In 2008 I graduated school. After the examinations most of my friends started looking for a job but I decided to hit the books again at university instead. Back then I wasn’t really sure what direction my life would take and I also didn’t exactly know which degree programme would be best for me. The only thing I knew was that the coming summer holidays were going to be my last before university started, so I wanted to do something special. One of my best friends and I agreed to take a trip and the only question left was where to go. To this day, we still don’t really know how we came up with the idea but it took us no longer than a few minutes to decide that our trip was heading to Bilbao, Spain.
After spending a night in the probably scariest backstreet I had ever seen, we walked to the railway station at the first light of dawn. At seven in the morning we finally got on our train southward toward a small city called Burgos, the historic capital of Castile. Because it was already lunch time we grabbed a bite at the next best snack bar where we discussed our strategy. At this point it should be mentioned that Burgos is not just any regular city in the north of Spain, it is located about 500 kilometres east of Santiago de Compostela, at the end of the well-known Way of St. James and the end of our trip.
When we finished our lunch break we immediately made our way to the pilgrims’ path that led straight through the city. Because the whole city was paved with street signs and scallop shells, the traditional emblem of the apostle James and also called the shell of Saint James, we had no problems finding the right direction. We decided to start our pilgrimage straight away and directly headed due west. The landscape in Castile is nothing more than burnt down fields (we were there in September) and flat plains. We totally underestimated the distance to the next village, so the first day’s march was sheer torment. It took us some time to accustom ourselves to the blazing heat and our heavy backpacks did not contribute to our well-being either. We were both carrying about twelve kilogrammes on our backs plus at least two litres of water each. With this kind of baggage, our trip was already destined to be more than just a cosy walk.
Since there are not many villages in the plain landscape of Castile, we had to walk more than twenty kilometres that afternoon. When we arrived at the village of Hornillos del Camino, dusk was already falling and because of the late hour, the Refugio we wanted to stay at for the night was full up. The next village was about ten kilometres away, which was an impossible distance with our aching feet, so we planned to sleep on hay bails we had seen earlier outside the village. Before we were able to make a move, somebody offered to let us sleep in a dorm room in the back of the church, which made him our hero for the day. We immediately fell into a deep sleep and when our alarm went off the next morning we felt like somebody had beaten us up. We packed together and learned our first important lesson of the next three weeks: Spaniards tend to sleep long and no shop or bakery opens before 9 am. Consequently, we had to begin our second day on an empty stomach and 480 kilometres to go.
To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment