Time for some pics!

It seems that I am in my lucky phase. After ~500 Km I have finally found a computer to upload some pics!!! I have already mroe than 400, but here you have the best (:



Munich, the very beginning: The Studentenstadt. On the 11th floor of that building I had my very first home in Germany



The Isar, to the south of Munich (The trees hadn't leaves yet!)



Sunrise in the woods after Schäftlarn



Starnberg & my mochila



Bigfoot alert



Just before a magic valley near Starnberg



Radar station in the way to Haid... And the alps were getting closer and bigger each day!!



See those three white stripes at the very background? Well, that's a factory in Munich!!!! :D SOOOO far away!!! The photo was taken at Hohenpeissenberg.



The church at the top of Hohenpeissenberg. The sky was uncredibly blue. For WEEKS.



This farmer came to me when I was nearly dead and we talked about this and that. He was a really good man. Thank you!



Gertrudis and her family. A magic pelgrim that hosted me and gave me peace and strength.



You gotta mooooooooooooove... At 8 am!



This day it snowed like crazy. Really like crazy. Bavarian april!



Everything I need. Excepting bread & water.



Camino de Santiago: Betreten auf eigene Gefahr (cross at your own risk)



Cute switzerland!!!



Maia. A very special pelgrim. Very mature, very sensible, really special. Good life I wish you (:



Cute Switzerland 2



Someone needed a grill and had a car too much.



The big and the small Myth. Perfect name for a great mountain. It feels as if they would be protecting you.



Again, a bit further away.



Amazing Switzerland



Yeah. There you have some pureness.



( )



It's amazing! It's huge! It's powerful! It's silent! It's... It's....!!!



:D



Sleeping in the straw. Really comfortable.



I'm so tired...........



Fribourg, the town of the nice girls! (And the nice medieval houses)



Well, it was actually 2003 km... But who cares!! Let's gooooooooo!!!



This morning was foggy and so nice...

The Long Version

Here I am! In Fribourg (Switzerland)!

I sit in front of this computer, and I don't know where to start. You know, there are sooo many things happening each day. So many emotions. In my diary, in which I write each day, I cannot write all that go trhough my mind and soul. And in the blog, where I can write once a week at best.... What you get is the summary of the summary (: !! :P But anyhow, I think that the feeling stays.

It was a very good idea to stop for one day. Not only for the body, but also for thinking. For feeling. For recalling a bit all the things that have happened. You know, in this life we do not appreciate things until we lose them. And the feeling of knowing where your house is is SO worthy. To know simply where you are going to sleep tonight. A luxury for the pelgrim. At the beginning I had a list containing aaaaaaaall of the possible places where I could sleep. Hotels (which I avoided like hell, 'cause they're really expensive), Gasthaueser, private people, everything. The list did only comprehend german places, thought, and luckily I was lazy or unlucky enough to not print the 50 pages of the longer swiss list. When I arrived in Switzerland, I only knew where I could stay the first night, in Sankt Gallen. It was a great pelgrim shelter. And then... Good luck!

Well, at first it made me a bit anxious. The villages are not homogeneously distributed over the way, so you may get throught three or four hostals in one hour, and then stay five hours "away" from civilization. So if it's like six p.m. and you haven't found anything, it's likely that the sun will set before you do so. Or so I thought.

Violating all laws of physics and common sense, I NEVER had a problem in finding a place to stay. Never. Specially in the last days, I have learnt to forget about the question "Where am I going to sleep tonight?". There is miracously ALWAYS something. Some days I was asking farmers if they knew where I could stay that night and they were answering "no, but you can stay in our granary, if you want". (Farmers are incredibly kind people. And extremely wise. Never use the expression "simple as a farmer". When you talk to them you feel that they know so much from nature, from people, and from life!) I have selpt in straw, near cows, in some storehouses, there was ALWAYS a place. And at the end of the day you are normally so tired, that when the sun is gone so are you too.

