The most moving match on the streets of Fayoum

Encounters that await you only outside the hotel walls

The boutique hotel "Lazib Inn" resembles an oasis in the village of Tunis – which, like so many here, started to be built and now partly consists of ruins. Outside, the known, polished pottery shops line up.

I keep walking.

The buildings become emptier, it gets dustier. People sit on the street, kids without shoes, donkeys and cows in the backyards, street dogs everywhere.
Hard to imagine where everyone lives here.

In a small courtyard, a boy shyly passes me a football. Or rather the inside of it – because barefoot it would be too hard for the kids.
I pass it back. The passes get longer, the kids more.
At some point, I ask about a match.
The boys are immediately on it, pointing at stones that mark the goalposts. I put my valuables aside.
What started as a spontaneous kick becomes a two-hour deconstruction of class and privilege boundaries in the sand.

Mustafa, 11 years old, stays close to me the whole time:
“I speak English!”
In his eyes burns this unconditional hunger to learn, to understand the world out there, and to build a real connection.
He wants no pity and no money – he wants a conversation at eye level.
Since then, we write to each other every day.
He tells me how it was in school and that I am his best friend.

Days later, a little river island on my Relais & Châteaux Nile cruise between Luxor and Aswan.
Kids want to sell bracelets and local souvenirs – their hard everyday life to somehow contribute to the family income.

“Hey, how about football?”

In that moment, selling no longer matters. The boys leave everything behind, forget the business, forget us as tourists.
Then emerges what is referred to in cultural theory as the 'Third Space': A third space beyond origin, capital, and status. Hours in which they can simply be kids – and I can simply be a player.

Two things have been confirmed for me:

1. Football acts as a universal system of signs and a global denominator, without translation. When the ball rolls, there is no rich or poor, no tourist or local. All artificial barriers simply break down in interaction.

2. True luxury transforms from being a mere status symbol to an unscripted, transformative experience. The value of a journey is measured not by the exclusivity of isolation, but by the depth of human connection.

We travel not to mirror our privileges, but to let ourselves be unsettled and grounded through encounters with the 'Other.' Only in this way do both sides learn: One feels the world out there – the other remembers what matters.

Leave the air-conditioned bubbles of your suites. The most valuable encounters of a journey await on the street.