Spanish Acceleration

6/12/06

I can feel my spanish acquisition accelerating. It is a physical sensation.

As I learn more about the owner of this albergue, Nícolas, I´m more amazed by him. He and his wife lived in the closest large metropolitan area, Burgos, for 25 years prior to moving here. They have two children. During their last 12 years in Burgos the family worked here on the weekends renovating what started as an abandoned and dilapitated four story building. What Nícolas did with the sheer artistic force of his mind and exceptional labor of love with is body is beyond my capacity to properly convey with words.

Spanish tile and beautiful beechwood floors adorn rooms that are connected by a spiraling staircase that meanders up the centrality of the building. A backyard patio with a foot washing fountain gives onto a garden where vegetables are grown, pear preserves are prepared, and wine is made. The roosters crow at dawn and the farm dog cavorts with pilgrims. The entire edifice is suffused with natural light and throughout there is a pervasive feeling of comfort, warmth, and healing.

I think that the most phenomenal aspect of his labours is that Nícolas built this specifically as a refuge for pilgrims. Although it is private (meaning it is not one of the church albergues made for pilgrims and it recieves less public assistance than one) he still runs it as a donation-only refuge (something most of the church albergues cannot claim).

Donation only. His dream and his livelihood.

Opportunity Knocks

6/10/06 : Belorado, Burgos, Espagña

The most amazing albergue yet. They have pictures of previous pilgrims which include a man with a Clydesdale and a dog, two women with a donkey, a man with a donkey, a man on a UNICYCLE, and a couple on small foot scooters. They also make their own Riojan wine here (a type of wine that is currently gaining world-wide popularity); for the price of 2 euros a bottle (around 3$) it is an exceptionally good deal.

As soon as I walked into this town I knew I loved it. I couldn´t pinpoint why. Something about the smells, the backyards with wildflowers next to cultivated gardens, and just the right amount of trash in abandoned lots appealed to me. My good feeling about it was confirmed as I was invited to stay here and work for two weeks as a 'hospitalera' helping out with checking in pilgrims and cleaning in the mornings. The beer/wine/food is free and I get a private room.

¡Qué Bueno!

"El Día del Diablo"

6/6/06

Today I sweated so much that I had salt encrusted on the side of my face when I reached the albergue; thick enough to scrape with a knife. But I do seem to be acclimating to the heat faster than in previous years. For those of you who read my blog last summer know that so far this is nothing compared to that inferno.

It was the hardest day yet; 22 km and no water at all. Every other day there was a lengthy stretch of water to walk next to which makes a difference both in temperature and temperament. The changes in the terrain in just 120 km has been astounding. I have covered stream habitats, mountain microclimates, desert sorrell, deciduous hardcover (where I found a tick, of course), prarie grasses, and second-stage succession pine forests.

I had a rare moment for me while sitting in the church after walk´s end. I found myself wishing that I could believe in God. It would make things a lot easier. But it´s impossible for me to get past knowing that the whole concept is fantastical make-believe. I´ve decided I must need an imaginary friend. I wondered on the whole walk today: Can one truly know good without truly knowing bad? Of course, the opposite posit is just as valid.

Letters to a Muse: The Week of Walk

6/5/05

It has been awhile since I wrote. I began the pilgrimage one week ago at 6:30 am in Roncesvalles. I´ve been lost in a world of wonder, pain, and glory since. I´ve already decided that long walks must be natural to my soul and that a through hike along the Great Wall of China is next. Every night is a bit of a nightmare. The cheapest lodging (around 6$ US) is in buildings set up specifically for pilgrims. Known as "Albergues" they are, ironically, one of the closest places to hell I´ve ever known. Well...that´s not fair. There are some very beautiful ones; places that most pilgrims don´t find. Small farmhouses and converted barns atop hillsides in the middle of the country. Others, ah, those refuges of the weak mind and maligned spirit. 150 people packed into a small house; farts, snores, foot smells, and general rudeness. Marathons of bad manners. I´m not being fair. I´m bitching. But I suppose I entered this (despite my best attempts to the contrary) with some preconceptions. One of them was that anyone who decided to do a pilgrimage such as this would naturally have to be of a kind, generous, and considerate disposition. That is just simply not the case. I´ve met some real gems in just the first 120 km.