I am sorry that I cannot upload any photos yet. I have some really good ones. Specially in Switzerland, every day I found I place where I thought "I could staz here and contemplate the landscape for weeks". No exaggeration here. I have seen places that could give life back to a dead person. Huge mountains with shining snow and ancient trees, lakes with water so blue that you think there has to be some kind of magic in it, valleys so mystical that you woulnd't wonder too much if suddenly a big dragon flied over your head.

Each day I cry. Each day I laugh. Each day I sing and each day I'm angry, and astonished, and and and... You know, there is nothing extraordinary in the Way. It's only a matter of a step behind the other. But it's you. You, all of you, all your good parts, all your bad parts, all your dreams and your fears, your successes and your inner devils that go aaall the way long with you. It's you, the Way, and the Nature. You, Nature, and the World. It's pure. It's spiritual. It's right.

In my 20th day or so I was angry at me. I sayed to myself, come on, Samu, this is costing so much money, your body hurts so badly, and after 20 days you haven't find even a big truth about yourself. (This is true. I have found a lot of minor truths, but no major evidence striked me yet. But I'll come to this in a second). I was feeling a bit guilty. But then time passed and I thought, no, it's wrong. It's not about that. My philosophy in life is "Be a sponge". Fill yourself with what surrounds you. Observe. And why should I be handling the Way differently? So I started to stop expecting and just "let me go" throught the Way rather than "actively walking to my next destination". And it feels so right.

Here are some songs that I have this days in mind:

You gotta move
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtlVSedpIRU (though not this exact version)

Cat Stevens - Father and son

Lagarto Amarillo - Siempre y cuando
And of course, a lot from Mercedes Sosa, specially Gracias a la vida, Todo Cambia, Como la Cigarra & Maria, Maria.


There is a question that I have been asking myself from the Beginning: Why am I going this Way? I have told friends and family that it was because I needed some time to think about continuing in physics or not.

But this is not the truth. Oh, no, this is not the truth. Of course I needed some time to think about that, but the point is that this Way called me. Something inside or outside of me called. It feels like playing the lowest tone of an enormous guitar. It's not loud, but it's present. I saw once a book with photos of this Way, and after that moment there was no chance to escape. My secret inner tones started playing, and when this happens you gotta move. I don't know the exact reason why I am here. There is something calling. There is some unasked question boiling inside of me. And I will find it, oh yes I will (:

Thinking about this, I realized something.
You could describe my personality as the conversation between some people, being all of them different parts of me. You have the Serious Samu, the Funny Samu, you have the Adventurer and so on. What I discovered is related to two parts of me, Big Samu and Little Samu:

Both Little and Big Samu wanted at some point to leave Tenerife and go see the world.
Everything was so exciting, everything was so special outta there, my body and my soul were simply needing to go. As time came closer and I was seeing more clearly what leaving for Germany really meant, Big Samu started being the Driving Part of me. There were a lot of Big decisions to be taken, concerning where to study, finding a place to live, opening a bank account, understanding a foreign health insurance system, an unknown dialect of German, adapting to a fully new culture, climate, and so on. I had a lot of support from my parents and family, but little practical help, since no one of them speaked german or knew the country.

So it was the perfect task for Big Samu. We enjoyed it, being an adult, handling all Big Problems on our own, being a Steppenwulf.

The three following years were hard ones. Also nice ones. But when I say hard, I mean really hard. Big Samu had to give the Best out of him to survive the strikes of life. There were plenty of nights were I had no more truth in myself, where I was thinking, no way I can handle all this on my own. I invented the Ritual of the Elder and a thousand little tricks to get all possible energy out of the deepest parts of me. Big Samu made a very good job.

Big Samu had so much pressure, he had to handle so many problems and speak so loudly to not get lost in the middle of life, that Little Samu was nearly forgotten. Of course not at all. I always, always enjoyed taking some time for me, taking a walk at night, contemplating the stars, just enjoying like I used to do as a kid. But my life was being driven by Big Samu. There were still plenty of important and dangerous things around, matters about love, about the future, about my career.

