Hans Rohling (62) stops after more than twenty years as the café owner of The Spot in Erica. The quirky entrepreneur has put his pub for sale to focus on his great passion: walking. In May he undertakes the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela for the ninth time, something that gives him a rest and direction.
His life is a search for guidance. Between success and setback, loss and recovery, he tried to find his place again and again in a world that often escaped him. “With me things just happen because they have to be like that,” he says. That faith brought him to America in the early 1990s, when a friend suggested to try their happiness there. Rohling immediately said yes. “I imported American cars from Germany, but then decided to get it directly from the US.”
Eight months a year he stayed in New York and later Miami, where he bought cars at auctions, often in rugged neighborhoods. “Miami was then the cocaine capital of the world. They shot you off the street. I also had a gun against my head.” But there were also good times. In a bar named The Spot he found friendship and a second home. “I was refused first, but then a girl ran outside:” You from the Netherlands? Come in! “
Yet the feeling of home remained elusive. He lived between Erica and Miami, without solid ground. The death of his brother in 2002 meant a turning point. “I ended up in a black hole. Then I spent a lot of money left and right.”
Some time later he bought a cafe on the Vaart in Erica, a building with which he had a band. “I came there often, my comrade Johan Meijer was the son of the owner. One day I said,” I would like to buy that building. ” And then it started to bubble. ” The name for his cafe was immediately certain: The Spot a symbolic reference to his time in Miami. “Because I had my foundation there at the time, my people and friendship.”
The Spot grew into a household name, especially during carnival. “Six hundred people spread over the front and back room. And when the weather is nice, the water with rafts.” Another tradition was carbide shooting. “Three days of party, from early in the morning until the next morning.” But when the municipality set stricter rules, that also came to an end. “We tried to pop from rafts on the canal, but that too was forbidden.”
In 2019, Rohling started a new plan: demolishing the café and building apartments for it. He also bought the well -known copper bar on Havenstraat. “I have to have something to do.” But Corona threw a spanner in the works. He himself fell ill from the virus. “I have never completely recovered from that. Since then I have had less energy.”
With the construction plans, so far it does not go smoothly with the municipality. A source of irritation for Rohling. “But it’s better that I don’t say anything about that.” And what helped anything but helped: the loss of six good friends and regulars in recent times. “That makes you think. I am 62.” The stress, finding enough staff and the slow consultation with the municipality did the rest. The Spot is now for sale, with an asking price of almost half a million euros.
Since 2019 he has found peace in the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. He ran it eight times: twice via France (800 km) and twice via Portugal (300 km). “I woke up in the middle of the night and thought: I am going. No idea what to expect, but I didn’t care.” The long walking tours give him room to think. “My luxury is that I can do and leave what I want. So I went, and it brought me peace.”
He always runs the route alone. “I think it’s my autism. But when I start from Porto, along the Atlantic coast, and I hear those waves what more do I want?” He leaves again in May. What will he do afterwards? “Well, I’ll wake up again in the middle of the night with an idea.”