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 make the whole of it available here, in 12 parts. Eventual supplements will be always in footnotes... This would be the Part III. (Click HERE for Pt.I., and HERE for Pt.II.)

/…/ I took a night bus to the airport where the policy seems to be letting people bum until 4 am then a security guy walked around and kicked up those being spread over the chairs. I wouldn’t have thought that time that the bus station and airport will be among my best accommodations. My plane departed at 7 am which I slept pretty well as long as Santiago. There, appropriately enough, I was welcomed by a hearty rainfall, and back then had I neither an umbrella, nor a ratty raincoat.

I am just leaving the plane that was due to start backward within an hour, so people were already waiting for it at the gate, and me just passing by the first-boarding VIP passengers out of turn separated by a plexiglas, and checking now, who these 8-10 persona-muy-importante could be: in front, a disabled man in a wheelchair, then some mafia mobster, followed by a kind of businessman, then Paulo Coelho with a woman, then another mafi… WTF! so that is why there is a plexiglas for me not being able to spit over. Yes, I would definitely have salivated on the crippled. And by the crippled I mean Paulo Coelho! who is a honorary citizen of Santiago city despite the fact that he never walked there according to the conclusions of his book about his pilgrimage but a few little cities before arriving there he changed to some alternative „Portal of Glory”¹ in Villafranca del Bierzo, where he received a sword as well as a sense of mission to become a writer and ever since we suck because of the Facebook timelines full of litter of his well-inflated bullshits and brainless heads of aggressively emotional people.

False "prophets" are usually easy to recognize, for example of posing to photos like this...

Okay, of course, maybe it was not him, but I think yes, because sometimes he occurs in Santiago, if only due to his honorary citizenship. And there’s no other travel option from there, only the airport’s low cost flights. By the way, my Coelho-image became more nuanced when – as third of his books – I read his first-written novel (The Pilgrimage), the same infantile style but almost devoid of world saviour mannerism, there’s a bit of humility towards the reader and also towards the writing itself. But then... blows.² Great sorrow of mine is that he was the one designating the narrative of Camino’s communication, because there ought to be some writings written, spoken and documented on the subject, without pseudo-spiritual cheesy ravings.

At the airport hopelessness overcame me. Now what happens actually, which way to start at all and where to bring my donkey... ‘cause there was no specific plan for things like that. Around one and a half hour I was just staring out of my head, asked for hot water to make instant soup, I had no wish to start off carrying my 16-kilo backpack with uncomfortable straps which already wounded my shoulders during the walking in Barcelona. But as soon as I stepped through the door, the sun started to shine through the drizzling rain, so I slightly brightened up, too, and after walking approx. 50 meters a hardly broken umbrella was lying in the ditch. Hardly so, but still in a usable condition. Yeah, okay, now I remember, this is the Camino, there won’t be a problem here. I just caught the wanderlust, marched along the motorway till the evening so that walking 100 kilometres I can take the pilgrim donkey with me. Originally I started off for functional donkey transportation but I already felt in Barcelona that it’s in the bag, I do a pilgrimage again. ‘Cause it’s a state of mind, in which you just enter, with or without any intention.

Since I had only a very little money (approx. 70 Euros to budgeted for uncertain period), I invented a strategy which sneaking enough but actually harms nobody. I remembered that in municipal (i.e. maintained by local government) albergues (i.e. pilgrim accommodations) in Galicia, the hospitaleras/hospitaleros (i.e. “hosts”: landladies and landlords) don’t sleep there but go home in the evenings, leaving doors open for smokers and early birds to be able to go out. In the autumn, indeed, there was a time in the village of Ligonde that I arrived after 9 pm and the hospitalera left already, and I was near sickness – rebellio carnis –, my body wished for a bed so I fainted in the first unoccupied one. However, in the morning I was not able to wake up before the arrival of the hospitalera, so subsequently I paid correctly. Now the idea was that I walk until late in the evening to a place like this, sneak in and now I’ll be able to get up early in the morning. Well then, that never happened. (Camino phenomenon Nr.1: whatever you expect or plan, never happens, but something will happen, anyway.)