And what I realized the other day is that I had nearly forgotten about Little Samu. About the child that still lives in me, the one that used to point at things to know their name, the one that learned about life by playing with life. In the last times I have been SOOOOOO occupied with planning and imaging and calculating my future. Physics, Neurosciences, Munich, Bonn, Spain, so many possibilities, so many things that Big Samu wanted to clear as soon as possible.

But the Game of Life, the Joy of Playing, the Sense of all it perhaps, the things that Little Samu knows better about, they have been secondary when taking my decisions. This is going to change. Little Samu is back. Rediscovered in the Way.

Remind me that another day I tell you about the Spirits.

As the last thing for this long long post, I'd like to copy a part of my diary here:




There is a part of my diary I'd like to copy here. Some parts may be strange because it's difficult to translate them into english. I was lying on a bed hearing to Maria, Maria, and then everything came out:

How strong is this woman's (Mercedes Sosa) music. How much do her words move me, just like a leave in the wind. What a privilege. What a privilege this life, what a privilege being able of crying, what a deep privilege being able of taking my things and leave, what a privilege to have the money to pay it, the will to go it, to stand my ground, health to resist, heart to open myself and absvorve all the world, five senses to absorve life, landscapes and people and worlds I never knew before. What a privilege to have all my people so close to me, to take with me a part of all of them, from so many places all over this world, and to know that I am a bit in them, with them. What a privilege to have the liberty to go and cross countries that aren't at war eith each other, that don't hate or fear each other. What an inmense luck to bne alive, but specially to FEEL alive, so alive in the world, in here, now, how wonderful to be able of recognizing my fears, my weaknesses, and be able of working to be a better person, how amazing to have so many doors open, how delicious to have lived, to have enjoyed, to have risked and have experienced Good and Bad. How wonderful to cry. How wonderful to feel my breath, how wonderful EVERYTHING is! How to thank for all this? How to only understand all this? How to realize that I have a THOUSAND times all I wish? How to express this wet happiness, this unbelievable present? Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

The Short Version

People, I'm happy. I am now in a town called Heitenried, being hosted by a wonderful couple that has their own house for pelgrims. Tomorrow I'm arriving in Fribourg, I'll make my first stop (after nearly four weeks of walking) and I will write a looooooooooooooooot (:

Be hugged
The Pelgrim

The Ritual of the Elder

Here I am!!

In Switzerland!!! (This is SO amazing uncredibly beautiful!! I would sit for days each five meters and just look at the landscape!!)

I have only very short time today, but there is something I really want to share.

There have been some moments in this Way and some moments in the three years I was studying in Munich when the energy simply was exhausted. I was so tired of everything, I was so at the end of my forces, that the only thing I could do is sit and feel like a huge piece of worthless shit. Really a bad feeling. Sometimes things happen that lead you to such a state.

Well, the other day, while crossing the borders between Germany, Austria and Switzerland, I was feeling a bit like that. Very exhausted. Not only physically, but also on the inside. Not really wanting to walk another 35 km (it was going to be a really long day) and that the next morning and so on. My steps were slow. My eyes were on the ground. I had in mind that song of celtas cortos

"a veces llega un momento en que
te haces viejo de repente
sin arrugas en la frente
pero con ganas de morir
paseando por las calles
todo tiene igual color -everything was really looking kind of colorless-
siento que algo echo en falta
no se si sera el amor"


Well. The soul seems to have an emergency system that activates in such moments, and I am always impressed about the power mine shows. It started kind of subconsciously in Germany, during my endless bike riding nights through the english garden, and it grow more and more to a Ritual. I think the name "of the Elder" fits it perfectly.

Well, what saves me in that moments from actually turning into a huge piece of worthless shit is the following: I imagine my father and my mother. They're just behind me, walking at the same rhytm I do. Then I imagine my grandparents, the ones I liked and the one I didn't. They are behind my parents, they're walking with me. Then I invoke the fathers of my granfathers, and so on. All my anchestors are behind of me, in silence, neither approving nor disapproving, simply accepting whatever decission I have taken (e.g. to go the Way until the end), and aiding me. Simply staying behind of me, saying silently "We are here. We are with you. Your steps are our steps". They won't talk, I won't see them if I turn, but all their names are written in my skin, in my brain, in my heart. Their bloog is my blood, their dreams were like my dreams, their fights were like my fights, and their fears were alike. They will walk with me. I have all of them boiling inside of me and they will silently follow and help me wherever I want to go.

