Her Story: Travel Diaries
Day 1
When I sat in the train from Hendaye towards San Sebastian, I was thinking about getting off at Irún, partly because a Spanish lady over the speakers said “Irún” and partly because I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d taken the right train – let’s face it; I’m probably one of the most unorganized people.
So there I was, surrounded by Spanish chattering, or what sounded to me as passionate shouting. From one station to the other, everyone had gone from speaking French to Spanish and I already missed the 40 year old man I met in the train from Paris to Hendaye, whose name of course was… Francois. And I had to admire his courage because right before we went our separate ways, he gave me a note that said “you are very beautiful”, blushed and quickly walked away.
When traveling on your own, expect attention from men, which has its good and bad sides. But when traveling on your own also comes the feeling of being lost (literally), and especially when you don’t speak the language.
So after I’d been trying to communicate with a non-English speaking woman for about fifteen minutes, she somehow managed to involve everybody on the train (and I mean everybody), which is why the 20 people trying to help me shoved me out of the train, thankfully when we reached San Sebastian.
I chose to skip the first walk from Irún to San Sebastian because I’d heard it was the hardest and most difficult part of the Camino del Norte – oh how my guidebook was wrong.
The next morning my pilgrimage began at 6 AM sharp when I started walking towards Orio, not really sure whether I had to turn left or right but somehow I managed to find the yellow arrows that had to guide me in this foreign country. Alone, sweaty and desperate I looked in my guidebook, which described todays walk as “easy and flat”. Here I was, climbing what felt like a mountain, alone, with no one to talk to and my guidebook saying it was “easy”? All I could do was try to silence my thoughts that kept repeating itself “what are you doing!? You could be at home now watching the new episode of Game of Thrones”.
When I finally arrived in Orio, I was just about ready to take the first flight home even though that meant that I would be a failure, but thankfully enough I met a 50-year-old pilgrim from Austria. His name was Fox and we became immediate friends, which is the beauty in traveling alone because you have to grasp onto every single person willing to keep you company.
He told me that he had just sent his first book to print and that he worked at a gas station. The book was about his recently deceased friend who had been in a wheelchair his entire life, but still had inspired everyone around him by his positive way of looking at life. The title of the book is ‘Toad’ because apparently he reminded him of a toad…
But Fox was just like me; he smoked cigarettes, drank a lot of coffee and worked at a gas station (the only difference between us was the fact that he actually liked working at a gas station), so he lured me with promises of coffee and cigarettes at the next town. I followed him, and the next 10 kilometres went by surprisingly fast. So, we finally reached Geatria but the Albergue was of course, located on the highest peak the city, which after walking 26 km on an empty stomach, bad knees and the feeling of a massive blister attacking my foot was worse than spending an entire night watching Mexican soap operas.
Thankfully, I met a Spanish girl who was about my age (all the other pilgrims were approximately 50 – something, which I found kind of disappointing, since I had imagined that the place would be crawling with good-looking guys). She helped me buy some food, since my Spanish wouldn’t get me any other reaction than laughter.
So there I was, sitting outside the Albergue, smoking a cigarette and thinking about heading to bed. It was already 8PM and everybody had gone to bed, while I sat with a blister the size of an Oreo and my knees hurting more than ever.
Only 32 days to go…