After healing myself with the power of the olive trees and deciding to follow the path of the trees, I discovered a small ad in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper:
Olive grove for sale.
It was a coded ad.
That meant: no name, no phone number, no direct connection. You had to write to the newspaper, and the newspaper forwarded the letter to the unknown advertiser.
So I wrote.
Not an ordinary letter of interest from a potential buyer.
I wrote a long letter and told my whole story. About my healing. About the olive trees. About my decision to leave my previous life behind. And about my crazy dream of becoming an olive farmer as a German with no experience whatsoever.
In response to this letter, Joaquin and his then-girlfriend Anna got in touch. They were the ones who had placed the ad.
But we didn’t meet right away.
It was not until two years later that Joaquin and I met in person for the first time.
I drove to see him in Cala, a small place about 80 kilometers from Seville. On the way, I asked him if he might know of an olive grove that was for sale.
Joaquin hesitated.
“Maybe Santiago,” he said.
Santiago was the bee whisperer.
A few months later, I was the proud owner of my first olive grove with roughly 120 olive trees.
The crazy dream suddenly had solid ground under its feet.
I was an olive farmer.
At least on paper.
Because I still had no idea how to turn an olive grove into a movement.
But I had an idea.
After I got to know Joaquin a little better, I asked him if he would come to Seville with me.
I had seen that thousands of tourists moved around the cathedral every day. People from all over the world.
To me, it was immediately clear:
That’s where I had to advertise my trees.
Not with an agency.
Not with a big campaign.
Not with glossy brochures.
I wanted to walk around the cathedral as a sandwich man.
So I hung two huge posters around my body, one in front and one in back. They read:

YOUR OWN
100-YEAR-OLD
OLIVE TREE

At first, Joaquin thought it was a joke.
But I was serious.
So I marched through Seville as a walking billboard – right through the crowds around the cathedral.
Joaquin came along.
Although about a hundred meters behind me.
Out of shame.
He clearly didn’t want anyone to think he belonged to this completely crazy German who was advertising hundred-year-old olive trees as a Sandwich Man.
I can imagine what he was thinking at the time:
Who is this lunatic?

Many years passed.

From the first 120 trees came thousands of protected mountain olive trees. The crazy dream became Oliveda. And the idea I had once walked around the cathedral with all by myself turned into a movement of pioneers.
Then we returned to Seville.
As every year, we retraced the steps of our story together with our consultants – or rather, with our pioneers from the USA.
And again, we wore the Sandwich Man posters.
Again we marched around the cathedral.
But this time something was different.
Joaquin no longer walked a hundred meters behind me.
This time he walked right by my side.
The shame was gone.
And there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there many years before.
A little pride.
Maybe at that moment he remembered the long letter from an unknown German. Santiago, the bee whisperer. The first 120 olive trees. And the crazy Sandwich Man he had preferred not to be seen with back then.
Now everyone could see that we belonged together.
This is the Sandwich Man story.
The story of a long letter.
Of a first olive grove.
Of a man who was walking a hundred meters behind me.
And of a friend who, many years later, proudly walked by my side.

Happy Birthday, OLIVEDA.