Each time I came to Sri Lanka, our home from 2007 to 2011, the approach to Bandaranaike airport felt like immersing myself into an endless ocean of cocomut palms. Later I met the Srilankan Minister for Coconut Development (one out of a cabinet of just 110 ministers). I immediately knew that he must be a busy man. Leaving the airport you immediately feel the soft tropical air and succumb to the beautiful smell of Frangipani. The endless curves of Sinhala and Tamil fonts, the elephant in the Buddhist temple, monks in their safran robes singing, Hindus walking barefoot over fire, a leopard sunbathing on a rock, fierce, fantastic food, eg the Wild Boar Black Curry cooked by Ranji our cook – almost everything drives you crazy in Sri Lanka.

Even the names can do that: The ancient Greeks called it Taorobane, the Portuguese Ceilão, the British Ceylon.However, my favorite name was created by Arab Seafarers: Serendip, the base for of one of my favorite English words: Serendipity, unplanned fortunate discoveries. In four years I had many. I never lived on an island before (maybe apart from Manhattan) but it felt definitely special and brought me close to Islomania. As soon as you get to an island, you start to think how you can get away from it,  rumours are more ripe, as are conflicts. But above all, for me,  islands are more beautiful and more serene than mainlands. Sri Lanka, just as big as Bavaria, offered everything: A 2200 meters high, holy mountain in the center, sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike, which I could only climb at midnight, rice paddies in all shades of green,  jungles teeming with wildlife, tropical beaches.

And, tragically, as many islands, it had a civil war: In areas mainly populated by Hindus, Buddha statues were used by radical Sinhalese as symbols of conquest, a young Tamil lady solely got pregnant to use her baby stroller and her newborn baby as a hideout for a bomb to blow off the General Chief of Staff of the Srilankan Army, a self-constructed “warplane” of the Tamil Tigers flew one night above our house before it dropped a bomb in the government quarters, and a close Tamil friend and businessman had to dine with the devil to survive in his Sinhalese business environment. In 2009, almost 26 years after its start and two years after our arrival, the war bloodily came to an end. The entire north and east lay in ruins, thousands  of palm trees stood beheaded, almost a hundred thousand people were killed. I will never forget the heavily-wounded child whose bloody face bore just two holes where should have been two eyes.

Just days after the end of the war I went on a business trip over the famous Elephant Pass north to the Jaffna peninsula. Just after sunrise, when morning mist still filled the tropical air, I left my shattered guest house and strayed through the ruins of the once beautiful city when I met a elderly local, doing his prayers:

„Welcome” he told me with a  wonderful smile, “you are our first tourist.”