/…/ I tell you one of my highly spiritual experiences back from autumn, which is a typical camino story considering its dramaturgy, and as for its unique content, very “Rooolandistic”.
The last water before Santiago is the brook of Lavacolla. Pilgrims from afar had usually the last opportunity to wash themselves, 8 km from the finish, before seeing St. James. ‘Cause the pilgrim is dirty and stinky – nowadays actually only a minority of them, for examples me. This washing became a popular tradition; lately it’s been symbolizing a kind of preparation, spiritual purification for the encounter with the apostle. I’d heard of it in a documentary but I have already forgotten. (One part of these kind of traditions I followed, the other part I didn’t, depending on what I felt it was for me. This one I didn’t really care about, I didn’t even remember of it.)
I wanted to camp in Monte do Gozo (5 km before Santiago) in order to catch up with the midday pilgrim mass in the Cathedral the next day. It was already evening, end of October, and a sudden need to urinate crushed on me at a resting place. Rocinante, as usual, started to graze, so I sat down on a bench for a little bit. I didn’t really know where I am exactly, only that it’s already very close to Monte do Gozo. However, tiredness came to me out of nothing, thus for some minutes I even fell asleep sitting, so I rather camped here, at the bank of the brook. Then, at 6 am I woke up to an urgent and relentlessly rushing diarrhea. There was no other option; I had to crawl into the cold, so I dived into my slipper in the gloom – and with the same vigour, into Rocinante’s excrement, insomuch that the donkey shit was splashing between my toes. (I think I mentioned before that he always shits at the closest point to my sleeping place on purpose.) I was just looking around where I could crouch but the sun was already coming up, and all the point were visible from some of the houses nearby, so driven by the urgent compulsion I went into the brook, found a good hiding place under covering trees and – mea maxima culpa – emptied all my intestinal content of unholy quantity and quality into the water. The brook is a great bidet, at the same time cleansing both my feet and slippers from the donkey shit... After departing I read in the guide book (the style of which freaked me out so much that I rarely used it) that it certainly was the brook of Lavacolla, where the above-mentioned tradition is still alive.
I camped here in autumn...
...although I would have to camp here, on the other, more beautiful side of the site. But in this case I would have found place to hide outside the broom :)
Understand? I had to wash myself here! Where millions of pilgrims with spiritual burden have already done the same. (OK, maybe not exactly the same, hehehe.) Not to mention that diarrhea is purification itself!
When I realized this, the flow of synchronicity crushed on me, I marched towards the apostle’s tomb grinning. As if my body has knew what I didn’t. This kind of Camino experience has real attitude- and personality shaping power: when you experience that there’s some relation between your nervous system and the Earth’s magnetic lines and other people’s (including the dead and the unborn) nervous system and the universe and all other things, or in short I’d say: between you and the God. This also indicates that the pilgrim could as well get the guide book the fuck out (which actually René definitely did during his way and continued without it), ‘cause it’s not about fucking recipes dictated by some people that you have to follow, but what the way specifically gives to you.
If it gives you to lose your way (as it happened to me in various forms), then you have to contemplate on and handle it somehow. In the other hand, if it throws that you have to follow a guide book, it also has its symbolic meaning. So the whole way is a big-big metaphor of life. Good go accomplish it to look at your life from above, realize your truth. The Way, the Truth and the Life: all the same!
I have to add, I didn’t get to the cathedral on this day ’cause I was stopped by the rain at the Albergue Acuario in the suburb, the only almost-donkey-compatible place of Santiago of which it turned out lately that Balázs had been working there for years before founding his own little place with similar feeling: age of Aquarius, prayer flags, love&peace etc. In which actually I’ve been working recently.
So in February, arriving here 8 km from Santiago for the second time I washed myself on purpose in the surrealistically cold brook. This day was the first and for some time the last with good weather. In the afternoon the sun finally came out and I was marching in a big flow singing. Arriving in Monte do Gozo, a fellow came out of his huge hacienda to tell me he likes my donkey and would like to buy it. I was just wondering about the same, how I could sell it. However we couldn’t meaningfully communicate, so I wrote down his number to call him later with an “espanglish” expert.
I put my tent on a wooded part near to the pilgrim monument which is supposed to commemorate the happiness of the first sight of the cathedral’s towers – here:
The picture was shot back in autumn; this is the “Mountain of Joy”. The cathedral emerges about a half inch left from the photo’s geometrical centre, in the size of an ant’s cock in the picture. This time I spent here more nights. /.../
/…/ At the albergue of Melide I tied Roci to a tree from where he is able to graze, and in the other direction to run under the roof in case of raining. Do you think he adapted his toilet to the grass?... So in the morning I had to clean the terrace and I left the place as the last one, like always. I found that if I follow the donkey and maneuver with him deftly, he walks faster than being in front of him leading by a rope dragging our feet behind, as I used to. So our average pace became quite acceptable and we caught up with Renée who helped me to lead the donkey onto an elongated piece of stone serving as a bridge at a flooded forest river, with the bridge being 20 centimeters deep under water. But this goosy animal is not able to detect the bridge under the water and treads very lame on the edges, so then came the most spectacular crisis of the way: as the result of our common forcing Rocinante crawled till the middle of the bridge where he suddenly fell into the floating river, with all my stuffs on his back. And this is something what never happened before.
I couldn’t see the bottom of the water so I scared enough ‘cause I had no idea whether a donkey can swim, I just guessed he wouldn’t like to. I grabbed his rope, with the possibility that he will engulf me as well and will die together. But his leg reached the bottom. I tried to pull him out to the other side, but he was not willing to start to this direction. Only back. Nevertheless, the two Korean girls cheered for us while taking back their shoes on the other side. And then one of them took the shoes off again and came back through the bridge to give a towel to the donkey as a gift. She assured me that they will pray for us – that’s why I mentioned (Part 6.) how lucky I was not to ream them out because of their loudness, for I’m sure these prayers are the reason I’m still alive.
On the left: that's how the venue looks like unflooded. On the right: that's how it looks like a little flooded. Just imagine half a meter more water on the "bridge" and it's already invisible... We demand the obstacle-clearing of the Camino for donkeys!
At last I liberated the shivering, soaking wet animal from the saddle-pack, however, thereafter it was not possible to make him back to the bridge, I mean into the water. I said goodbye to Renée who I (spoiler alert!) only saw once more, in Santiago when he was just leaving for home.
I started to dry the poor animal. Unbelievable but he was gobbling even while shivering. I think he’s frustration-eater, like some kind of BridgetJones. And Galicia assisted us in its own way: with hail. But finally the old guy didn’t catch cold, we returned together to the motorway, I squeezed the wet stuffs under the roof of an abandoned gas station and we crushed on towards Arzúa on the emergency lane. Arriving to Arzúa, Rocinante immediately got half a bucket of corn from a fellow who got it from a factory, so that the donkey should also have a little joy on this hard day.
Since I left, this is the first time I had Internet access, which was full of good news. First of all, ex-girlfriend has now officially switched into a hidden mode and removed herself from Facebook where she could remember anyone from her past that she’s alive. And from the circular message she sent to communicate this it’s pretty clear why she doesn’t have friends. She shared neither an information about herself (e.g. from what, how and with whom she lives), nor was she interested in anyone (e.g. who lives from what, how and with whom) in the last more than one year, since she stopped to keep in touch with anyone. During her scholarship, when her Americas reference group mates were power-users on Facebook worthy of the western exhibitionist ego, she used it the same way. And now her actual reference group (one person) is anti-Facebook face, so it was just matter of time until she also stops to be active. And those for whom she sent this letter (exactly those who are recipients of this letter of mine, too) are actually my friends... Live long and prosper!
