It was a very special day yesterday in santo domingo. A sunday in a town called holy sunday and my birthday! I got to celebrate it with very special people. We had awsome italian pasta, a little too much wine and some really good Guitar music.
I have walked over 230km already and am surprised how well this is going. The blisters from the first day have healed, so I can enjoy the daily 20-30km fully.
I knew that everything was going to work out perfectly since Paris. I was at the train station in order to buy my ticket to St. Jean Pied de Port in Southern France where the classical camino francés (One of the many St. James ways in Europe) starts. The person selling the tickets nearly laughed at me when I told him where I wanted to go and assured me that it was not going to be before the day after that I could go because it was a long weekend and every train going south was fully booked. But he looked in his computer anyway and found ONE (!!!) last ticket for the train that was supposed to leave 30 min later. It was perfect. I didn't even need to wait! I said to him 'I guess I was supposed to go' and than we smalltalked for 10 min or so. Just a perfect start for a pilgrimage. And it didn't stop there, arriving late in St. Jean Pied de Port, I got the last bed in town which was as full as the trains going there. So I could have a good rest after a 30 hour journey and before the first day of walking 27km over the pyrenees which are one of the hardest of the whole camino because 23 of them are going uphill.
It was very foggy that first day which is really a pitty because I am sure that the sights over the mountains are beautiful. I got one glimps of how the views could have been in the minute I reached the summit when the sun came out for 10 minutes and the fog went away. Downhill I took a detour and walked alone for 1 hour or so and thats when my walking stick found me (They say your walking stick for the camino finds you and not the other Way round). I named it Opi which means grandpa in German because it looks really old and experienced, you can lean on it and you kind of look like an old person walking with it and if you would want to you could also tell him all your worries . Opi and me are a good team and he has been a good help so far. I am so used to walk with it that I notice right away when I leave it somewhere.
The days after that first day where even worse wheatherwise. It rained so hard for two entire days that I decided on day 4 not to walk but to stay in Pamplona. It is a nice town so it was worth the stay. And I had walked a lot already so it would not mess up my average. It turned out to be perfect, the next day was sunny and I felt as fresh as on the first day so I could walk a lot better.
It is funny how you bump into the same people over and over again on the way and some of the people you see once and than never again. It makes the talks and everything really special because you never know if you see that person again. There are some pretty interesting people on the way and you feel right away with whom you have a connection and who you should talk to.
Most of the people are middle aged but there are surprisingly many young people here. But I have the most respect for the older people. There are quite a few who are over 70 years old and walk every day like anybody else. Wow! They have my full respect.
I remembered this english girl, I had met in Brazil who had done the camino and had told me about it. She said that the way is like life: You start unexperienced and motivated as a child, than you think you know it all like a teenager and than like an adult, you know how it works, you know what you can do and you know your limits.
I think I am in the middle of puberty, trying everything out: 'I wonder of this way is a shortcut' or 'I wonder if I can Walk the last 5km with that amount of water' and similar stupid experiments which are not always very wise. But eventually I will get to know my limits.
Tomorrow I am supposed to walk into Burgos and than into 'la Meseta' a big plain where we are going to walk strait through fields for km and km. Gonna be interesting. Probably will have enough time to put into words why I am doing this ;)!