Whatever...

This morning around 3 km after setting out I came across a FOUNTAIN OF WINE. Specifically set-up for pilgrims it is along the pilgrimage route. At 7:30 in the morning there were clusters of people, all ages, all nationalities, on foot, on bike, stopping to drink directly by mouth, then fill up water jugs with wine. I suppose that helps a bit with other aspects...

Right now it´s 11 am. I´ve been walking since 7. I stopped in a grove of trees that are similar to Elm but not quite the same. They drop huge amounts of a cottony substance all over the ground. I haven´t yet been able to deduct the ecology of this phenomenon that is completely new to me but I´m sure I´ll look it up at some point. I´m drinking from my Nalgene bottle of wine, sitting in a grove that looks as though a sleeping bag exploded on it. I´m so content.

What Goes Wrong on the Camino: An Inventory of Pratfalls

*Everyone gets up before dawn but no stores or cafés are open.

*Everyone steals the toilet paper from the pilgrim hostels and by 7 am none is left.

*Everyone uses the stolen toilet paper for what appears to be sudden squats taken directly on the side of the trail indicating either a total lack of discretion or explosive diarrhea. It seems that about 90% of pilgrims engage in this delightful activity.

*You will get blisters that are in reality open, running sores and you will also probably get tendonitis, transient palsies, or a persistent limp.

*Although we´re taught that Spanish is the national language at least half of the signs are in regional dialects that have little relation to Spanish.

*You´ll realize too late that you need a walking stick to prevent the injuries you already have.

*If you aren´t in bed by 8 pm you are considered a troublemaker but they´ll get back at you by stealing all of the toilet paper before you wake up.

*You will never get as much sleep as you want nor need; sleep deprivation is a state of mind, body, and soul.

*There will always be an alpha-snorer in your room.

El Refugio es Completo

6/3/06-6/4/06

Writing at 6 am in my sleeping bag on the patio that I moved to around 3....

Man from Holland is snoring and more than anything I feel bad for him. He can´t speak any of the main languages associated with the pilgrimage (i.e. Spanish, English, German, French, or Esperanto...) and in the mornings his bunkmates must find it quite frustrating to not be able to commiserate with him over the sleep he caused the loss of. A good joke makes many things better...His must be a lonely path right now; isolated by language and reviled for his nighttime nose solos. I remember watching him limp into town yesterday afternoon and the kind but very bemused smile he had on his face as everything was explained to him with body language.

It didn´t help that the man under him was apparently sleeping with several plastic bags. Each turn of his body evinscing the grocery store.

5/29/06 Journal Entry to Mom

I´LL NEVER TAKE A NIGHT TRAIN AGAIN. I´m sitting next to the (in)famous ¨Plaza del Torros¨ right now; unfortunately, it´s not open to the public. Pamplona is nice but you´re not missing anything. The Spanish cities are all starting to blur together (all but Figueres...oddly). I take a bus to Roncévalles tonight. I begin the pilgrimage tomorrow. I´m very excited.

*(I´m going to have to continue the 5/29 entry...)*

6 hours later...

I have to continue this entry because where I am right now is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE I HAVE EVER BEEN. Took the bus out of Pamplona on what I thought would be a 30 minute journey and almost ruptured my bladder on a trip to the top of the Pyrennees. During the last 30 minutes (of the 1.5 hour ride) I saw 12 rainbows. Not namby-pamby ¨Oh, is it? Maybe it isn´t...¨ rainbows; I´m talking about pinpointing the pot of gold at each end. Vibrant. Iridescent dreams. All in one extremely steep 18 mile stretch. On that alone I´ve decided this might be the most magical place in the world to live (of course, I can imagine the locals in the morning:

Frank: Hey Bob, how´s it going?
Bob: All right. Oh look, another rainbow.
Frank: Eh...)

