I bake the world a better place.
One pizza at a time.

I ended up in a technical high school, then Vienna, then a degree I wasn’t sure I wanted, then an e-commerce job that made complete sense on paper.

The subjects I was actually good at were German and history. The questions that kept me up were about how we want to live together. The technical work gave me no grip on any of that. But it paid the rent. So I stayed.

Seven years. By the time I left, we were shipping fifteen containers a week — three hundred pallets, stacked they’d reach the Empire State Building. On a spreadsheet it was just a number that had gotten larger.

The work itself? It could have been done by anyone. Probably soon will be.

Around the time I was looking for steadier work, I got sick. Chronically, seriously, in a way that rearranges your thinking about the future. What if it comes back? What if I can’t work? What if I become a burden?

So when a startup offered a stable income and social security coverage, I said yes without hesitation. I had ideas. A lot of them. But I never acted on them alone.

That’s how it works. You’re not miserable enough to quit. Not fulfilled enough to stay. And the years pass quietly — not wasted in any obvious way, just exchanged, year by year, for the comfort of not having to explain yourself.

I’m not angry about it. I understand it. I just don’t want to go back.

By April 2024 I knew I wanted out. I just didn’t know how to do it without losing everything I’d built to protect myself.

So I tried the side door. A few colleagues and I founded a company together — B2B textiles. We had the contacts, the logistics knowledge, the opportunity. And more than that, it let me tell myself I was doing something without actually burning anything down.

That’s the thing about side doors. They feel like courage. But they’re usually still a form of caution. You’re not choosing the thing you actually want — you’re choosing a safer version of wanting something different.

The textile company ticked along without catching fire. And in the meantime, October 7th happened.

I’d been to Israel before — a road trip in 2014, then Tel Aviv for my thirtieth birthday in 2022. Good food, good people, easy warmth. The kind of place you return to without needing a reason.

Watching the news after the attacks, scrolling and refreshing, I arrived at a thought that felt almost embarrassingly simple: watching is useless. So I asked myself what would actually help. The only honest answer was: go there. Do something. Anything.

I tried the usual volunteer platforms. No response. A country at war doesn’t wait for paperwork.

So I went back ten years through my phone. An Israeli guy I’d met once at a Christmas market in Vienna — barely an acquaintance. I texted him. Five minutes later he sent back a number. I called. Brief, practical exchange. Worst case I lose twelve days of holiday leave. That felt like a risk worth taking.

Tel Aviv. Bus, train, no sleep. Then north to Tsipori, a small moshav near Nazareth.

I remember standing in the heat thinking: this looks nothing like I expected. The foreman spoke Arabic. Someone else was on the phone in Hebrew. I was standing there holding Austrian waffles I’d brought as a gift — no particular reason, it had just felt right — thinking: what if nobody here speaks English?

First day: sorting avocados. Meeting people. Getting used to the noise and the dust and the languages I couldn’t follow.

They did speak English. The waffles disappeared within the hour. And just like that, I stopped being a stranger.

The work wasn’t glamorous. Painting railings. Cleaning machines. Spreading organic fertiliser on fields. Farming — properly, physically, the kind of work where at six in the evening you can point at something and say: that’s done. I did that.

Then Ayala explained what they were actually doing.

Ayala is the eldest daughter of the farm’s founders. After October 7th she didn’t want to sit still. She saw what was needed — displaced families, fields full of produce going to waste — and with the Israeli instinct of yalla, let’s go, she built something from scratch.

The NGO is called From Soil to Soul. The reality most people don’t see: somewhere between thirty and forty percent of farming produce never reaches the market. Not because it’s bad — because it’s not perfect enough to sell. Too small, too irregular, too expensive to harvest relative to what it fetches. So it stays in the field, while people who can’t afford supermarket prices go without.

That gap is where the NGO operates. Volunteers collect what’s left. It gets sold cheaply to cover costs, or given away, or fermented into jam. Nothing wasted if it can be helped.

This is still the model I want to replicate. Wherever I go.

Back in Vienna that summer, still going to the spreadsheets every day, I ended up at a dinner where someone made me a pizza that stopped me mid-bite.

His name was Emilio. He had potatoes on top of it.

In Italy, that’s not just unusual. It’s a provocation. But it was extraordinary — light, airy, a fluffy crust and a crisp thin base. You could watch him stretch the dough and the fact that he was doing it at home, in a regular kitchen, made it more impressive, not less.

I asked him to teach me. He sent me YouTube links. “Try it in your oven,” he said. “See what happens.”

The first four or five doughs were completely unusable. But something was different this time. I didn’t stop. I went back the next day, and the day after. Emilio would become one of my closest friends. He wasn’t just showing me a technique — he was handing me something I hadn’t known I was looking for.

I was supposed to fly home the morning Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel.

The night before, I’d stayed up late making dough. I went to sleep planning to leave. I woke up to no flights. While everyone else was glued to the news, I was in the kitchen finishing the dough. Someone asked what I was doing.

“We’re still making pizza.”

For twelve days, stuck, we made pizza for friends and family and on the weekends for people from the village. Between rocket alerts and sirens. When the siren hits you run, the big iron door closes, and you wait. Some people had brought chairs. Some sat on the floor. Some kept scrolling.

I sat there thinking: this is insane. Outside: summer, life, normality. Inside: concrete, strangers, silence.

And then a thought arrived. Not dramatic. Not philosophical. Just clear:

Going back to Vienna wasn’t heroic. It was uncomfortable. Because once you decide something like that, reality shows up fast.

I didn’t resign the next day. I hesitated — of course I did. The health history was still there. But the pull was stronger than the fear this time. I sat down with my boss and told him I was leaving. He offered a consulting arrangement as a bridge. I took it.

Then the flat. Finding someone to take over the lease. Organising seven years of accumulated life into boxes. Closing down the textile company.

February 2026. Flat gone. Life cleared.

The plan was Israel — return in April as a volunteering pizza chef on the food truck. Those plans are postponed. So instead: yalla. A pizza tour through Europe. South Tyrol first, to see my family and build something on the farm. Then wherever the next table is.

I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t think I ever will. A lot of us never will. That’s not a problem. That’s just what it looks like when you actually start.