At this point my vody is filled with a new energy. It's hard to describe. It doesn't matter anymore what my trouble before was, if the feet were hurting, if I was afraid, if I was unsure about a decision. I feel all my elders inside of me, I feel all the force of my family, their old dreams, their old wishes, all concentrates inside of me... And then nothing ever can stop me.

Two days ago I made the Ritual again, and, guess what, at the end I walked ~40 km with 1000m vertical distance.

So, I have to hurry now... To all the people that have written me beautiful mails and comments: I`m really sorry that I`m not answering... But it`s very difficult to get to the Internet in the Way. You will receive my answer, PROMISED, but it will take some months :)

The Fight

Here I am!


To let go. To let it be. To let yourelf fall. This is for sure one of the majr things I´m slowly learning in this Way. And I´ll tell you why:

Yesterday was the worst day of the Way until now. With difference. It was really really shitty. I planned wrongly the km I wanted to do, I was walking until 9 at night and I still wasn´t there. The whole day had been extremely hot, I was sweating like a pig, the way wsa also not dirt as usual, but asphalt... And this is soooooooooooo bad for your feet. They were hurting so much that my TEETH started hurting. How that works, no idea. But it happened.

I had to go up a mountain, and at the top of that mountain there was a sign: "Kempten, 2 3/4 h". I looked at my watch, it was 5 in the evening. Well, there was nothing but a small wood church with open windows, and the night was going to be cold. Kempten was a big town, so I hoped to find something and decided to go on. Just for you to know: I use to wake up at 7 or earlier in the morning and starting walking at 9 the latest. I usually arrive at 5-7 to the places. So that day I was already VERY late.

Well, I walked on, and some half an hour later I see another sign "Kempten, 2 1/2h" Special relativity tells you that the time of the signs doesn´t go at the same speed as your time, so no reason to hurry. I continue, and after another half hour, "Kempten 2 1/2 h".

Fuck the sign. I go on, and surprise, I still find three or four signs saying that the way needs two hours! I start calling people to see where I can stay ( I have a list of cheap and good places for pilgrims) and, surprise, four people not answering. When it was like 7 I finally get to talk to a nun that says, yeah, you can come by.

Well, and so on. It still took me until 9 to only reach the BOUNDARIES of the town, I still had to cross to the other side (But, the question is, which other side, my friend?)

At this point I would have taken a bus and driven the rest of the way. For more than three hours (and not 2 3/4), I had been walking in asphalt at full speed!


Then, the miracle occured.

A car stopped and a woman asked: "Are you a pilgrim?"
-"Yes, I am?"
-"It´s a bit late, isn´t it? Do you wanted me to take you somewhere?"

The miracle. In the last moment. After the hardest day of the Way. This woman falls from heaven and asks me to help me with the ugliest part of my day. Man, I had no words!! This only happens in the movies!! :D

The woman turned out to be working exactly next to the place where I wanted to spend the night. And the night turned out to cost nothing ´cause the nun liked that I was ging the full way.

I´m still a bit of in shock. I have no words to express my gratitude for these people, and SO many others that I am finding in my way and are enriching me, either by helping me like that, or by sharing experiences and thoughts with me.

In these days, though, a new phase of the Way is going on: The Fighting phase. I´m facing my inner devils, my old fears, I´m doubting about things like if doing this Way is the correct thing. There is no certainity without the fight, I read somewhere. And now it´s time for the Fight. Samu vs. Samu. A decisive part of the Way.


Thank you very much for your comments and for your mails. I may not answer all, but thy give me strength and will to keep on with this strange Fight. I´m thinking of you, people (: Thanks


Next time I´ll time to write something better, but now there are so many people smoking in this small room that I definetly have to go!!! Hasta pronto!