The other thing was a message from Balázs, the owner of the Albergue Delfín in Muxia saying everything’s OK – things we were talking about as opportunities in Budapest: as closure of the winter break I could clean and open the place when I arrive at the oceanfront, and hospitably welcome the pilgrim mates. Even 2 km from here there’s a farm, too, with donkeys among others, and if I can’t find anything else until then, he contacts the people living there and asks about the parking options. Foreigners also used to work there (some kind of wwoofing I guess), it could even be a perspective for me, too. Great, great, great.
Alba has also answered, although pretty belatedly. She is the one whose mother took care of the donkey after I arrived in Santiago in the autumn. I parked Roci at their hacienda of horses and donkeys for a couple of days so that I could go to the Ocean alone. I wrote to her in January if she had an idea for me ‘cause the Italianism was just take me into trouble. She answered me just now that her mother (called Mayka) is totally OK with me leaving Rocinante there for uncertain period of time. Anyway, there wasn’t problem with him the last time either and also he got along well with their female donkey. That’s how I’m sure that there’s nothing wrong with my donkey’s social skills. However, I wouldn’t have liked that, since it’s a big favor and I don’t have any idea how I could return this. At least there was an emergency scenario for the donkey and also for me.
It was getting dark when we moved on, for staying overnight is my life. I was focusing on stables, squatting, municipal albergues to sneak in, but found nothing liveable so we were marching in the seemingly endless and rainy night to the village Santa Irene (approx. 20 km from Santiago) where there’s a covered resting place with drinking fountain which is a luxury thing, isn’t it. In this place, I made my bed on the bench, full-homeless style. It was so fricken’ cold. But now, even in wintertime I didn’t catch cold, just as neither in autumn, and also the disappearing process of my herpes took fewer days than ever. So I definitely returned to my faith (spoiler alert again!) that I will arrive somewhere – just like the history. /.../
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... /CLICK HERE for the former parts/
/.../ In the morning we moved on late again as usual in the unusually capricious weather you just can’t get used to. The socks hung-out to dry became wetter, but at least they couldn’t have smelled worse. Taking on them is already a pretty time-consuming torture itself from which mostly was part of my daily routine. Meanwhile early-bird pilgrims arrived sporadically, almost every one of them (=about five) was busy with the donkey (=petting him, asking me, taking photos of him, taking photos of me), this finally made me feel like it’s camino again. Koreans are cuckoo eggs even regarding this: I usually hear only a photo click from behind and when I turn, he’s just staring around with his big camera with huge telephoto lenses or with an iPad in his hands, squinting a characteristic “it was not me” facial expression despite the fact that nobody else’s in the surrounding.
I could write a book on Koreans, too. Obviously there are cool people and not so cool ones among them, just like among Italians or among Hungarians, respectively, but it’s worth to pay attention to common features, to elaborate more on national spirits. For me, at least, it’s quite entertaining. Also keeping in mind that already some certain kind of people come to the Camino from a place. ‘cause for instance, with Americans I had pretty good experiences last autumn but I feel this impression would change in time if I moved among them to the States – to one of the many.
We arrived in Melide early afternoon where they were just packing up the market and I could acquire some uglier fruits and salads „para el burro”, but sure enough the bigger amount was not eaten by the burro but me. The burro in turn got carrot in a shop, however, this we shared, too, ‘cause for him there’s always grass. Róóócinante is a real junky jerk: only interested In grass and dust, the latter for wallowing purposes. At this time started my carrot-fasting also lasting till today. I’m already starting to become a rabbit.
So Rocinante is a burro laying golden eggs (+ vast amounts of donkey crap), this time laying golden second-quality-fruits for the two of us. The sun was shining for longer periods but that day I stopped to put myself in order at the municipal albergue in an exceptionally early hour. This lasted till the evening, I paid and used the place, respectively (Rocinante has also eaten up all the grass and shitted all over it). Also wanted to sleep in the afternoon but was not able due to two Korean chicks together with their tablets laughing aloud on videos. Incredibly technocratic folks. Next day I thanked myself I’m that conflict-avoiding type and didn’t attack them (+a smiley winking mysteriously)...
Renée arrived in the evening: peregrino alemán in his forties with a big family but pilgriming alone, with whom I had a nice conversation during dinner. Before I mostly met Koreans, Spanish’ not speaking other languages, lunatics and bums and different combination of these. But there were days when I encountered no one. This is in the winter’s stock. With Renée there was Camino phenomenon analysis and positive thinking-rotation going on which anyway the non-winter pilgrimage is full of. This way, running into only a few social acts, they have a much more specific colouring.
He opened with the notion that it may not be so fortunate to identify with Don Quixote because it’s story doesn’t have a happy ending: dies without getting Dulcinea. Yeah, I say, but Dulcinea, in fact, is a peasant slut. Well, yes, well yes. (Because he’s idealizing a blatant burned-out cowgirl as a princess.) But anyway I gave it a thought. Don Quixote’s story also focuses on his way not on some goals or a happy end... Renée told me about a book important to him discussing the scientific theory that time doesn’t exist, but it’s only the illusion of the human mind and the events are just... khm, existing in the “eternity”, linearity is perceived only by us because our brain needs it. I would like to see if it became clear for everyone ‘cause then I shouldn’t learn this fucking many tenses in Spanish language, wehe.
In any case, it would explain a lot.
Not only the fact why I also feel the same with an animal mate along the conclusions of a long journey but the proof of the Schillerian teleology, too, which I already shared with you (Part 2.). Because no wonder all everything indicates that the flow of the world takes the direction of a certain outcome, when this outcome has eventually came out already, and the word “already” actually doesn’t refer to anything. However, human somehow lost its connection with the present, because being a single species human is aware of its death, its transience and thus, constantly worrying about the future or lamenting the past. As I see, the aim of religious practices – regardless of denomination – is always returning to the present: you dissolve in the present in the eastern meditations, and furthermore Christianity also proclaims that eternity is open to the human as love has won over death. If time is just an illusion, death is an illusion too, obviously. /.../
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... /CLICK HERE for the former parts/
/…/ I got into lows, also confirmed by my herpes which decorates my fluffy lips only when my immune system becomes week due to my despicable state of mind. In the Autumn I was continuously checking my lips because of the bad hygienic conditions but never found a thing as I was harder than The Rolling Stones itself. And now I just fell down after a couple of days so that my lips would flower by the morning, which is not a good beginning of changing lifestyle. Camilla went to be with family (actually it must be fun in Italy), and me just started to put the pack together, wash-dry and systematize my stuff. This made it pretty late, outside was a damn big weather so I remained for another bitterly cold night. And I also played with the donkeys.
The she-donkey proved to be smarter than Rocinante: always jumping more quickly to the reward carrots and tangerine clove so one should not wonder how she succeeded to faint the approach of the male bastard. But it can also be that when pregnant, jumping to tangerine and the approach-fainting are both instinctive. Look, how she’s teasing Roci with her butt:
Cockwarmer!
Meanwhile the Ita’-German couple started off again to search for the lost dog in the 30-km radius which they couldn’t find the day before. While they were away, an unknown big black dog started to mill around in front of the kitchen window whom the other dogs greeted him as a friend: the lost sheep returned so I let him in. This made a little improvement on my quite shattered reputation, so I could start off the next day with Rocinante in peace.
