When we first came to Union Lido, our eldest daughter was two. Our caravan stood in a small lane near the “Mare”, not far from the “chicken man”, and she had found an activity she apparently considered quite sufficient: running out of the lane onto the main road.
So off she went. Again and again. With us running after her. At first, anyway.
Because we soon realised we were not the only ones keeping an eye on her. Someone stopped her when a car came. Someone else sent her back in our direction. Nobody had discussed it. It just happened.
That was about 25 years ago.
The two-year-old has since become a grown woman. The chicken man is still there; some other things are not. Bars have changed their names, restaurants have arrived, barbecue areas have disappeared, water parks have grown. We have not stayed the same either.
And yet that moment happens every time. After just under ten hours on the road, we turn through the entrance, find our pitch — and the holiday has already begun.
We know which paths lead where, where we like to lie on the beach and where we have our morning cappuccino. Eventually our children knew even better. They got out of the car and disappeared. To friends, the pool, the mini disco, later to beach volleyball or somewhere else on the campsite.
Union Lido no longer needed explaining to them. Or to us. At first, our reasons for returning were entirely practical.
The beach was one. Wide, shallow, sandy, easy with children. Since then, we have seen many beaches — in Florida, Hawaii, the Caribbean, Thailand, Bali, Croatia and elsewhere. For a two-week beach holiday, we still do not know one that works better for us.
There is always something on offer. What mattered to us changed just as much as the campsite did. The kids’ club and children’s disco, later the slides and long evenings at Morbidosi, beach volleyball, windsurfing and friends, Pilates or aerial yoga. Pizza and ice cream work at any age, of course.
Above all, nobody needed a plan. In a new place, a holiday often begins by getting your bearings: Where is the supermarket? Which beach is right? Where is the good coffee? What will the children do? Here, those questions had long been answered.
The holiday did not begin once we had settled in. It began the moment we arrived.
We still call it Bar Blu
This works partly because Union Lido does not try to stay as it once was.
When we started coming, there were no large water slides, no burgers, no bicycle hire and no Dog Camp. You had to push your bicycle. There were more barbecue areas, though, and the “Pista Verde” for roller skating. We welcomed some changes; others we still discuss today.
Our own expectations have shifted too. These days we bring the bicycles and decide in the morning whether to run, do yoga or cycle through the lagoon. The campsite has offered something for every phase of our lives. But not always the same thing.
Returning does not mean travelling back into the past. You know the place, grumble about something that has disappeared, try something new — and eventually that becomes part of the place too.
The bar where we have been drinking cappuccino for years was once called Bar Blu. Later, Blu Bar. Today it is Lido 55. Sometimes we still call it Bar Blu.
Over the years, almost every corner acquires a story of its own.
There is the turtle pond. The handmade owl mug. Windsurfing lessons with Michi. The night the storm swept across the campsite. The summer when every spare minute was spent playing volleyball. The barbecue with friends, which to this day includes my potato salad.
One year, even Grandpa’s dot-matrix printer came along. A school research paper had to be finished, holiday or no holiday. The machine rattled through the pages while campsite life carried on around it.
Another summer, we collected pine cones to find out whether we could extract the kernels ourselves and make pesto. You can. Whether it is worth the effort is another question.
The little slides at Aquapark Mare, whose coating wore away a little further each summer. Compulsory swimming caps. The riding arena. The Colour Run. Beach on Fire. The fuss when the Dog Camp was built. Later, our favourite burgers right there. And, of course, the mini disco.
Even in their mid-twenties, our children still sing along to some of the songs with an enthusiasm that would be difficult to explain anywhere outside Union Lido. No: impossible to explain.
For one summer, the beach had Spinnenwilli — Spider Willi: a little red-haired boy whose other identity was a superhero, complete with a Spinnenwilli phone, Wilma and the terrible Doctor Thang as his recurring enemy. Resemblances to other superheroes were not accidental. Every afternoon, five to ten children sat there waiting for the next instalment. I had no idea what happened next. I had to make it up each time.
People keep coming back. Holiday friendships, so uncomplicated precisely because they are holiday friendships.
Big things and little things sit side by side, on equal terms. The storm and the owl mug. Illness and potato salad. The dot-matrix printer and the mini disco.
The paths have long since become more than paths. Woven into them are stories that appear on no campsite map. Most of the time, we do not even talk about them.
When the story carries on
At some point, the story could have ended.
The children grew older. Nobody needed the kids’ club or children’s disco any more. And once you are over twenty, you no longer need someone watching when you run out of the lane onto the road.
Later, they went away on their own. With friends, to university, abroad, on journeys of their own. A holiday was no longer automatically something five people did together.
And yet they still come along. Not all of them every year, and not always for two weeks. Sometimes just for a few days. Whatever fits into their lives at the time.
Suddenly there are three, four or five chairs outside the caravan again. Only there are no small children sitting in them now. We go out for pizza, meet old friends, lie on the beach, play volleyball or have an Aperol. And at some point, somewhere, a song from the mini disco comes on.
It is astonishing how little dignity grown adults need when the right opening bars start playing.
Originally, we came because the campsite worked wonderfully for a family with small children. The children have long since stopped being small.
Apparently, the reason to return is still there.
Creatures of habit
When you write all this down, something becomes apparent.
We have become precisely the sort of campers we ourselves tend to gently poke fun at. The ones who have been going to the same campsite for decades. Who always go to the same bar and call it by a name it has not had for years. Who know where they want to lie on the beach, can tell you what used to stand on every corner, and reliably have an opinion whenever anything changes.
All we are missing are the garden gnomes.
From the outside, that is all you see: the same campsite, the same beach, the same bar. What you do not see are the 25 years in between.
Perhaps that is why we are too quick to make fun of such things. From the outside, it is easy to put a label on what someone does. You cannot see what it means to them.
These days we are travelling a great deal again: to America, Asia, the Caribbean and across Europe. Mostly without our children now. We have sought out new places and found quite a few.
And kept coming back.
Only those who wander find their way back.
We have already made plans for next year.