If I wasn´t an atheist I would truly believe this area is blessed.

Because I´m a cheapskate I packed a sandwhich for dinner and breakfast tomorrow (I think I´m going to become notorious on the hike as the girl who constantly reeks of cured ham...) and so while 90% of the 200 people staying in bunk beds in this GIGANTIC MONASTERY went to a restaurant across the street I ate on the floor by my bed and then left for a calmly invigorating walk down a small dirt path in the misty 50 F evening in order to reach a sheep field I saw earlier so that I could ¨baaaaa¨ back at them.

Mom, in the last 1.5 hours, since I stepped from the bus up here, something very major has changed in my life. I don´t know what it is yet, but I know it´s already started.

Oh my.

Sleeper Car nightmare

5/29/06

I suppose the preceeding and next 12 hours represent my first day on the pilgrimage. I´m in Pamplona at the moment sitting in the bus station café. This is the city famous for the festival of San Fermin (the running of the bulls) and for the love that Hemingway held for it. Last night at 10 pm I left the Barcelona-Sants train station prepared to arrive in Pamplona at 5:30 in the morning. What I wasn´t prepared for was the particular flavor of insanity upon which some European trains are designed. Imagine the small seating compartment you´ve seen in movies (think Harry Potter Hogwart´s Express). Three seats on each side of the compartment, one access door leading to the corridor (which has a bathroom at each end). I hadn´t expected this; I had expected seating more similar to Greyhound bus lines in the US. But, I thought, I might end up with some interesting people. What I didn´t anticipate was that the seats are what´s known as ´sleeperettes´, i.e. they fold down into half beds. ´Well, that´s great!´ you say, ´A half bed is better than none.´

BUT! WHERE DOES THE OTHER HALF BED COME FROM?????????? HMMM....??????

The person sitting across from you........

Please take a moment to reflect upon this arrangment.



You´re in a compartment with five strangers and one is sitting across from you. When it is decided to turn the light off you lay out your sleeperette, your neighbors do as well, and so does the person across from you.

When this configuration was explained to me by the first two people to arrive in the comparment my first question, naturally, was: ´Where do all the feet go?´
They both adopted a semi-queasy uncomfortable look and silently nodded assent when I caught on and said: ´Whoa! Whooooooaaahhaooooo!! No Way! You´re telling me that you both fold down your half beds and cozy up together on a space the size of a fucking camper bed, with your feet in each other´s faces?!´

I was horrified. I have a very high threshold for invasion of personal space when it is unavoidable. But this was outrageous. What band of idiots thought this was a good idea?

More later.....holly out....

5/28 E-mail to Mom and Ron

Mom and Ron,

I thought I would give you an idea of how my day went as I have a fairly good idea of how your airplane hell was. I didn´t have too much trouble finding the train out of the airport (it was right where Ron said it would be). I almost missed a connection in the middle of butthole nowhere Barcelona outskirts but made it and arrived at the Barcelona-Sants train station. So, it turns out that when we were trying to find the airport bus THE VERY LARGE BUILDING we were walking all around the outside of was the very building that houses the airport train. We really can be dolts.

I was a bit confused about where to get off the train and saw two girls that I assumed to be either returning Barcelonians or French. I asked them in Spanish if we were at the Barc-Sants station and received two blank stares. I asked if they were English and they replied: ¨Michigan State¨. They had less of a clue than me. Between the three of us we figured out the right stop and I told them that I would spend the day with them and give them the quick and dirty tutorial of Barcelona without them having to suffer the pain the three of us went through. Of course, I instructed them to get a Barcelona card (turns out you can get one at the train station) and in return they gave me the T-10 they purchased at the airport.