Right at the first kilometer we encountered the donkey-nightmare, in which, thereafter, we have regularly: a small bridge in the forest covered by the swollen river, so you have to go into the water. In such cases the human being just takes off his shoes, however, the donkey only stops. And when a donkey stops, it is definitely stopped. He doesn’t see the difference between the water depth of the bridge and the river, no matter how hard you pull him and try to provide a good example. And if you push him, he just turns and starts to run in the opposite direction. And it is not cool ‘cause he’s amazingly quick, except, of course, when he has to go into the direction you want. In case you are able to catch the bridle in the right moment, then he pulls you as a kite behind himself, the same as the little girl walking a giant dog on a leash in a cartoon. The solution is usually walking around – with a lot of asking and making out the map. So the 100km to Santiago was absolutely not 100km for us.
Night fell on us at Portomarín which I only remembered as the town of the unreasonably high and long bridge, since under which only a two meters wide, ankle-deep creek was flowing in the Autumn. By now it was as big as the Tisza river at the town of Tokaj in Hungary almost reaching the top of the bridge – so maybe this bridge is not so unreasonable after all. Over here, I mostly came on the motorway, now for a change, following the signs I lead Rocinante into the forest, in the midst of which we found pretty bad conditions: here, the water wasn’t 10 cm but was knee-high instead and unavoidable and me just hardly seeing nothing ‘cause just had a small bike light. Obviously it was raining. I won’t crawl back in the dark, here the donkey will be kicked over.
After several failed attempts I had the idea that I’ll tie him to a tree ahead that there would be no possibility for him to run back. Because first he succeeded and these can cause pretty great downtimes. Scandalizing this hapless animal from behind with a stick until he wades into the water: in such cases, in order to succeed the power of beats have to harmonize with the animal’s degree of fear, however now this poor donkey was so afraid that I couldn't make him move at all, he rather endured anything marking time. These are the most miserable deadlocks. Surely hurts me more that flattering word doesn’t make it possible to start him move. When you beat his butt, he farts, respectively. And now, he even shitted a big one so that I should evade it while struggling in the dark; but no way had he started to move.
Finally I had an idea to brake down the stonewall surrounding the deep road, lead the donkey to the dense shrubbery lying over the road, in an attempt to get around the temporary stream. Only that in the bushes there was a stream, too! We waded knee-deep in the mud, the spikes torn my jacket and all the pack on the donkey apart. Blood was flowing from my hand and saliva from my mouth holding the flashlight but so that it infiltrated to the lamp that already sucked anyway, the glass became hazy from saliva inside which made it flicker more faintly. The trouble is coming thick and fast, always has been. With the method of tying-to-the-other-side I succeeded to motivate him through the bushes this time and finally we got to the village of Gonzar. Telling this all costs only a few sentences, but I felt to be in a never-ending horror story...
Otherwise, we went into the woods several times in autumn, too, which can be quite scary, especially when you encounter similar difficulties. Now, when I think back to those cases I always have goose bumps that how comes I didn’t have fear of death on these unknown paths that time. Probably, because my donkey-buddy was with me. Who obviously would have eaten my corpse as being a huge fucking son of a bitch anyway. As well as being a fat gobbling machine! No matter how vegetarian he is, he sure would eat me, only for the sake of insulting my piety.
So donkey is not a winter livestock. But cute,for he has a larger fur this time.
Mr. Fur and owner in winter outfit
I had a lot of memories of Gonzar, which now was increased with finding the municipal closed at night in the absence of pilgrims, here too. Nevertheless, I found a really cool stable in the near so I slept on the straw with the donkey, like the Holy Family. It was completely good but not for winter, so freezing again. Anyway, I will chose it again next time I come back. There was even a water tap, complete luxury. Also apple trees with sporadically barely rotten fruits in February. A memorable accommodation.
However – due to the adventure with bushes – I started to get a hopelessly shabby look which my increasing homeless bouquet made even more congruent. Nobody looks good in a torn, filthy jacket. Nevertheless I didn’t get to the accommodation the next night either, but laid down on the outside of an abandoned house in a mountain village en-route where I could also tie Rocinante so that he will be able to reach the grass outside but in the same time to be able to escape from the rain under the roof. Obviously he shitted right under my nose, not on the grassy part outside.
The donkey does his toilet work in a very intelligent way: he drops his marbles even 5-6 times a night, always the same place. He smells it whether it’s his crap, yeah it is, oversteps it and shits the pile of crap again. So I quickly threw it away from beside me to a more distant place (the rope being available for me that time was unfortunately quite short) but despite of it he shitted at the same place again. So I can’t think of it as not intentional anymore. I had the same impression already in autumn. But I couldn’t tie him anywhere else ‘cause if he doesn’t eat due to the lack of grass or doesn’t sleep due to the rain, then he’s totally out of control the next day... Otherwise there’s a lot of run-down, enclosed buildings along the way just who the hell wants to squat in gallego villages of 20-30 residents where you don’t even really have a concrete road, let alone anything else. Oh, me! I do! Anti-business-ideas start to born in my head from what and how to live in a happy way along the Camino route. /.../
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 is the Part IV. :* (CLICK for the former parts!)
/…/ From here the motorway is not parallel with the Camino, so I had to cross the temporary rivers. The socks-plasticbag-socksagain combination only served me with destroying two pairs of socks in the same time out of three. Decorticating them from my sexy kind of feet in the end of the day has never provided me with a heartwarmingly sensual experience. Such things that blister, which is the biggest agony of a pilgrim, I already ignored in addition to the myriad of other inconvenience, especially that my whole foot was so withered like one great contiguous blister.
Obviously, my tormented boot of 5700 HUF (~18 euros) also started to give up. But so many things have we lived through together that in the meanwhile I got to love it, it remained a mate even despite the many holes. Camino phenomenon Nr.2: people start to attribute soul to their objects. Except for some “decadent Western bourgeois” who simply throw out their not exactly 5700 HUF perfect boot when getting wrinkled a little bit. (These can be collected by donkey, so since then I also have a pair of good short shoes.) They are the reason the Camino became good business, this way were established those many shops, restaurants and available arty trashes along the way, from which sometimes you can vomit on the Camino Francés. But in turn I’ve met many people who, for example, named their hiking stick. If you have only a few stuff, this few starts to behave like your extended yourself, thus, a part of your soul quasi migrates into them. So was my attitude towards this mere set of holes containing traces of shoes… Major part of the infrastructure is obviously closed in wintertime, so it was definitely worth to experience this little tour: the atmosphere is very different, business-free and… differently-good.
On the way the umbrella-found went awry, too, so I fled into a village church to avoid the heavier showers as well as to find my inner peace a little bit – at least until the end of the showers. Also to message Camilla my whereabouts. She was probably not happy that I arrive exactly that evening, since she had a lot to prepare for her route. She comforted me that while she’ll be away, a couple of Italian-guy + German-girl combination from the neighborhood moves in to take care of her dogs and girlie donkey, so I should not hurry ‘cause they will be there and Rocinante still behaves well.[1] Fuck, so now I just want to meet her to discuss it in person, and if the two donkeys are nice with each other as she imagined at the beginning, then – since she so much wanted it – it would be better for her, too, if Roci still stayed.