Here I am!

Here!

Everything hurts! Everything! Every single part of the body you can think of and some that probably don´t even exist are hurting! But it feels so great! So right! It was just about time that I gave some gas to this body again. And it responds so good. When I arrive at my destination, I´m feeling like I could break to pieces in a matter of seconds. Making a step, rising the hand, even just staying there and sit: whatever minimal movement I do, it hurts. But, astonishingly, in a matter of hours it´s almost completely gone. The body reacts. Nature reveals all its wisdom, and the result of loootsa years of being on the top of the food chain. In the third day of my journey, my body seems to be happily violating the energy conservation principle, and in the morning -after swearing internally a bit because of having to wake up so early- I´m full of power again. I get out, I walk and I sing- And I thought I was not fit enough! I love this body.

Now I am in the -private- house of a woman that has also gone the whole Way before. Because she lives in the middle of the german Way, she decided - a bit like Couchsurfing! - to share her home with the pilgrims. And you wouldn´t believe how full of love this place is, how beautiful and inspiring, how much attention it has been paid to the details... As I entered the door, I realized that this IS one of the reasons I had to go this Camino. People like Uschi Schneider paint the colors of life. Could you believe that she wasn´t home when I arrived? They let me in in their house, having only heard about me on the phone!

That´s the way life does taste.

This place, Haid, somewhere lost in the bavarian hills, has such a charm. The immaculate green plains surround everything. There are no´(t many) loud cars here, no big ugly buildings, no(t much) annoying civilization and asphalt destroying whatever desires to grow. There is green. Green trees big as dreams, and green plains wide as imagination. I was absolutely destroyed while walking up the last very steep meters to arrive here. But when I turned....

I could see the alps so near that I could nearly touch them. They were shining bright with the last sun rays, the snow was kind of orange, the sky behind, blue as if all the blue color of the world had condensed thre. I had to stop. Even with my feet on fire, I had to stop five minutes -and turn off the motivational mp3 I was hearing to make the last steps- and simply, contemplate.

To Contemplate.

This is what I have been doing, apart of walking. It´s funny how time passes at a different speed when you are not in a hurry and really really wish to just contemplate.

An old man approached me when I was sitting against a church and making a break and started talking to me. "Good that there are still people doing this by foot". -How I love this people...


I´m sorry that I cannot upload any photos yet, but my friend Juha, that accompanied me on the first day -and will one day go the Way himself-, took this excellent pictures:
http://strayshot.smugmug.com/Erasmus/El-Camino/16493462_ccR4F

As you see, my Way started on the rainiest day of the year. Honestly, it was raining like all angels in heaven had decided to pee on us at the same time. But, as Katharina said, ´it means that now it can only get better and better!´ And she didn´t realize how f***ing right she was.

Now I´m going to bed, before my back explodes.



Thank you people (:




-Ps. About the blisters of the beginning:
I bought not only one but TWO extremely expensive blister patches from the Apotheke because I was bloody scared of the Blister Monster. Remember, it took me ONE HOUR after arriving in Freimann, Munich, to get my first blister. So you can imagine how hell scared I was. (One hour, one blister, what about a hundred twenty days?)

After arriving at my first destination, I had two big blisters, one on each foot, and I put patches on them, then I went to sleep. This special patches do stick to your skin until the blister is gone for good and then they fall down. Theoretically.

Well, in the first break of the day, when I took my shoes off and looked at them, I invoked the full power and depth of the spanish swearings, since the fucking expensive blister patches were not only not where I had put them, but they had moved quite a lot towards the fingers. They were now white, had stick to the socks and were like melted. A mess and a lot of shit for 7 euros.

When I relaxed, I said to myself: Let´s think like the physicist you are. Why have those fucking shitty and expensive patches moved that much? The blisters were actually in a very strange location, where I had have no blisters before: Exaclty UNDER the feet. Wtf? Perhaps the foot was loose in the shoe and it was gliding hence and forth?