Oh yeah, they´re sisters, their mom works for an airline, they get ridiculously discounted plane fares for themselves and friends, one is living in Paris over the summer, and the other in Finland this fall, they LOVE me, we had a great day, and they want me to visit them later this year. I told them about the tour boat and after we found them a ridiculously cheap hostel on the waterfront (and after I told them to refuse the first offer of a room on the noisy street and they got a cool quiet one on a back alley), we stashed and locked up our stuff in the hostel room, then went on a 1.5 hour cruise around the Barcelona seashore. They had a real bottle of champagne from Champagne France and we drank it on the tour in celebration of our new friendship. It was fantastic and I´ll have pictures for you after they e-mail them to me.


We had a very nice lunch at a small pizza joint full of locals (I had anchovies, of course) then went back to their hostel where they took a siesta and I FINALLY took a shower (going on 7 or 8 days at that point...heh...) and washed my underpants. Then I left them in order to go back to the train station and now I´m sitting in train station hell at ¨Café Café¨ (the place we made fun of from a distance). All the food is twice the normal price, there are no open stores in the surrounding neighborhoods, the restrooms are stinky and revoltingly disgusting, the people are all rude, and I couldn´t be more excited about taking my first ¨real¨ train ride in an hour and a half. I hope your flights went well.

Love, Holly

PS. Ana and Sara taught me a new phrase for a mullet that rivals ¨the Kentucky Waterfall¨: ¨Business in the Front, Party in the Back.¨

Letters to a Muse: Solo Impendition

5/26/06 6:00 pm

I took the final step affirming my impending solo status last night. I will be escorting Ron and mom to the airport at 8 am on Sunday morning. AFter that I´ll head back into Barcelona proper to find the main train terminal. Last night I bought a ticket for the 10 pm Barcelona to Pamplona train. It´s a 7.5 hour ride so I´ll have plenty of time for sleep. It will be the first ¨legitimate¨ train ride of my life and I have mixed feelings about it.

I know I´ll be happy to be alone. I´m dreadfully sick of the tourist traps, tourist prices, and tourists.

I´ll reach Pamplona at 5:30 in the morning and at that point have to find the bus that will take me further north to a city in the Spanish Pyrennees known as Roncesvalles. From there I will begin the 776 km hike to Santiago de Compostela.

My pack is too heavy. I already know that the next two weeks are going to consist of shedding weight from both my pack and my body. I´m going to be muscle on bone at summer´s end.

Letters to a Muse: L´Escala

5/25/06 4:30 pm

In the small seaside town of L´Escala. Huge boulders of hardened clay dominate the coastline interspersed occasionally with sandy beaches. Although topless sunbathing is (obviously) allowed here I opted instead to walk out onto the morass of boulders that just into the sea. The sandals I´m wearing make me feel insecure in the spots worn smooth by the thousands of people that have walked here before me. The rocks rise about 20 to 30 feet above the water and it´s obvious that when the tide is in the water runs in along their bottoms slowly wearing away at their bases until they appear as though they are huge chunks perched atop stalks. The sun on my back is the perfect temperature of warm and makes me feel sleepy but the breeze coming off the sea to my front has enough bite to keep me awake. I wonder if water shoots up through the rocks during storms.

This is like a dream. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Unbend, Remain Nermal

I like bartering. I´ve always enjoyed visiting flea markets to indulge in this moneywise proclivity. Recently, I acquired a nice watch in the La Bisbal d´Emporda flea market at a very nice price due to bartering. I picked my seller due to my belief that he enjoyed bartering as well. I ended up getting an almost 50% discount and left him as he was saying: Muchas gracias, guapa.

However, the instructions leave something to be desired. If you don´t like randomly pushing buttons for three minutes in order to figure out how the alarm works and/nor bartering then I suggest you don´t buy a watch in a flea market in a foreign city. I wanted to share these instructions with you as they are so hilarious I almost pee myself everytime I read them.

I´m sure this is what my Spanish must sound like to the locals...

Why you shouldn´t buy a watch in a foreign flea market:

*Insurance card

This product would be insuranced all functions well by our company, since you buy it within one year. If the product malfunction, our company would injust or repair it free.
But when the following conditions happened, you should pay the ray material fee.
-When you didn´t obey the pay attention matters lead to the product damage.
-Battary were used up and appearance scar, fade etc. You must show the insutance card when it repaired.
Date buyed:
the retail dealer´s seal:
(The card will effective after sealed by te retail dealer.)