I was pretty naïve, because by the time I got there through the increasingly difficult obstacles of water and mud, dead-sleepily and run-down, with backpack of 16 kilos on my back, at 9pm, they didn’t wait for me: light was on, dogs were barking but nobody let me in. When they finally got back it turned out that Camilla got a new dog (already hard to count the number of them, as she also kept four of those born in November), who escaped and the three of them together started the search but couldn’t find it. Why the hell must it be there another dog at a place where you already can’t make a step, especially for someone without money and unable to make ends meet without familial support at the age of thirty-eight? And no way could Rocinante stay! Now he has to get the hell out of here ‘cause he made her last two months miserable. Easiest to blame an animal for a situation that she made herself. And while covering the reality with dogs, bathing in the appreciation postulated for “animal charity”? Patting her own shoulder how great a person she is… OK, Camilla is not a simple case, she has an extremely hard story and a lot more problems to cope with than any of us, so I don’t want to judge over her at all, only it hurted that she in turn has judged over me, despite my honest intent and the fact I didn’t want to cause any harm.
And I certainly didn’t expect that they are going to look at me as a piece of shit. The Italian guy all along was very fair with me. (Note: an intelligent culture racist doesn’t generalize people, of course I don’t hate Italians, indeed! only just the manifestation of “Italianity”: being a mugger and being fucking fair to be cool, self-respecting pride and aggression instead of assertiveness…) But his chick who seems like an abstinent junkie continuously confirmed Camilla in her silliness so in the end I had to be glad to be allowed to sleep on the ground of an unheated empty room there. In the house which she wanted to lick into the shape of an ordinary donativo albergue last time, but in the end, instead, she decided to set up a kennel from it.
And I had inside all the stuffs for the donkey and camping lifestyle, plus Rocinante in the yard. And now I had to feel like crap, because referring to the letter of the Donkey Committee and a bunch of YouTube videos (and the common sense) and also deeply caring about the problem I’ve written my proposed solutions from home, which are contrary to their good-hearted husbandry principles. I wouldn’t go into details now.
In November (2013) everything seemed perfect here - "Musicians of Bremen" are forming
I felt shame set and almost sank there. This is one of my life-dread that when I know for sure that I'm right (already from the fact that I’m incomparably more rational and calmer than my opponent) I can’t argue with her because I don’t put that much emotion into it. And most people can be so indignant and self-confident that in the end I also believe they are right, no matter I know they aren’t. In general, this is one of the fucking great injustices encoded in evolution and one main reason for the established social hierarchy‘s absurdity.
Meanwhile the dogs totally ate most of my bread stock (and they took apart my extravagant aviator sunglasses which I could collect from different parts of the hacienda; don’t mention it), so then started the permanently lingering hunger, still ongoing. No shops could be found in the neighborhood, most of these little villages don’t have any. I left some stuff here in November that I can trail with the donkey but not allowed as hand baggage on a low cost flight. Thus, I slept on my polyfoam, finally got a raincoat, yeahh, and could wear my fourth pullover, too. But my jacket was soaked, so unbelievably I froze more and slept less than the night before.
The self-loathing and the despair I drifted into was much worse than all, and that it was the first time the horror came to my mind that maybe my mother was right and the life-style I dreamed couldn’t be sustainable. Of course, she also creates her right with the constant speeches of that. Instead of admitting that this time – which is in my opinion the only adequate reaction: support –, can only be contra-productive and based on this admission, say, she would strengthen me in my decisions, ‘cause as you see they are fucking not easy. However, the more thoughtful! /…/
[1] I just recieved some information of them a few days ago: they still live in Galicia and recently they had a baby - congratulations and all the best!! :)
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 problematicpilgrim 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 6th 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.
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 II. (CLICK here for the Part I.) !
/.../ I toured the city in bright sunshine. People sunbathing in shorts and T-shirts meant quite a big buzz for me in the beginning of February, as being Sunday, already pretty massively at the afternoon. I saw the Gaudi quarter and besides, the Sagrada Familia which is a crazy big church without a rear part but with two fronts instead, and the line of those wanting to watch it from inside lasts from one of the fronts to the other. I’ve never seen so many people lining up for a church or any other building. And me… being chased by a curse which doesn’t allow me to see famous churches without any racks. This was being reconstructed, just like Santiago Cathedral’s “Porta de Gloria”, from my first arrival to the second. Ditto is the Leon Cathedral, and now the famous chapel of Muxia (where I am just now), Virxen de Barca is also being reconstructed, after having its roof burned by a lightning at Christmas – hmm, some food for thoughts. In front of another big church of Santiago me and the donkey were even photographed by a journalist in November, and we appeared on the front page with the text that “Franciscans’ San Francisco Church is being reconstructed which pilgrims are visiting for 800 years”, and I was the pilgrim representative, however I feel even more so becoming a reconstruction representative.
Barcelona is a city with an awesome multicultural atmosphere: university students, street musicians, catholicism, transvestites, football mania, many-many tourists and foreigners living there etc. And at night, anyway, the party mood didn’t really differ from that of Kazinczy street, and the beach part from the Hajógyári (famous party places in Budapest)…
My plane was to depart from Barcelona to Santiago only the next morning, so towards the evening I set on the coastal sand to chill, and a Peruvian guy of the same age found me to offer his beer and fragrantsmoke, so, me in turn offered him my pálinka. Then, as it was getting dark we found a Brazilian group playing music around a fire lit in a metal barrel. He says, according to his current knowledge the Hungarian girls are beautiful. And that the Hungarians are something like the Polish, aren’t they? ‘Cause Polish people are very cool, he thinks. It turned out, the previous day he was partying with Poles, and now we just ran into one of them: a girl with dreadlocks who was trying to roller skate in a really funny way. You find a lot of sucking roller skaters in Spain, however I’ve never seen a roller skater who does it well. (This may be a fashion, something like fluting bad, from which I used to collect the donkey’s price, then I’ve seen in Santiago at least three other guys fluting bad. This is the Zeitgeist!) And I almost learnt how to say in Polish that „Polak, Wegier dwa bratanki / drink tugedör something-something”. For some months, the girl has been working as a volunteer, she seemed as one to have sense, so I asked her about Catalonian life. She says in overall it’s peaceful, everyone is more relaxed than anywhere else she’d been living, and also everyone herbage and according to her these two are associated. I would complete this picture with one more thing: everyone plays football. Everyone! On the squares and streets grannies are playing football with small granddaughters and stuffs like that.
With the Peruvian we went up to one of his Ecuadorian dudes, to a pretty interesting flat of a many centuries old building. You have to crawl a fucking steep spiral staircase to reach the umpteenth floor, like in some minarets (before daybreak, half-drunk & peed it can be troublesome), a little hole with a big feeling, exactly like fucking in the ass, ha-ha; I’ve never seen any apartment like that. The guy is some dancer, the kind of Latin (s)expert from whom our bored women come to life in case we let them go to salsa nights. He also started with sharing his knowledge about Hungarian girls as the most beautiful. Or Bulgarians? He doesn’t remember exactly. Well, both can be beautiful I guess. Anyway, I like this stereotype more than some of those I ran into earlier like “Hungary? I read that racism is a big deal over there nowadays” or “Hungary? I know, where it used to be communism, and there’s again some dictatorship”, or there was the 18-year German couple being just passing through Budapest, when some pitiful son of a bitch suggested in the Parliament that Judean representatives should be written on a list – and they remembered this, Germans are pretty sensitive to this topic.
Nah, but the Ecuadorian obviously prefers the Brazilian big booty. Showed every kind of South-American ass-wriggling music’s on Tube, e.g. an aging fellow with enormous googles died of heroin overdose in the 70’s. I say it doesn’t look like a pop star; he answers that’s why he’s the biggest, ‘cause he’s natural! I had to repress my laughter, respectively, there was some “Love Boys Twins”-like band name, too, with some alcoholics in their 60’s, wearing seal rings and unbuttoned shirts. We consumed our residues and I told them that I certainly know only Sepultura from South-America. Then it turned out to be an equally common cultural treasure for them! Cavalera brothers are national heroes, not only for Brazilians, but for the whole continent. They two told stories of them, and also showed yellowed ancient-Sepu live recordings… So I was just getting and getting cultural shocked.
