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 ((:

I'm nearly gone.

In the first days of april I will start El Camino from the door of the 1114th room of the Christoph-Probst-Strasse 16, the green building in the student city in Munich.
My very first home in Germany.