1st of September was the day we needed not only to be physically but also to mentally arrive in Santiago de Compostela.
Yesterday everything went way too quick, was overwhelming and we were so exhausted that Robert had nearly fallen asleep in the Cathedral during mass.
Now we had a good night of sleep and we were ready to get organized for the day. Having breakfast at the Seminario Menor was not what we were used to. After having been to huge places for pilgrims like Roncesvalles before, we didn’t mind the crowd. But the atmosphere here was more like in a student cafeteria with the feeling of being at a kiss and ride place where everyone was preparing to leave. The pilgrims were losing their destination and had to orient back home, being busy with the preparations for their return.
The focus on the people around them got lost and the bonding experience of being a pilgrim was dissolving like the teabag giving colour to the water in my cup. It was still tea, but it had transitioned into another state of being. For some it was just a nice Instapost, for others a record to be fulfilled on their bucket list, and for some it was maybe a life changing experience.
We had to take care of our bikes to get a complete check-up. They had suffered really a lot and needed urgently to be taken care of. The first bike shop said they were too busy and we should check at another place. It was about 2,5 km from where we were, but worth going there. The owner is Oliveira, who had biked the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta. He must have chain oil running through his veins. He looked at our bikes and had a quick diagnosis what needed to be repaired.
Just right in front of his bike shop was a cornerstone of the Caminho Português, leading us the way back to the cathedral. Suddenly we were also walking pilgrims going with the flow downtown. We actually wanted to meet with Jana, who had informed us that she had arrived in the city. But we missed her by a half an hour as she had taken the bus to continue to Finisterra, where the Camino ends at the Atlantic Ocean.
Reaching the cathedral it started to rain heavily, and after we had bought our museum tickets for the next day we took shelter at the Pilgrims office to get our certificate for having done 3.000 km from Munich on several Caminos. It was not a big problem, but only my name Nicolai written with normal “i” instead of an “ï” at the end caused the computer to not identify the Latin translated version.
After we had solved that, they offered us to go upstairs to get a coffee at the international representations for pilgrims. The German room seemed to be empty, while the Polish were just having a conversation, but the Dutch-speaking team was very relaxed offering us “koffie en een koekje erbij”. Robert and I wrote our names in their guestbook and we realized the two Dutch bikers from Rotterdam, Andre and Angelie, had just signed shortly before us and we were numbers 1.998 and 1.999. So the next person coming would be pilgrim number 2.000 in their guestbook for this year. They just started to invent a welcoming banner and were searching for a certificate for being number 2.000. It was fun to wait for who we would be welcoming in the next moment, but it was again Andre and Angelie who shortly returned to say “hello” as Robert had send them a message. As nobody was coming Robert and I decided to have lunch and we celebrated our success with a real freshly made paella.
After we had finished we were just curious and checked who might have been the 2.000th pilgrim and it was a young girl. We were just about to leave when we coincidentally dropped by the German representation and found someone inside. There were already two pilgrims ready for the coffee-talk, which would start at 4:00, which was in just about two minutes. We felt a bit awkward to just have sneaked in without knowing, but we didn’t want to be impolite and stayed due to Martina who had invited us to stay.
At first we introduced ourselves and then we explained what had us made doing the Camino.
I spoke about the environmental project for Rotary where I had given conferences about how to reduce the carbon footprint along our way. Martina got interested and started to ask whether I had experienced any negative reactions, which I couldn’t deny. There were people who had accused me for just causing fear of melting glaciers, where they claimed the opposite would be happening in Norway. Or they came up to me on stage and blamed me for not talking about the effect of the carbon footprint caused by the Ukrainian war.
At this moment I got interrupted by one of the German pilgrims asking if we would talk now about the Saint James Way or the subject of climate change? Martina explained that she had asked me about my experiences and was interested in the subject, but it seemed like this guy had a problem with the facts of climate change and left. I felt really uncomfortable that this topic made him quit the conversation, but it showed me again that there’s a big gap of accepting the reality happening and the way politicians are using their power to manipulate what science has proven since more than two centuries.
Without the greenhouse effect we couldn’t exist on this planet as it would be freezing, but with adding more greenhouse gases we will be getting a fragile system to the tipping point of not being able to return anymore. All these things were going through my head and this situation left me speechless again. It is not easy to be confronted with such unexpected reactions, but it teaches me more and more to keep track on what my message is and not to give up to find resonance in other people who are thinking the same.
The other German who still stayed with us in the chatting group was a teacher from Würzburg and did the Camino by bike for a second time. He did it once in spring time when a lot more insects like butterflies were accompanying his way. This time of the year we were all missing insects along the way, maybe due to the extremely hot weather.
Somehow the bad food from last night and the stress situation in which I found myself had caused some tummy troubles, but I was glad they had a toilet close by. We still had to walk back to the shop to pick up the bikes from the service. Oliviero did a great job and had completely exchanged my gear rim and chain, and for Robert the brake pads.
We were happy about the perfectly fixed bikes and felt safe again. Back at the Seminario I just fell on my bed and fell immediately asleep.
It was already dark when Robert woke me up to ask if I still felt like having dinner and we tried to find something without meat or seafood. Just something vegetarian would have been nice for a change. As we walked by the cathedral we found by a coincidence a vegan place called “The Greenhouse” in the Rúa da Conga. There we were finding something good healthy food and a wonderful tea that calmed my stomach.
Later the owner of the place came by and we had a wonderful talk with her. She is called Shanta and is an original as she called herself. Half Welsh and half Sri Lankan she grew up in Hong Kong. She had been living in different places around the world and moved 13 times, and has her family all over the globe. She ended up opening this restaurant as she was fed up with having meat with fries all the time in Spain. She wanted to have her own spices and vegetables and thought she might as well share them with others running a restaurant.
As we came up with the problems of traveling by bike through Europe on trains, she told us that she has experienced the most absurd prizes to travel by train within the UK, where it was at the end cheaper for her daughter to fly from Plymouth via Berlin with Easyjet to get to Newcastle. The other absurdity was to try and organize a family get-together in the UK. If everyone would take the train from different parts of the country, it was more expensive than flying from all those places to Marrakech and meet there.
It just confirmed the fact that flying is way too cheap, a result of the policy to support tax wise the air industry rather than the railways and the public transport within Europe. There is a lot to do and it confirmed the idea of our project to not give up raising awareness for this issue.
The other person who joined our talk was Rachel Freire, an artist in leather art and costumes. I shared with her the experience of how our productivity as creative persons is always in danger by giving our ideas out of hand and then not being paid for it. The artists’ labour is always at the risk of being exposed to exploitation by clients who, having seen the opus, think of it as theirs, leaving the creator back with empty hands.
Nevertheless, it felt good to be understood, and although we didn’t find that evening the solution for the world’s and our problems, it was fun to intensively exchange and share our opinions and be part of a cosmopolitan perspective. And it was good to know that Shanta would cook with turmeric tomorrow, which would help my stomach even more and was another reason to come back.