This southamericanization was especially interesting to me ’cause in the Autumn I made friends with an Argentine lad, who was just preparing to move to an eco-commune in the surroundings of Montevideo, where I could also go maybe, and now this was just the first sign among the later ones that after finishing my camino mission, I may take the direction that way.[1] On the Camino your focus is getting to be sharpened to signs. And obviously you generate them, too, which in turn results in deeper self-knowledge. Just before leaving, I’d spent some days at CH, and almost every day somehow Sepultura came to our mind, however neither of us is a big fan of it... Something like this is how coincidences make up into being meaningful, and if it has somehow any destiny-shaping effect, than it almost doesn’t matter whether coincidences were sent by God (and this way they are not even coincidences any more), or they are created by the person himself, or they were created just like that – or these three are the same, only with other words... South America: storaged in mind.
For example the topic of my philosophy thesis doesn’t reflect my interest at that time at all, was just thrown by the machine: I wrote about Friedrich Schiller’s teleological approach who used to muse a lot whether history is going to somewhere, whether it has a development line, whether it has a goal. He concludes that it has. And many people conclude this, and their reasoning even makes sense. And my thesis had a part, too, that it’s also true on the individual level, as ontogenesis repeats phylogenesis already in the womb: within a few months organs develop in an order and the nervous system differentiates in a way that had been formed at our ancestors through evolution over millions of years. Characteristic behavior patterns of children of certain age always correspond to the characteristic acts of a certain evolutionary step (e.g. peer relationships become important around the age of 4, like people also gathered into tribes in a certain level, and even in the kindergarten there’s always the boss etc.) And then all die, but meanwhile through the many seemingly ad hoc events they get somewhere, and by the end, respectively, a life-career line can be drawn, with causes and effects. Probably this is what Eric Berne calls “Scripts”. And this is what Schiller calls teleology at the social level. It was a coincidence that I wrote an essay on this, and all at once it found a place in my life, as lately everything directs my thoughts towards these kind of things. The cliché that there are no coincidences, shines in a new light along the pilgrimage. This truth comforts me, because if the natural development line of the things are anyway given, then I can’t screw up anything. Enough to live in the belief that the whole comes out well. And if in the end it didn’t come out well, then it’s all the same, why bothering. But anyway, I think this approach itself facilitates the things to come out well…
By the way, the dancer dude wants to start his pilgrimage just in the summer, on a less crowded Camino route, maybe on the Norte, so he in turn took my appearance a sign. Ever since he wrote that he is preparing for it, so we may see each other again.
(to be cont.)
[1] Later, signs leading towards Uruguay peaked long after writing this letter, with the first creature I got to know from this country: a girl.
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./
/Az eredeti magyar verzió a drot.eu -n jelent meg, KATT IDEérte!/
I used to be a financier in Zurich, then inherited three prospering businesses from my father. I got everything, but one night while just making Mrs.Andyvajna Shakira Palvin suck in my jacuzzi for five hundred per hour, suddenly the feeling of emptiness occupied me. I realized that it is not what I need. My life was not complete. So I got out of the water, packed my backpack and a week later I found myself at the Caribbean’s working as a crab fisherman; ever since I travel the world and aim to inspire people with my personal story…
Last time it was raining the whole day, so while being bored, I read traveler blogs at an open wi-fi place and learned that the majority of the stories is built on this frame. Well, not mine.
‘Cause at a certain point, no matter how hard I tried to pack my backpack, since I had no money for a backpack.
Finally, my mother borrowed one for me from her friend so that I could start my pilgrimage. (Aunt Pirike, at my next visit I promise I give it back!)
Let’s start from the beginning.
Following my meticulously lengthened rural university studies I became a penniless, fucked-up literature teacher at a small town’s school near to Cock-Of-The-Death.
(Now I already would be better, but on the one hand, similarly penniless, and on the other hand, I wouldn’t be it anymore.) A real neurotic master of liberal arts being horny to Derrida’s works (and also using a great deal of unnecessary brackets and semicolons); however, the world still refuses to understand him.
At the time, I had a pretty awesome girlfriend for several years, but then she rather ran off with a cruising German pseudo-hippie, and started to travel the world together, living in a Transporter painted like Scooby Doo’s Mystery Wagon. She’s even changed her name, now she’s called something like Love-rescuer Blossomly Yoko Ono and lives with Fritz somewhere in Harmony Land with their own water source, own dog and rainbow factory. Indeed, they have their own travel blog, the base storyline of which follows the recipe outlined above, even if they would probably interpret it differently.
Anyway, I understand very well she ran off.
On this rainy day full of reading, I was just shaking my head even on the travel scripts elevated as a lifestyle, but I remember when I moved to Budapest after my teaching career, and continuing the office social-not-working at home, I was browsing the holiday photos of my rarely seen ex-schoolmates, sometimes I also felt like post something. (Usually I don’t do it, because I believe
status update is a lie even in it’s name: any time I tried, my state never became fresher or more up-to-date, however, that time it would have been in need of that.)
I would have written above my unshaved selfie face captured in my misty room at Pest: “who wants your fancy cocktail and blonde bikini girl on Ibiza, you gigolo asshole?! I’ve just smoked a poor quality joint and will soon toss off to online porn, just a pity that it falters, ‘cause I steal the wi-fi from the neighbor, anyway it doesn’t matter because I have to go down soon to drink a Kőbányai beer bought from coins hardly collected from under the bed – with a pal on the concrete pingpong table to have a conversation about how beautiful our life is…”
I would also like a punchier name (like Max Power or Krisztina Bombera), but I am Banka Roland and this is it. It’s good to keep in mind where we came from.
Me, for example, from a traditional loser dynasty where I learned from my divorced parents at an early age that money is something to stress, be uncomfortable, argue about, to freak out while gaining it, and to be indignant and ashamed in the lack of it (i.e. always). When – as a decipher of this radical experience –
I saw the national corruption continuously being cumulated starting from the regime change is already growing not only in its quantity, but with a qualitative shift it has changed into absurd, then I decided not to assist to this game anymore.
Money transforms humanoid into bastard villain however he originally came to Earth to do good things. Boycott politics, boycott money! I won’t quit the loser side by collecting more money, but by simply ignoring it. And my name I don’t change, but turn to my benefit, attributing it to God’s sense of humor. (Last year I had an Italian girlfriend, the only one since Yoko. I was thinking that if we had a daughter I could name her Banka D’Italia after an Italian national bank, but then it turned as bad that finally I stated collective guilt not only regarding banks, but temporarily regarding Italians too…)
Back to the story, I haven’t posted the misty-unshaved selfie, but I went down to the pingpong table to that Kőbányai, and mentioned to my pal that maybe we should go to Spain to visit that Composting St. James, see if he says something smart. He answered:
“El Camino? That’s cool… Anyway, since when are you a bored housewife in her fifties with children already flown out and having read too many Coelho which has made her even dumber?!”
There are a lot of stereotypes about the St. James pilgrimage, this was only one of them. Let’s see whether I can disprove some of them.
The first step: I rather don’t invite this pal to join me. But instead I invited another one who has some movie making experience and he threw in the idea of shooting a video blog or one longer documentary on the way. And if we would find a sponsor to this, then we immediately had the missing financial coverage to our pilgrimage.