I tied my shoes much stronger after the break and, guess what? After half a kilometer there was no pain anymore. Nothing. It was gone. Bye, bye, and don´t cry for me, Argentina. Well, of course they were still hurting a little bit, but I could move at a decent speed and I hadn´t to be walking like an old Donald Duck anymore!

That has been my very first triumph in the Camino ((:

Old good Munich

Long before starting, I wrote two pilgers from Munich who had made the Way twice, and I asked them if they knew where I could stay while in the german Way. They knew, and the first part of their beautiful email was this:

Lieber Samuel,
da beneiden wir Dich fast etwas, dass Du im April Dich von München aus auf Deinen Camino aufmachen willst. Du wirst einen wunderbaren Weg gehen können, der sich von dem Weg ab der spanischen Grenze ziemlich stark unterscheidet. Wir sind von München bis nach Santiaogo schon zwei Mal gegangen - das letzte Mal im letzten Jahr - und sind immer wieder sehr stark beeindruckt von diesem Weg. Wenn Du ab München gehst, durchläufst Du wie in einer Zeitreise die Entstehung unseres alten Europas. Du durchwanderst unterschiedliche Kulturen, unterschiedliche Baustile, Du erlebst vorallem die Menschen am Weg mit all ihrer Verbundenheit - in den dörflichen Gegenden - mit ihrem Unverständnis - in den städtischen Regionen. Du erlebst vorallem andere Pilger und was noch wichtiger ist - Du erlebst Dich selbst - in den schönen und in den etwas anstregenderen Situationen. Deshalb ist es für uns Münchner auch so gut, dass wir den Weg von München aus gehen können, weil wir damit die Zeit haben die 3 Phasen durchlaufen und durchleben zu können, die ein Pilger, wenn er so lange unterwegs ist, durchläuft. Da ist erst die körperliche Phase, in der man mit seinem Körper und seinen Wehwehchen zurechtkommen muß und sich durchbeißen muß. Dann die seelische Phase, in der wir zu uns selbst kommen können, den Kopf frei bekommen um über uns selbst nachdenken können und letztlich die 3. Phase - die geistige Phase - in der wir dann bereit und in der Lage sind, uns mit Gott und der Welt auseinanderzusetzen. Diese Phasen durchläuft erfahrungsgemäß fast ein jeder Pilger, der sich von zuhause auf diesen langen Weg macht. Und es ist dann ein unbeschreibliches Gefühl in Dein wunderbares Spanien einzuwandern und sich dann zu erfreuen an den Mitpilgern, und sich langsam vorzubereiten auf die Ankunft in Santiago, die nach so einer langen Zeit einfach UNBESCHREIBLICH ist. Du wirst erleben, dass es einen großen Unterschied macht, nur die letzten 150 km ab O Cebreiro zu wandern oder ab München den ganzen Weg zu pilgern. Es ist einfach ganz anders und für Dich wird es etwas ganz besonderes sein, zuhause in Spanien Deiner Heimat anzukommen/´heimzukommen. Wir freuen uns für Dich.


Sorry that I don´t translate it (:

One of the things that they say is that there are three parts in this Way. In the first one you are fully occupied with your body, and all the small pains that it prepares for you. The second and third one are more spiritual phases.
...I´m fully in the first phase now. I have not really started, I only walked some few kilometers from the Studentenstadt to where I am staying now, but I have my first small red blister - this has to be a world record! Blister on Day 0 !!-. I´m nervous, to be honest :P The oldest and biggest of my fears, the fear of failing, is knocking at my door. (What if in the first week I get so many blisters that I cannot walk anymore? What if...?) He and I will have a long chat tomorrow... This Way is going to be soooooooooooo therapeutical!

And now forgetting about the blisters....
It´s such a nice & strange feeling to be again in Munich. Three years I have lived here, and every corner of the town reminds me of something that happened in that time. To be honest, I didn´t remember that the town was so nice. Specially with sun and 25°, of course (: Feels just like home-
-Home. Nowhere and in so many places at the same time.

Well, let´s start the day! Have a nice sunday! :D