*Pay Attention Matters

-Becatse the electron meter made by precise elctron spared, so you can´t dismantle sillfully, except appoint expert.
-It can´t be pushed button under water while you swimming.
-It must be repaired right now by the appoint expert while there have some water vapor.
-The electron meter can bear the generalshake. But it must avoid within strong collide. Strong shake. Used rudely and falled on the spolit place.
-It can´t be used in extremely hot or bitter cold weather.
-It can´t be washed in chemistry matters. Soap. Otherwise it will corroded the rubber sheet of the suface. So it only can be cleaned in sofy cloth.
-It can´t be carried in strong electric field and static electricity cytle etc.
-Lot electricity will be lossed if long using the cool light crystal.
-Cool light is not to be seen under sunlight.
-Error is +/- 40 seconds under the normal temperature between 5C-35C.

(I´m sure that somewhere the ´generalshake´ is a wicked dance move...)

Cultural Consumption

Two of the most interesting objects I have encountered so far are disparate and separated by over a century of invention but share in their ability to inspire wonder.

The first is a wooden submarine that is on display down at the harbor in Barcelona. It was invented by Narcís Monturiol i Estarriol, the man credited with the invention of the first combustion driven submarine, in 1862. He also invented the first anaerobic engine. For more on this Spanish native check this: Submarine.

The second is a new age instrument which is like an inverted steel drum, is played with the fingers, and has 8 octaves and a base aligned as pie wedges around its area. It´s known as a Hang (pronounced ´hung´). To hear a sample recording click here: Space Music. It would sound fantastic played with the Shona M´bira.

The Barcelona Kiss

The Barcelona Kiss is a unique species indeed. I have had more than enough opportunity in the scattered metro stations of the city to break down the anatomy of this spectacular display of PDA. It is overt enough to inspire a visceral ire in one of my companions and formulaic enough to appeal to my sensibilities as a scientist.
The Barcelona Kiss is simple but unique and requires several characteristics: 1) It must be in public, 2) A tongue must be stuck in an orifice other than a mouth, 3) It must evince the image of passionate sex followed by unavoidable separation, 4) A purplish hickey must be given, and, 5) A butt must be grabbed.
The Barcelona Kiss is the refuge of adulterers and the bane of the lonely. It engenders a transitory dichotomy: 1) Relief that you´re not the jackass involved in the Barcelona Kiss, and, 2) Sorrow that you´ve so rarely been kissed that passionately in full testament to all inquiries.
Some avert their eyes in either personal embarrassment, vicarious shame, or disgust. Others, like me, stare the beast of lust full on and wait for the horns to start bucking.

Doonkin´ Donoots

Foreign policy aside I have found many reasons in Barcelona to explain why most of the world despises Americans. The most prominent would be our cultural import of food. I would generously endorse the idea of standard southern fare (ex. Fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, collard greens, and sweet tea) being an authentic, and gourmet, American meal. But that is not the culinary face that Barcelona sees. Barcelona´s conception of US food is (in order of decreasing conspicuity): Burger King, Dunkin´ Donuts, McDonald´s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and KFC. Obviously they are not incorrect in their conception of us as slovenly pigs lacking in any gustatory sensibility. One of my traveling companions broke down on the second day and bought a Dunkin´ Donut. The saving grace of her American ¨postre¨ is that rather than containing chocolate it instead had nutella.
I find it quite ironic that here Starbucks has eschewed the pedantic monikers it assigns to coffee sizes in the States (I believe those being: venti, grande, and something else...) opting rather for authentic regional Catalan. It would be much more exotic if, in Spain, they chose to use: small, medium, and large.

¨Un MEDIUM caffe mocha, por favor.¨

Another aspect related to our poor diet, general corpulence, and the worlds conception of us is that in three short days I´ve learned to assume that every obese person must be an American, Dutch, or German tourist. I still can´t figure out how they fit into the tiny bathrooms and cars.