Good idea!
We like walking pretty much, only we shouldn’t carry that lot of stuff, especially if we go with cameras and those other shitty gears… And, in that special moment one totally flippant sentence came from his lips, kind of sentence of which hundreds come from his lips day by day, but that one in this case specifically has changed my life:
“We should get a donkey or something.”
…
THIS IS IT!
Donkeys are terribly cute.
So I wrote the sponsor-hunting project outline which already included the donkey business, I show some details of it:
„Today’s materialism as well as the deterioration of human &nature relationship share a common root. This is the idea behind the growing number of alternative societies trying to take steps towards self-sufficiency, as antithesis of the technocratic-materialistic spirit of this age.
People disgusted from urban rush returning to sustainable and renewable resources can be considered as Earth’s sporadic immunoreactions, as the system determining the world’s economy increasingly proves to be untenable in a long term.
Social disintegration and the elimination of money as measure of value result in a number of contradictions and encounter many difficulties. Our intended documentary is searching for the unlocking of these contradictions and difficulties at a micro level, meanwhile considering the possibility that perfect solutions may not exist. From our perspective, it is the process what interests us, which is often symbolized by a way. /…/ The fact that the traditional religions’ role has diminished left a spiritual space in the western culture behind, which a reasonable part of youth aims to fill with personal religiosity with eclectic motifs, independent of churches. This usually includes the combination of humanitarian principles with self-fulfilling and self-transcendental ambitions. This kind of personal religiosity – just as in case of organized religions –often considers the Camino as its catalyst, or even its foundation. /…/ From amongst the target topics
materialism is inconsistent with the cash fund deprived lifestyle reducing the consumer needs to a minimum; in contrast to the alienation from nature, semi-nomadic conditions and a donkey as company – and of course as a consequence of these: responsibility.
/…/ We’ll name the donkey from the famous Spanish hoofed-character, Rocinante because we consider our trip as an experimental pilgrimage of a modern Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, driven by extinct values. In addition to the perpetuation of our own experiences and reflections, a big part of the captures would operate with pictures and interviews of interesting characters, thereby processing life histories as well as searching for common points in the phenomenon of the alternative religiosity.”
The guy cancelled the route of course, but the thing is that I am still doing it.
Documentary didn’t become of it, however, we already have some partial results as answers to questions raised! To communicate it outwards I do what currently I can: just started to edit a blog. Indeed, now that my status is already freshly updated from the lot of walking, I even do some “status updates” on its Facebook page. As I mentioned, I also try to turn my name to be a benefit: the title of the blog is Rolandante – from the fusion of the donkey’s and the owner’s name. As a matter of fact, Roland, my Old French mythical hero-namesake is one of Don Quixote’s chivalric role models, and andante means walking, step by step – as if it were written above the music sheet of my journeys. (Not to mention the renaissance Dante ‘cause – though he’s gone through inferno and heaven, just like me – he was a politician, what’s more, was an Italian, too! In love with a descendant of a banker. Blows.)
Stories of self-realizations like mentioned above in the epilogue are not only didn’t inspired me, but in fact, frustrated the hell out of me.
They suggest that in order to change lifestyle, first you have to experience the emptiness of the meaning “successfulness” dictated by the current social order. This I have never experienced. On the other hand, I would be happy to inspire, after all I’m still a teacher (plus meanwhile I also graduated from psychology); my professional identity is intact, I only have problem with the system. From which – good news! – it is possible to quit. Let this short story below be an epilogue to this, which – combining La Fountaine and Vonnegut – was born when I was collecting money for the donkey by fluting folk songs for several days, at the border of Rocinante’s place of origin.
The Ant and the Cricket
Once upon a time, the cricket was partying the whole summer and chilling out in the fields, while the ant was working hard beside him.
Then came the winter and the cricket was starving, because he had nothing harvested to eat, in contrast with the ant who was just completely dead, as the average life expectancy of the ordinary black ant (lasius niger) is 4-6 months.
Hogy ne lógjon a levegőben, mit és meddig csinálok és csináltam eddig Spanyolországban, itt egy összegző időrendi visszatekintés, amire biztos sokat fogok majd hivatkozni. Így nézett ki a történet, a mai nappal bezárólag. :)
Not to let the thing hang in the air anymore what I’ve done in Spain so far and for how long I’ve done them, here comes a summarizing chronological retrospection what I surely will refer to a lot. So, the story looked like this, until this day. :)
I. A naaagy eredeti zarándoklat, 2013 / The biiiiig original pilgrimage, 2013
1.) 16 – 20 August 2013. Budaörs – Ostabat
Stoppolás Budaörstől a francia-baszk Ostabat faluig, ahol a 3 tradicionális franciaországi zarándokút találkozik.
Hitchhike from Budaörs to the French-Basque village Ostabat where the 3 traditional French pilgrimage routes meet.
I.1. Stoppolás Franciaországon át, sátorozás ilyen helyeken / Hitchiking through France, camping at places like this
2.) 21 August – 2 September 2013. Ostabat – Estella
Séta Ostabattól, St.Jean Pied de Porton, Roncesvallesen és Pamplonán keresztül a navarrai Estella városkáig.
Walk from Ostabat, through St.Jean Pied de Port, Roncesvalles and Pamplona, to the little town of Navarra, Estella.
I.2. Hello Africa, hello BAZ megye - pár nap egy pamplonai hajléktalanszállón / With roommates of a homeless center in Pamplona
3.) 3 – 12 September 2013. Estella
Estellában sikertelen alkudozási kísérletek a szamárra látatlanul, majd megismerkedés Rocinantéval, akit akkor még Anastasionak hívtak, szerelem első látásra, gyűjtögetés rá utcazenével, majd várakozás az állatorvosi papírokra, és kezdődnek az első szamaras zarándoknapok… Horror! A valaha volt leglassabb erőltetett menet…
In Estella, unsuccessful bargaining attempts with the donkey unseen, then getting to know Rocinante (that time called Anastasio), love at first sight, collecting money with street music to buy him, then waiting for the veterinary papers, and the first days of pilgrimage with donkey have begun… Horror! The slowest forced march ever…
I.3. Az első megcsacsigoltatott gyerekek Estella határában / First children rode on my first donkey
4.) 3 days in mid-October 2013. Matavenero
Matavenero független község, és hozzá a Cruz de Ferro eredeti, régi helyének meglátogatása –kiemelendő highlight kívül a zarándokúton, 7km-re Manjaríntól.
Visiting Matavenero independent village and the original old place of Cruz de Ferro – prominent highlight of the pilgrimage, outside the pilgrimage road.
I.4. Vacsi készül Mataveneroban / Preparing dinner at the community kitchen of Matavenero
5.) 1 – 3 November 2013. Santiago de Compostela
Első megérkezés Santiagoba, sírás-rívás, apostolölelgetés, Rocinante megőrzésbe adása a környéken. (Saját képem nincs innen, van viszont egy a Voz de Galicia napilapból.)
First arrival to Santiago, weeping and Apostle hugging happened, with Rocinante being given into care in the neighborhood. (I don’t have own photo in Santiago, but there is this one from the Voz de Galicia journal.;))
I.5. "Hatalmas péniszű zarándok érkezett... Van vele egy ember is." / "Pilgrim arrives with huge penis... there is also a person with him."
6.) Approx. one week in mid. November 2013. Muxia
Elsétálás Muxiába immár egyedül, pár nap önkénteskedés a magyar érdekeltségű Albergue Delfínben, gyors elbicajozás Fisterrába, szétrohadt ruhák hátrahagyása az áldozati máglyán.
