SO MANY WAYS – DAVID

46 years, from Barcelona, Spain

So Many Ways; Vanlife; 2022; Portugal; Teneriffa; travel; lifestyle; van; camper; lebensgeschichten; life stories; Saskia Uppenkamp; Portrait; Fotograf; Fotografin; Berlin; Friedrichshain; Studio; On Location; Reportage

»When I go to sleep in my van at night, I feel like Huckleberry Finn on his raft.«

David – Playa Las Americas, Tenerife
46 years, from Barcelona, Spain

You could say David has focused his life more and more on surfing over the last twenty-five years. Finally, 4 years ago, he quit his flat in Barcelona, liquidated everything and set out in his van to find the place where he wanted to live and surf every day. Actually, he imagined a quiet place, with lots of nature and few people. Now he has been on Tenerife for over a year, living in his van in a car park in the middle of the tourist hotspot Las Americas because that’s where the best surf spot on the island is. Good weather and good surfing conditions all year round.

David comes from near Frankfurt, his father is Spanish, his mother German. He grew up multilingual, speaking Catalan, English, French and a little Italian in addition to German and Spanish. His professional career started rather classically. After school, he trained as a bank clerk, followed by further training as a foreign language correspondent. After his education, he moved from Germany to Barcelona, where his father’s family lives.

David has had many different jobs in his life: as a commercial manager, translator, employee in a car rental company, music promoter, ski guide, dubbing artist, production assistant in the film industry, constantly looking for an occupation that would inspire him. After a few months in the same job came routine, followed by boredom. Also, a steady job is difficult to reconcile with his passion for surfing. The surfing virus gripped him in his early 20s, and he used to drive 800 km from Barcelona to the north of Spain in an old jeep equipped with a mattress in the back for surf trips. The conditions here are much better than in the south on the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, this is not true of the opportunities to find well-paid work.

He has used the time since he has been living in his van to fulfil his dream. During the Covid Pandemic, he started writing a science fiction novel, experiencing all the adventures he could imagine while writing. For the first time in his life, David had found something that made him truly happy besides surfing. He has just self-published his first book and is now working on the second.

David appreciates the solitude that comes with living in a van. It gives him a lot of time for his passions. Besides writing, he makes music, plays guitar and writes songs himself. David currently lives off his savings. He knows there will come a time when he will have to seek employment again. The thought of entering into a fixed employment contract and selling his lifetime to other people makes him uncomfortable. For the last few years, his motto has been work less, live more.

After four years in the van, he is toying with the idea of looking for a permanent flat in Tenerife. A flat brings higher costs. His lifestyle currently is rather spartan. Food and fuel constitute the bulk of his expenses, maybe a repair on the van or a filling at the dentist. So, he can get by on very little money. A flat would force him to take a full-time job. Average salaries on Tenerife are not high, and rents are anything but cheap in comparison. Apart from that, there would be little time left for his passions. At least he could continue to live near a wave.

Either he finds a way to earn money on Tenerife or he has to start looking again, think about a Plan B. So far, the fascination with surfing has not diminished one bit, the urge to go into the water every day is still unbroken. To earn enough money from writing books out of the van and to surf, that would be David’s future vision for a perfect life.