't ready to go all in yet. The e-commerce job continued, but it felt increasingly like a waiting room.
The yearning for Israel came back in waves. Not in a religious or political sense — I had no familial ties there, no ancestral connection, nothing that should have made it feel like home. And yet it did. An Israeli guy I met online described it once in a way I couldn't improve on: it feels as if the soul has a contract to the land.*
That's the only rather vague explanation I have. The soul had signed something. And it was time to honour it.
*This quote comes from Barak Schwarttz also known on Instagram as @otherbarak. For a long time I didn’t know what it was, that I felt this connection to Israel. I am not Jewish nor do I have familial ties to the land. But being in the land talking and volunteering alongside people, sharing food with them, it builds a different kind of connection. The mistery and the daily balagan. The beauty of its people and the food. There is no connection like the one over shared food and being stuck together in a bunker. In german you say “Liebe geht durch den Magen” Love travels through your stomach. And I agree it does. But in Israel it is also about the no nonsense the just do it attitude. The refreshing bluntness. And all of it together can be too much easily. Or my case it just feels like a missing puzzle piece.