The Tax Counsel: With the Cowboy Hat to Spain

The thalidomide victim Silvia Kaufer is a tax counsel – actually. At the moment, in fact, she is something quite different: emigrated from Germany to Spain. With her husband, daughter and granddaughter. Together they want to make a fresh start and establish a little holiday resort with a western-country dance school.

01/03/2011

Silvia Kaufer makes a new
beginning in Spain; © Kaufer

With a freshly blanched coffee the 48-year-old Silvia Kaufer is sitting in her house in the always sunny Calig. Between Valencia and Barcelona on the east coast of Spain her family has begun a completely new life. She enjoys every minute in her new adoptive country. However, there is not much time to be lazy, because there is a lot to be done.

Until lately the family had been living in the town Gründau close to Frankfurt on the Main in Germany. Silvia Kaufer led an own tax office where her 28-year-old daughter Sandra worked, too. Johann Kaufer is a qualified carpenter and was the househusband in Germany.

The parents had already been thinking of living in Spain since the beginning of their marriage 30 years ago. „In 1999 we built a summer cottage. In 2004 we resold it because a big holiday park was built there,“ reports Silvia Kaufer. Ten years ago we started to prepare the emigration. The plan: Building a small holiday resort with up to four bungalows and a house where we could live. Moreover, the Germans wanted to find a place for a western-country dance school to teach the typical "line dance" - the common passion of the family – also of the one-year-old granddaughter Amelie-Jolie.

Different than originally planned

Then in 2008 Silvia Kaufer sold her tax office and the family acquired a property for the planned holiday resort. However, when it came to the construction of the houses, unexpected obstacles appeared: The authorities did not allow the kind of houses the family had imagined. A heavy setback for them: „In this area one pays a lot of attention to nature. After long efforts we could convince the responsible people permitting us to build three very small wooden houses. Nevertheless, this part of the plan is waiting in line at the moment.“

Silvia and Sandra Kaufer dance in Spanish restaurants to get new dancing pupils; © Kaufer

For this reason, they wanted to concentrate on the western-country dance school as their source of income. Last October the Kaufers finally moved to their new house in Calig. Twelve hours after their arrival they already started searching a place for the dance school. It was quite difficult since the conversion of the facilities would have become much too expensive – due to restrictions of the authorities.

So, how to continue? Silvia Kaufer already had a new idea at the back of her mind: an American style restaurant with country-western decoration and enough room for a dance floor. Finally with a lot of luck they found a vacant restaurant with exactly this decoration. At the moment the renting contract is lying on the table, ready to be subscribed – if the bank allows the credit.

No look back …

Though the future is still uncertain Silvia Kaufer still does not regret their emigration at all – and she does not miss her job: „No occupation is secure. Even for a tax counselor with an own office.“ And emigrating to Spain was an old dream and no irrational sudden act.

The friendly Spanish neighbours make
the new start easier; © Kaufer

„I am not afraid – just sometimes a bit nervous,“ she tells; when the Spanish restrictions of the authorities give a hard time or when she sometimes reaches her linguistic barrier. „Though I can speak Spanish, I sometimes notice that it is easier to talk in German than in Spanish.“

The Kaufers already feel at home and saying goodbye to Germany was not difficult for them. However, friends and family reacted differently. „My parents did not want us to leave,“ says Silvia Kaufer. „For them - who are both around eighty - this is simply inconceivable. And they fear that something goes wrong. Otherwise, however, there is nothing to keep me back in Germany. Of course, we miss some friends. But we stay in touch by the phone and the Internet.“ Son Marco, 27, also works and lives abroad, in Ireland, and was enthusiastic about the idea.

… but forward

Moreover, the new neighbours make the new beginning easy for them. „The Spaniards are absolutely obliging. If you ask for help they simply come spontaneously with you to the city hall, for example,“ she says and is glad. If she needs information, she goes without hesitation directly to the baker or to the mayor and gets them.

The whole family: Silvia, Sandra, Amelie-Jolie, Johann and Marco (v.l.); © Kaufer

Her disability does not stand in her way. Since she is a thalidomide victim her hands directly begin at the body and have only three fingers. „Of course, my impediment will always play a role. When a glass stands too far on top in the cupboard and I must get a chair to reach it, I am reminded of it. Nevertheless, I do not think about it further. The Spaniards handle my unusual appearance much more openly than the Germans. They simply ask if they want to know something about it.“

If everything goes well, the restaurant could be opened at the beginning of May. And if it failed, it would also not be the end of the world. „Nothing will keep us down. I am proud that I do not sit around in the corner and say, it is just the way it is,“ says Silvia Kaufer.

She has one more ace in her sleeve anyway: Besides, she writes novels on which personal data can be included like names and places of the reader - in German and in Spanish. „The Spaniards rather like the children's books, the Germans the erotic novel,“ explains the tax-advisory, dancing and writing new Spaniard. Let us see what she will do next.

Natascha Mörs
REHACARE.de

- More about the Kaufers at: www.elpaso-linedance.com