To get home, Stephan Hock had to cover around 11,500 kilometers.

Once from Gießen to Brakwater, from Central Hesse to the savannah.

If you want to visit the emigrant there, you have to leave the Namibian capital Windhoek in a northerly direction.

There are thorn bushes and dry grass on the side of the road until the gate to the Immanuel Lodge appears after a stage on the gravel road.

Hock has been welcoming its guests there for almost 15 years.

Not much is going on this Sunday lunchtime.

A family is having lunch;

A couple of antelopes are drinking at the watering hole.

Hock, hotelier and chef in personal union, has a short chat with his guests.

Then he sits down on the terrace and talks about his old and his new life.

It's a crazy story, he says.

Hock spent his old life in Giessen, where he published the Mittelhessische Werbung newspaper.

He was also a commercial judge and owner of several travel agencies.

“You don't just leave that alone overnight and run away,” he says.

His wife Sabine worked as a nurse at the time, and their daughters were seven and eleven years old.

Actually, says Hock, there was no reason to leave Germany.

Why did he do it anyway?

It all started in 2005 in Carnival.

In Giessen, Hock and his wife were traveling as a prince couple.

They had more than 100 appointments in a month: They went to kindergartens, hospitals and old people's homes.

"That was a lot of fun, but it also got under your skin," says Hock.

Then came Ash Wednesday, the thundering Helau fell silent, and all of a sudden the fun was over.

Until a friend said he could continue partying in Namibia.

When he was there, something happened to him

A Hessian had brought the carnival to what was then South West Africa almost 70 years ago, which had been a German colony from 1885 to 1915. Since then there have been street parades, prince balls and hand-made speeches, mostly in March or April. Hock really wanted to experience that. When he was there, something happened to him that he can hardly put into words to this day. “For the first time in my life I felt such a deep sense of home.” Further trips to Namibia followed, first with his wife, then with the children. Finally, Hock asked his family: "Can you imagine that we will spend our lives there in the future?"

Hock listens to his heart, trusts his senses. For a year, he and the family meticulously prepare for the move. They sell their house in Gießen and reduce their belongings to half a container. In September 2007 they left their old homeland. Saying goodbye to friends and family hurt the most. "Even if the joy of the new home was very great."

Since then, her home has been ten hectares of land, a lodge with a main house and several guest houses. In Germany they would be small farmers, says Hock. For Namibian standards it is an allotment garden. The large neighboring farms attract tourists with leopards, rhinos, crocodiles and giraffes. They can't keep up with that. Instead of spectacular safaris, Hock relies on cordiality: those who stay with him should feel like part of the family.