Walking to Muxia already alone, some days of volunteering in Albergue Delfín (the one with Hungarian interest), then a visit to Fisterra by bike, leaving behind rotten clothes on the sacrificial pyre.
I.6. Átrándultam bicajjal az egyetlen olyan pontra, ami Fisterránál is nyugatabbra van a földrészen: Cabo Touriñan / I biked to the only point in Spain that is more occidental than Fisterra: Cabo Touriñan
7.) 18 – 20 November 2013. Peruscallo
6-7 nap séta visszafelé az úton a Sarria melletti Peruscallo faluig, ott a szamár letétbe adása egy Camilla nevű caminós arc rezidenciáján, az akkori 103-as kilométerkő közelében, azaz jó 100km-re Santiagotól.
6-7 days of walking backwards on the road to the village Peruscallo located next to Sarria, there depositing the donkey at the residence of a Camino face called Camilla, near the former 103 kilometer stone, that is, some 100 km away from Santiago.
I.7. "A-szobában-lakik-itt" band / Rocinante's new family
II. Eddigi legjobb évem, a hosszú 2014 /Best year of my life so far, the long 2014
1.) 20 November – 31 January 2013. Budapest, Miskolc, Debrecen
Hazarepülés, relaxációs technikákról írott pszichológia szakdolgozatom leadása a Debreceni Egyetemen, arra 5-öst kapás, majd megbukás az államvizsgán. Nem vagyok pszichológus. Januárban üzenetek Camillától, hogy Rocinante már nincs jó helyen nála, vigyem onnét azonnal!
Flying home, submitting my psychology thesis about relaxation techniques at the University of Debrecen, getting a 5 for it (this is the best grade), then failing the final exam. Still not a psychologist. In January, messages from Camilla that Rocinante doesn’t have a place at her anymore, I’m to take him away at once!
II.1. Debreceni Egyetem / University of Debrecen
2.) 1 – 3 February 2014. Barcelona
Egy hétvége Barcelonában, majd tovareppenés Santiagoba.
Spending a weekend in Barcelona, then flying on to Santiago.
II.2. Barangolás Barcelonában / Barcelona trip
3.) 4 – 24 February 2014. Hardcore pilgrimage in February: Santiago – Sarria – Santiago again – Muxia
Santiago repterétől magányos séta Peruscalloig, ott felkapni Rocinantét, visszamenetelni vele Santiagoba, majd sikertelen szamáreladási kísérletek után továbbmenni az óceán felé San Martiño de Ozónig, megtalálva jövőm egyik fontos színhelyét és közösségét: az Aurora de los Caminos kooperatíva fennhatósága alá tenni a szamarat, majd továbbmenni egyedül Muxiába, a téli retekből kipuceválni[1] és megnyitni a magyar illetőségű Delfín zarándokszállást a 2014-es szezonra.
Lonely walk from Santiago’s airport to Peruscallo, collecting Rocinante and marching back to Santiago together, then following the unsuccessful donkey businesses marching on to the ocean until San Martiño de Ozón, finding one of the important places and communities of my future: placed the donkey under the roof of a kooperative called Aurora de los Caminos, then went on to Muxia alone, to the Hungarian Delfín albergue to clean it1 from winter’s crap and to open it for the season 2014.
II.3. Pompás februári kilátások Galiciában / Among incredible circumstancies in the Galician February
4.) 24 February – 26 May 2014. Muxia
Önkéntes munka a Delfínben, először nagyrészt magányban, szórványosan érkező zarándokokkal, majd az akkori tulajdonossal, aztán egy hónapig két önkéntes kolleginával.
/…erről a fenti három szakaszról (II.2., II.3. és II.4.) fog szólni a 12 részesre tervezett beszámoló, ami a következő hetekben jövöget majd szép sorjában, az akkori naplóim alapján./
Volunteering in Delfín, at first mostly alone, with sporadically arriving pilgrims, then with the then owner, and later with two other female volunteer colleagues for a month.
/…the next posts of 12 parts will be about these three sections (II.2., II.3. and II.4.) which come sequentially in the following weeks, based on my diaries of that times./
II.4. Muxia, ahol jó öreg Nap testvér felkelni és lemenni is nagyon tud / Muxia where the sunrise and the sunset are equally beautiful
5.) 28 May – 22 June 2014. Finisterre, Burgos
Felkaptam Rocinantét San Martiñoból, és elsétáltunk a világ végére /’Finis terrae’/ nyaralni. Sátrazás a hippie beachnek nevezett Mar de Forán, barátkozás helyiekkel és egymást váltó zarándokokkal, megélhetésért időszakos furulya+állatsimogató+gyerekcsacsigoltató kombó üzemeltetése a világítótoronynál. Találkozás Rafaellel, a lovas zarándokkal. Pár nap múlva jött érte egy teherautó, ami hazaszállította őt és lovát Burgosba. Felajánlására lestoppoltuk Rocinantéval a verdát, és pár napot Rafa lovas-szamaras rezidenciáján töltöttünk. (Most is épp őt megyek meglátogatni Burgosig, ahonnan május közepén japán barátom kezd majd szamaras zarándoklatba, amiben segíteni szeretném.)
I fetched Rocinante from San Martiño and walked together to the end of the world /’Finis terrae’/ for vacation. Camping at the coast of Mar de Fora called the hippie beach, making friends with all the world, operating a temporary flute & petting zoo & riding service combination at the lighthouse. Meeting Rafael the equestrian pilgrim. After a few days a van came for him which delivered him and his horse home, to Burgos. If he already offered, we hitchhiked the van and spent a few days at Rafa’s residence. (I’m just to visit him again to Burgos, where my Japanese friend starts a donkey pilgrimage in mid-May, I’ll try to support and help him a bit.)
II.5. Megszokott világvégi kempingállomás a Mar de Forán / My good old camping spot at the Mar de Fora of Fisterra
6.) 23 June – 13 August 2014. Burgos – Foncebadón – Santiago – Finisterre – Muxia – San Martiño – Santiago – Madrid – Budapest
Summer of ’69: Fisterrából szamarastul eltranszportálódunk Burgosig egy teherautóval, ahonnan vidám menetelésbe kezdtünk a Cruz de Ferro falujáig, a Camino Francés legmagasabban fekvő településéig: Foncebadónig. Ott megálltam vagy 3 hétre dolgozni az Albergue Monte Iragoban, hogy addig a tulaj lányszamara összeszerelmezhessen Rocinantéval. Kiscsacsi nem lett végül, de cserébe én meg összeszerelmeztem a szintén ott dolgozó Olasszal, amiből aztán hosszútávon semmi jó nem sült ki. Továbbzúzás Fisterrába, lazulgatás és a szamár San Martiñoban hagyása újfent. Hazarepülés Madridból.
Summer of ’69: Were transported by a van together with the donkey from Fisterra to Burgos where we started a joyful march till the village of Cruz de Ferro, the highest settlement of Camino Francés: Foncebadón. There I stopped to work for 3 weeks at Albergue Monte Irago that in the meantime the owner’s female donkey could fall in love with Rocinante. Finally, little donkey we didn’t get, but in turn we fell in love with the Italiana also working there, out of which then nothing good turned out, in the long term. Then crushing on to Fisterra, some chillin’ and then leaving the donkey in San Martiño again. Flying home from Madrid.
