ENG:

This letter (or rather “retrospective diary”) was written in March 2014 in 20 pages, which was then sent to 20 of my friends. The unsophisticated style occurring sometimes is due to the primary audience of friends. On those reading through themselves, it usually had a nice impact: many of them reported meditative experience pulling out of everyday greyness, that’s why I publish the whole of it here, in 12 parts. Eventual supplements will be always in footnotes... So, this would be the Part I. only for you, with manically many love! :*

Hellofolks! 

You’ve all got that in August I hitchhiked to the Spanish-French border, set off walking on the Camino Francés, unrealistically quickly succeed to collect money in a hat by playing the flute for an unrealistically expensive and old donkey stallion that I named Rocinante like Don Quixote’s horse, and after completing 3 months of excellent march together I flew home like a migrating bird. Of all this I’ve kept a detailed diary, which I would like to share with you occasionally, in the form of a day by day blog, completing it with personal reflections as well as with some comic illustrations, as soon as I have the chance… So what now comes is the story of my coming back here, to the NW corner of the Iberian Peninsula, Galicia, where the famous Gallegos live.

100 kms before Santiago I met an Italian woman, Camilla, who were renting a donkey-compatible house along the road, besides, she has also worked at a place with horses before, and she particularly asked me to bring Rocinante back to her after the end of my pilgrimage, for taking care of him. It happened exactly like that, we agreed that I come back for the donkey around April. Everybody was happy: Camilla, me, and especially Rocinante. But after two weeks, Camilla brought a wife to him in the person of a mare donkey unwilling to mate, therefore they had to keep them separately, which caused Roci to become more and more frustrated. He was roaring the whole day, destroyed the garden, they had to call the vet ‘cause he’d bitten the mare’s neck apart etc. So mid-January I received a message that my donkey was possessed in a way nobody has seen anything like that, so I am to get him from there, otherwise he will end up a sausage. An unworthy and unproductive debate has become of it with Camilla, meanwhile I contacted the Hungarian Donkey Association, watched many YouTube videos about donkey and horse pairings – if someone would see my search histories, would consider me a pervert. (And would be right of course, but not that way, please.:) All of this indicated that my donkey is all right, instead the donkey girlie must have some failure.

Indeed, later this became proven, since it turned out that she’d already been pregnant when she was brought there, and a mare does not fuck when pregnant… So the lesson is – in addition to Rocinante being a superb stallion – to never do any business with an Italian. When I found Camilla on the way as a caretaker, I believed it is the Way giving me lessons, as only trouble I had with the Italians the whole time… After all what remains is the validity of my thesis outlined at the very beginning: I am able to tolerate only 3 of them around me, as Bud Spencer, Rocky Balboa and Supermario – but the last two are fictive characters, so remains the good old Piedone. (OK, maybe Rocco Siffredi, too, but he can also be an urban legend.) I could tell a lot about Itas, but in fact it’s enough to watch a national match of their football team: screaming, complaining, sputtering, and meanwhile playing an irritatingly boring safety game, if in turn someone touches them a finger, they throw themselves and start crying, and on the other hand girls love them ‘cause they’re so sporty and charming, neatly combed Mediterranean males. Obviously, this time it wasn’t the case, but well, attitudes very much like to seek confirmation, eheheh. [1]

I left there a charming cutey donkey who would have been welcomed in any place in the autumn, however I crawled back with him 100kms, and now I have to find a new place in the middle of winter with an uncontrollable horny beast, while I still don’t speak Spanish, still don’t have money, besides these days pilgrims are also rare... how good for me.

In comparison I found the same dumb and gentle beast who I remembered  gobbling all day long as well as do not give a shit of his environment (okay, actually he often gives a lot of shit his environment), including the mare quietly grazing next to him. I was just finishing the booking of my transfer at home when a message arrived from Camilla, saying that I shouldn’t hurry so much, because Rocinante had suddenly calmed down and now the two cross-backed beasts are in the world’s largest harmony. He sensed that he will be deported and has to work again? Whatever, now I go. Actually, it is better that it turned out this way, because my mother’s incomprehension was already quite destructive. For minimum 2 months I’ve been explaining to her why emigrating to the Camino is the best choice for me now (which I don’t start to explain to you, since you are my friends, because you already know and understand it), but she hasn’t understood it, as I don’t understand why she thinks I’m obliged to live at a place and a certain lifestyle in which I feel like shit in long term – tried and tested.

I departed to Barcelona on the 1st of February, obviously with only one hand baggage in which I had to stuff in my coming couple of months, so at the entry gate of Wizzair I faced some problems with forcing the backpack into the size-checking frame. Being rolled over and sat on, the baggage somehow succeeded to fit into the frame. By the way it was some 16 kg instead of the theoretically possible 10kg, but they fortunately seems like not checking the weight. Also fortunately I bought pálinka in the duty free and I could stuff some things into the bag I got with it.

I arrived to the city Saturday evening. I haven’t arranged for accommodation, ‘cause it’s for faggots. By not sleeping at night at least I’ll have the time to walk around the city. Mostly I roamed in the Gothic District of the city and the beach.  The city at night is full of gypsies selling canned beer, since you can’t buy alcohol in the shops after 11 pm. On the beach Hungarian conversation hit my ears: a rasta cyclist with his girlfriend and some relative who had their plane transfer in the morning, so they just cycled over the sights at night in a hurry. He’s living there for 5 years, we changed contacts, so to say that he could help me later if I may start here my own business later. He shared some useful information, e.g. pickpockets are more than the tourists, so I have to be careful. The bus station opened at 5 am and be right the guy, I woke up at appr. 9 o’clock having slept on a chair that someone is packing my backpack and says in Spanish that he just wanted to place it a bit to sit down, but I shall taking care, as so many pickpockets are here… Yeah, kind of this already happened to me in Budapest, too…

(to be continued)

[1] /Already from the very beginning, my „Italian-receptor” has been quite sensitive, approx. from the point of August 2013 when I got stuck at a fuel station in Italy for a day during my hitchhike towards the Spanish-French border, because nobody picked me up there. Then the Hungarian trucker with whom I finally managed to depart – has been stopped and clearly instructed to give some compensation in exchange for the dispense with the allegedly punishable hitchhiking and in general, for everything… When these lines were written, I didn’t even guess that the ominous Italiana will enter into my life, to change it. My ambivalent relationship with Camilla seems like her old testamental omen, in the hindsight. My Italian crushing is also true the other way: the most interesting pilgrims, the best relations and the most memorable experiences almost always can be associated to Italians, respectively. Obviously, I have something to do with them./