August Macke to Elisabeth Gerhardt, Tunis, April 10, 1914:

Dear Lisbeth,

We are sitting here in the middle of the African landscape, drawing, writing, while Klee is painting watercolours. This morning I wandered around the city and worked. Then P. car ride, chicken ragout from the haybox, canned sardines, beds, etc. Our Arab driver Ahmed later turned into a racing driver. There are two children here, and Dr. Jägghi’s country house is splendidly situated by the sea. We are lying in the sun, eating asparagus, and so on. You only have to turn around and you have thousands of motifs – I must have made at least 50 sketches today, and 25 yesterday. Things are moving at a furious pace, and I am experiencing a joy in working that I have never known before. The African landscape is even more beautiful than Provence. I could never have imagined it.

Two hundred steps from us is a Bedouin camp with black tents, herds of donkeys, camels, etc., all around us. We are staying here for the night. In Tunis I am staying at the Grand Hotel de France. Louis and Klee are staying with the Jäggis. In the evenings, I usually eat with the Jäggis, who are very, very nice. Yesterday we visited the various Arab love quarters. In the sun, the women sat or stood at the doors. It was a magnificent sight – so colourful and at the same time as clear as stained glass windows. But in terms of health, I have a terrible horror of the whole population here. There are surely enough germs. One just mustn’t think about it.

I think I will bring home an enormous amount of material, which I can only really process in Bonn. How are the little ones, and how is Mother? Should I buy something for you? I often see wonderful things here, but I don’t want to spend money on old junk.

Now, dear Stiwwel, I wish you were here with me. You get a colossal kiss from your August. Greetings to Mother and Anni and the two.

I think the best thing for me is always when I'm in the south, where there's fresh fruit and vegetables. It's going to the market early, buying a fresh juicy tomato, slicing it up and putting it in a fresh bread. With some onions. Nothing can be better than a tomato sandwich.

The best moments are always the most unexpected ones and I like to look back on a trip to Havana, where I was walking in the old town of Havana and saw a Dynamo Dresden flag in a bar and then it turned out that the bar owner had lived in Dresden for a long time during the DDR period and also spoke German with a certain Saxon touch. That was a very funny encounter and very interesting.

Inspiration is one of those things... there's nothing specific that I can say inspires me or doesn't inspire me. They are mostly just stories that happen around things. And it's usually always quite different. Sometimes it's just a building or an element in a house that suddenly inspires me to do something. Or the observation of someone doing something on the street.

I like to look back on one trip, the first trip with our mobile state, Mobilistan. It was an art project that we did as a group. And when you travel in a group, you discover a lot of challenges and things within yourself, and dealing with the dynamics of a group.

The sky is blue and the sun is shining.

I think homesickness is also somehow a very difficult term, but I don't really feel homesick when I'm travelling, so sometimes you feel homesick for your things, but not ... at least it's not tied to the place. That's why it's so difficult for me, because I'm actually a kind of permanent nomad. And the concept of home is a bit difficult for me to identify.

Food is a very important aspect of my travels, so of course I have many favourite dishes. But probably one that I associate with many special memories is a particular milk pudding with pistachios, which I tried for the first time in Damascus at the bazaar. I’m still searching for that exact special taste and unique texture, which I’ve never experienced again in the same way. It was truly a very special memory for me, of that dish and the place I was in at that moment. I think that often influences how we remember a particular dish.

When I travel, I usually have a notebook with me. In fact, I always have a notebook with me, in which I write down all sorts of things, from phone numbers to ideas, and sometimes things I just can’t afford to forget. It’s not really a diary, but it’s a bit of everything. And besides that, my mother always writes me a little note with a poem or a prayer, which she puts in my bag. I still have it in my bag afterwards, but for longer trips, she usually writes a new note.

Right now, I'm probably at a point where I don't really know what homesickness is. I think, at the moment it’s not so much about a specific place, but more about the people I want to be around me and spend time with, people with whom I feel comfortable.