II.6. Csacsiszerelem / Donkey love
7.) 16 August – till the end of October 2014. Miskolc and Alsózsolca
Otthon tüzépes barátaim alsózsolcai telepén tudtam idénydolgozni: fizikai munka, baráti közeg, harmincadik születésnap, faszaság, de folyamatosan ébredező visszatérési kedv. November 1-én Salamancába látogatás egy bő hétre, ahol elkezdődik a kálvária az Olasszal. Szóval ottani letelepedés helyett végül inkább San Martiñoban teleltem át az Aurora de los Caminosszal.
At home, I could do a seasonal work at the building yard of my friends, at their site in a village next to my town: physical work, friendly environment, 30th birthday, real coolness, with the constantly awakening feeling of return. On the 1st November visited Salamanca for a loose week where the Calvary with the Italiana began. So instead of establishing myself there, San Martiño was the place I overwintered with the Aurora de los Caminos.
II.7. Hajrá Miskolc! / Go Miskolc!
8.) 1st November 2014 – 7 March 2015. Salamanca, then San Martiño, and sometimes Buxán & Finisterre
Élet kommunában, amely egyben alternatív zarándokszállás is. Januártól hétvégente utcazenével gyűjtögetés egy új szamárra, ajándékként a közösségnek, hogy ennek fejében bármikor ott hagyhassam Rocinantét is.
Life in a commune which is also an alternative pilgrim accommodation. From January collecting money by street music at the weekends for a new donkey, as a gift for the commune, so that in return I could leave Rocinante in San Martiño anytime.
II.8. San Martiño de Ozón: egy középkori monostor a hozzá tartozó földterülettel, plusz egy extrahosszú horreo az Auroras-központ / San Martiño de Ozón: a medieval benedictian monastery with the belonging field, and a super long horreo - home of Auroras
III. Új utak és ötletek felé: 2015 / Towards new ideas: 2015
1.) 8 March – till mid April 2015. Camino Norte from Llanes, Asturias to Santiago and Finisterre
A legkeményebb, legmostohább, legcsóróbb zarándoklat és szegény Tolsztoj csacsi története, spirituális overload, transzperszonális overload… Húsvétozás Santiagoban, pirostojás nuku.
The hardest, toughest, most penniless pilgrimage and the sad story of poor donkey Tolstoy, spiritual overload, transpersonal overload… Celebrating the Easter holidays in Santiago, without any painted eggs.
III.1. Camino del Norte: Asturias elképesztő partjai / The amazing coasts of Asturias
2.) April – May 2015. From Fisterra to Foncebadón, there and back
Rocinantét megsétáltatom ismét a Monte Irago albergue-ig, hogy ott rendes alkalmazott munkaerő legyek pár hónapig, de a tavalyi körülményekhez képest minden a visszájára fordul, úgyhogy ebből csak három hét lesz. Visszatérés Fisterrába kiheverni a sérelmeket. Közben szórványos és hűvös levelezgetés az Olasszal, aki meglepetésre vett egy nagy fehér szamarat Pamplonában, és útnak indult vele zarándokolni.
Walking with Rocinante again to Monte Irago albergue to become an ordinary workforce again for some months, but everything has been reversed compared there to last year’s conditions, so only three weeks remains from it. Return to Fisterra to lick my wounds a little bit. In the meantime, scarce and cold mailing with the Italiana who’s bought a big white donkey in Pamplona – to everyone’s surprise – and set off with it to do a pilgrimage.
III.2. Ajándékrajz a hospitaleronak és szamarának / A charming gift for the hospitalero and his donkey
3.) June – July 2015. Fisterra – León – Mansilla de las Mulas
Magányos menetelés visszafelé, Mansillában szembetalálkozás az Olasszal meg a kutyájával és a szamarával. Közös tervek, de a valóságban csak siralom, borzalmak és jajveszékelés. Mindennek vége.
Lonely march backwards, in Mansilla confrontation with the Italiana, her dog and donkey. Common plans, but in reality only lamentation, horrors and wain. Everything’s over.
III.3. Nem kellett volna búcsút venni az óceántól / Saying goodbye to the ocean for a while
4.) July – December 2015. Mansilla de las Mulas – Santiago – Fisterra – Budapest – Debrecen – Miskolc
Terrorkamínó családostul. Karácsony közösen Magyarba’. Olasz haza, én maradok, immunrendszer romokban, orvosok látogatása (magyar egészségügy rulez), közben meg csak le kéne már diplomázni Debrecenben. Az államvizsgajegy két év után: 3-as. Mint az igazi buták. De a lényeg: pszichológus vagyok.
Terror Camino with “family”. Common Christmas in Hungary. Italiana to home, I remain, immune system in ruins, visiting doctors (Hungarian health care rules), meanwhile I should make my degree in Debrecen. The mark I got on the repeated final exam after two years was 3 (”C”). As the real dumbs. But the point is: I’m a psychologist.
III.4. Rocinante kiegészülve Solomonnal / Rocinante's friend called Solomon
5.) March – May 2016. Budapest – Barcelona – Santiago – San Martiño – Fisterra – Melide – Burgos
Visszafelé menetelés a világ végéről, blogindítás Melidében, ezeknek a soroknak a gépelgetése Castrojeriz nevű faluban. Irány Burgos, ahová május közepén érkezik Takashi barátom Japánból, hogy tavalyi találkozásunktól is inspirálva vegyen egy szamarat. Ebben fogok neki segédkezni, plusz az első napok nehézségeinek átvészelésében – ezért vagyok most nagy menetelésben visszafelé a Camino Francésen.
Itt járunk most…
Marching backwards from the end of the world, starting the blog in Melide, typing these lines in a village called Castojeriz. Go to Burgos where my friend, Takashi arrives in the middle of May from Japan to buy a donkey, being inspired by our last year’s meeting. I will support him in this as well as surviving the first days’ challenges – so this is why I’m in the middle of a big march backwards on the Camino Francés.
So here we are now…
III.5. Rafa a burgosi lovas, holnap találkozom vele újra, várom már :) / Rafael, rider pilgrim of Burgos, I'm to see him tomorrow :)
[1] Minden idők legdurvább tele volt Galíciában az azévi, ezen a karácsonyon csapott a villám a muxiai kápolnába, majd a 8 méteres hullámok a bejáratba.
[1] This year’s winter was the toughest of all times in Galicia, this Christmas was the time the lightning hit Muxia chapel, and the 8 meters high waves to the entrance.
Night fell on us at Portomarín which I only remembered as the town of the unreasonably high and long bridge, since under which only a two meters wide, ankle-deep creek was flowing in the Autumn. By now it was as big as the Tisza river at the town of Tokaj in Hungary almost reaching the top of the bridge – so maybe this bridge is not so unreasonable after all. Over here, I mostly came on the motorway, now for a change, following the signs I lead Rocinante into the forest, in the midst of which we found pretty bad conditions: here, the water wasn’t 10 cm but was knee-high instead and unavoidable and me just hardly seeing nothing ‘cause just had a small bike light. Obviously it was raining. I won’t crawl back in the dark, here the donkey will be kicked over.
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.
This was being reconstructed, just like Santiago Cathedral’s “Porta de Gloria”, from my first arrival to the second. Ditto is the Leon Cathedral, and now the famous chapel of Muxia (where I am just now), Virxen de Barca is also being reconstructed, after having its roof burned by a lightning at Christmas – hmm, some food for thoughts. In front of another big church of Santiago me and the donkey were even photographed by a journalist in November, and we appeared on the front page with the text that “Franciscans’ San Francisco Church is being reconstructed which pilgrims are visiting for 800 years”, and I was the pilgrim representative, however I feel even more so becoming a reconstruction representative.