In the first evening I arrived right before 10pm to the place called Arzúa, which is the last settlement with infrastructure before Santiago on the pilgrimage road. The hospitalera was just there until 10, so I paid the 6 Euros and at night hand washed all my clothes, plus myself. I haven’t seen any beds or warm water for days, so in the morning they had a hard time waking me up; everyone has already left when I was still collecting my clothes from the radiator, dizzily. Usually it’s better in my tent, ‘cause I’m the typical problematic pilgrim who does everything otherwise and other times (e.g. walks backwards on the road, arrives at the accommodation at night, or just doesn’t have the money but buys a donkey etc.), but then, I was the same as a student, they already got a headache when they caught sight of me at the office of the university. The biggest conclusion of the pilgrimage is when you recognize your own life, your own route in it. Then, a lot of things make sense. Self-knowledge, you know…

In Galicia, the dominating element is water (in addition to the cow shit). When I first arrived here in the end of October, it was the first rainy season of the year, and this is the second one, now it’s just occasionally combined with hail. Walking in hail is not comfortable.  Nor during a storm. The second day my mouth was full of wounds from the dripping snot mixed with rain. The weather is also unbelievably shifting. Even within half an hour there’s storm when the sky is dark and you see nothing, followed by hail, then the sun shines through the drizzly rain, the sky turns blue and for some moments a rainbow appears and then it will be so hot that you even drown in a T-shirt, getting rid of your jacket and two pullovers, then wind comes from which you freeze and it starts from the beginning – and this all, I say, within 30 minutes. Another banality is being filled with content when you are exposed to it and feel so directly on your skin: nothing is permanent, everything changes. Only the change is eternal. Amen.

"Mais amor por favor!"- More love please!  /my celebrity look-alikes/

I mostly walked on the highway because this time, in February only a few come facing me and without oncoming people it’s quite hard to follow the camino-signals. Back then, when I tried, I always lost my way, and now even foot- and hiking stick prints are washed away by the rain in a minute. So I rarely saw a pilgrim or two peeking and wondering about who the fuck it can be that he is going backwards. On the highway, at least remained some chance to hitchhike but I hardly felt like it during the 3 days I got to the donkey. Anyway, hitchhiking in Spain is quite difficult. But I had to hurry, since Camilla went home on the 6^th early in the morning to Italy, for her brother’s wedding.

In the second evening I arrived at the municipal of Casanova village, but the hospitalera was still there so I just asked for permission to make a tea and desecrate their toilet. I decided to go into the night until Ligonde where back then I almost slept for free. I remembered that here a single straight deep road leads through the forest, which is much shorter, as the motorway bypasses the mountain. However, the deep road changed into a river with an average depth of 15 cm from the rainfall, with sporadic mud islands, which didn’t seem an attractive option in the dark, so I just got back to the motorway via a service road. At the next municipal en-route (Palas de Rei) I arrived at around 9pm which in turn was full with a group of 14-15-year-old kids and their teachers. They came from Madrid and people coming from there seem to speak English. They offered me tomato rice (very fasting), and gave me bread for the journey, also made me tell about my pilgrimage. Each of the children turned out to be pretty religious and they are totally interested in my motivations and the experiences. One of the teachers regularly camps kids in this season for a week, from Sarria to Santiago, a distance of approx. 110 km just to feel the Chí a bit. They told me at the farewell that they will pray for me. I will for them, too. Anyway, that was mostly my only big community experience on the road, of which, in turn, the non-winter pilgrimage is always full.

I arrived at Ligonde past midnight but didn’t count with the fact that no pilgrims will be there, thus, the door was locked exceptionally. However, the part in front of the door was covered, when in good position the rain didn’t reach me so I unfolded my almost-dry packed clothes and slept in front of the door like a watchdog. By which I mean that until sunrise I was shivering half asleep in the 2 degrees, and then I succeeded to sleep some 3 hours – thus, starting off pretty late again. Yep, because the zipper of my sleeping bag has already gone awry and here it finally gave up, which of course doesn’t help me to enjoy the thermal comfort. /…/

Albergue Municipal, Ligonde/Aerixe

¹ It is about the „Porta del Perdón” of Villafranca’s St. Jacob’s church, which, according to the tradition, results in the same complete farewell as the “Porta de Gloria” on Compostela’s Cathedral. 

² By the way, years ago I already gave my opinion in Hungarian about the harmful nature of Coelho-phenomenon: http://www.napikozlony.hu/2013/03/erzelgesrol-emberismeretrol/