Living in Roses, Costa Brava? Sure!

Eric and Silke: guides for La Vie En Roses

Pavilions
Silke is a real German, Hessian from Offenbach with Swabian genes, while Eric is a Belgian-Catalan half-breed (his mother is from Roses) who grew up in Belgium, France and Spain.
We speak Babel in everyday life, which is a mixture of French, Spanish and English, peppered with Catalan, German and sometimes Sanskrit expressions.

Wakes
We are both now over fifty years old and our paths crossed a handful of years ago in Roses. At this crossroads were yoga, a sailing catamaran, love and its faithful companion – chance, and a horizon that turned out to be the one we shared.
Since then we have lived and sailed happily through all kinds of blues, turquoises and greens until one day we thought it would be good to replace the swell with solid ground.
Currently we own a cute little apartment in Santa Margarita. Curiously, the chance has made that from our balcony we are able to make a ahoy to our former boat, wisely moored to its berth barely two blocks away!

Elements
Here are the five elements of our savoir-faire: experience, transculturality, rootedness, tools and authenticity.

Experience
We have accumulated more than a century navigating in life existence marked by its jumps, stumbles and pirouettes, but also with its achievements, successes and satisfactions.
We have had many different jobs: accountant, farmer, graphic designer, skipper, shopkeeper, yoga teacher, hotelier, waiter, masseur, secretary, advertising executive, entrepreneur.

Transculturality
Our origins and our life paths have given us the opportunity to swim like fish in water in the Spanish, Catalan, Germanic, French, Belgian, Anglo-Saxon and even Indian cultural spheres.

Rootedness
We live here and at the same time, we are from here and not from here: Eric was practically born here and, on his mother’s side, he comes from a family of fishermen.
That’s why we often know aspects of the area better than the locals.

Tools
We have retained numerous tools from our multifaceted professional careers and know how to use them. They range from the methodical rigor of the accountant to the sailors inventiveness, the agility of the waiter, the finesse of the masseur, the audacity of the entrepreneur, the serenity of the yogi and the creativity of the graphic designer and advertiser.

Authenticity
To the bunch of adjectives listed above we dare to add those of sympathy, humility, sense of humor and false modesty.