It used to be the place where my parents were. I actually used to feel homesick for Offenbach, and there was probably also a sense of longing, which for me sometimes goes hand in hand with homesickness. And that was the longing for my grandmother's house in Tehran. But in that sense, I can't really associate homesickness with a place at the moment.

An ideal day for me when travelling is when I have slept enough, have had time to meditate and look at the sky so I really look forward to the day energetically. That's always the ideal day, by the way. But it's especially important when travelling, because the way I start my day, with what intention, determines how the day will go. Later, of course, the encounters, the plan that I make for my day are very important. And I always leave plenty of room for surprises in these plans, because it's very, very important for me to discover and simply get involved in situations. I don't like to plan much and I think coincidences and encounters are the be-all and end-all when travelling.

The most important encounters are of course with people, animals are also very important, as are trees. I am a person who is very, very connected to the earth and when I arrive in a new place, I usually try to greet and touch the earth very early on and introduce myself. I also try to touch the trees and feel the impulse of the place through nature and that is my first encounter, so to speak. It is often a very beautiful one, because this encounter is never deceptive. I see myself as part of nature and of course it's wonderful to come into direct contact with people. I wouldn't say that there is one particular favourite encounter, because it varies greatly depending on the country, depending on the place. Sometimes the encounters are just coincidences on the street that you don't expect. When you start making small talks you discover impossible and unexpected stories and developments. Sometimes these are, for example, when... I travel a lot for my work and meet colleagues, artists and curators and recently, it happened that I met an artist and she is also, like me, from North Africa – her father is from Algeria and her mother has a Slavic background, Russian – and we didn't know each other, but I had the feeling as if I was meeting a sister and that is of course always wonderful and magical, but it doesn't necessarily have to be professional. Sometimes it's just a fleeting encounter and you keep these memories with you forever.

I have one thing that I always carry with me on every trip and that is a ring. My husband gave me this ring for my 30th birthday and it means a lot to me. It's my lucky charm. I simply never travel without my ring. When I look at the ring, I feel rooted in the world. I am often far away from my family, from my children, from my husband. And yes, this ring reminds me every moment that they are there for me and that I am there for them, too.

As I said, there is not one particular thing that inspires me the most. Perhaps my connection to nature is what I feel most strongly. And my instinct takes me straight to where the sea is when I'm in a place. I try to see the horizon first, because the vastness is what I miss most in Central Europe. I'm a child of the sea, so to speak. And that's where I try to go directly, because that's the place where I feel the most free, where ideas just come to me. They come to me when I'm by the sea. Otherwise, anything can inspire me, even a piece of garbage can inspire me, a sound, a smell, a conversation. It's really, really different. And I mostly capture things in my memory. My eyes are like a camera. It used to be a camera, now it's my cell phone, but I also always have a notebook with me. I write down pieces, ideas, sketches. So that's always in my bag.

I discover different types of food very, very often – I'm very curious and open-minded. I have to say that the thing that impressed me the most, when I think about it spontaneously, was the food trip in Ahmedabad. It's in Gujarat in India and perhaps my favourite dish was a traditional thali, where you get all the different kinds of food on one plate and it's endless. They keep coming and refilling and it's so sophisticated and different. You travel between spicy and sweet and salty and it really is like a wonderful symphony in your mouth. Yes, I'll keep that with me forever.

Oh, that happens every time. I always discover a new side or facet of myself. So anyway, a person develops and changes over time. But it happens most intensively when you're travelling. That's why it's a process, but I would say that the most intense differences happen when I return to my home country, Tunisia. That's when I notice most how the country has developed and how I, on the other hand, have also grown. And that's like a compass. I notice that my perception changed, my reactions to my parents, for example, how they change over time, as do those to my neighbours, friends and colleagues. But I've lived in Germany for over 20 years and when I return to Tunisia, a part of me is naturally reawakened. So I am in touch with my roots. Everything is very close and familiar to me. But at the same time, I realize how I have actually changed.