Pilgrim with no Direction CH12

8/4/2019 Pilgrim with no Direction CH12

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Brian R. Murdock

Copyright 2011



12Pilgrims often rise early because by doing so

they can get a head start on the day itself and

avoid those tortuous last miles of walking

under a severe and merciless summer sun.

This is especially advisable when the stages

surpass 30 kilometers, but it isrecommendable for any distance at that time

of year. Galician climate is perhaps slightly

cooler than the oven-like midday

temperatures of, say, Castile in the center of

Spain, but it is also generally much more

humid there and thus prone to muggy

weather. That can make even late morning

hiking strenuous and uncomfortable, so it

makes perfect sense to want to reach your

destination as quickly as possible.

But that’s not the only reason.

Departing well before even a roostercrows also increases your chances of arriving

at the next major town in time for you to

ensure a bed at the local public albergue. At

5€ a night, I can assure you it’s a coveted

prize for the frugal and low-budgeter alike.

This also explains why I had some issues with





arrangement was open. Redondela was one

of those days. As you already know, I agreed.

Albergues do not open their doors until1:00p.m. Personally, I feel it’s their way of

getting us pilgrims out of the way for a few

hours so they can clean up and fumigate, but I

also like to think they do so just to give

everyone an even chance to sleep there at

night. In a sense this is good because it

means the young, strong and swift can’t just

jump to their feet at 5 a.m. and bolt down the

trail to grab all the beds before the old, flabby

and slow like us have a can show up. But that

doesn’t mean people can’t resort to what is

commonly known as forming a line. So in the

end, instead of having people stream (orstraggle) in little by little and sign in, once

they arrive, they spend the rest of the

morning stuck next to the albergue door so as

not to lose their place in line. And that sucks.

When we got to Redondela at 12:20 that

day, already a sizable number of walkers hadmanaged to reach the albergue before us.

Aitor flipped out his guide of Infallible

Information and told us that the shelter had

something in the neighborhood of 55 beds for

weary pilgrims (another pilgrim heard there

were over 60), so after a quick mental head



count we figured we were well within that

limit.

At one o’clock on the dot, it opened andwe began to file in, which was just about the

point when things got a bit hairy. Up to that

point the crowd had been reasonable in size,

but suddenly, those people in line had friends

with them who happened to appear just in

time to go in. On top of that, it turned out that

the guides had grossly overestimated the

available space. Inside we were told that

there were only 42 beds. The situation

suddenly looked bleak. The crowd became

restless and nervous about whether or not

everyone would be able to claim a spot to

sleep in that night. Murmuring grew intogrumbling and even some well-voiced

complaining burst out.

“Jesus!” I thought. “The sticks are

going to be flying any second now.” You see,

when it came to a cheap bed, no one was your

friend.

The woman in charge was a pretty,

small-framed, fibrous-bodied woman with a

clear-minded attitude on how she felt pilgrims

should be treated, which was not dissimilar to

cattle. She possessed impressive

organizational aptitudes and, had she wanted



to, it is my firm opinion she would have made

a great prison warden. Her oral skills were

commanding as well. In fact, I think her firstword was something like “Achtung!”

Well, you should have seen how forty

people suddenly stood at attention. What had

once been nearly an unruly mob scene, had

suddenly turned into a fairly well formed line

of docile obedient pilgrims. From there she

reeled off several minutes of rules and

procedures with such efficiency it blew my

mind away. Everything she spewed out was

the general run-of-the-mill information and of

general disinterest to me (like pre-flight safety

instructions) until she came to the point about

who had preference to a bed:

First in line, handicapped (not us…yet);

Second, walkers (I guess that was us)

Third: horse riders (not horses, thanks);

Finally cyclists (not a prayer at this time

of year)

She capped off her discourse with, “And

of course, anyone using a support car can

forget it. I don’t know who you are but I know

there are some here. There always is. Come

on, I know you know each other by now, so we

can all be honest.”



The support car users were the scourge

of the Camino. The cheaters. The sissies.

The ones who should not be able to look atthemselves in the mirror in the mor-ning. But

that wasn’t the worst of it. Jesus! The woman

was actually asking us to fess up. Snitch on

each other.

I suddenly recalled the incident from the

day before with my car and noticed that the

Belgian girls were ahead us in line. The queue

had curled around the room in such a way that

even though they were at the front, they were

within a face-slap’s distance. I took one quick

glance at them as they stared in our direction

with an expression of (how can I describe it?)

hate. I looked away casually the way you dowhen your third-grade gym teachers asks for

volunteers to be the first to try a chin-up in

front of the class. At any second I was

expecting one of them to scream “Them! It’s

them! Fraulein, they have a support car!” and

have a dozen SS officers jump out and carryus away. It would have been an unlikely

scenario, I must admit, but anything they

would have said would have meant scandal for

us. But the girls kept mum and thank God

because we weren’t using a support car in the

first place, and it would have been entirely



unfair. But just imagine trying to explain it all

those tired and irate pilgrims. Once you get a

bad reputation in life, it ain’t easy to change.Considering all those rules that Fraulein

poured forth, what I couldn’t get quite

understand was how a group of Italian scouts

who were ahead of us managed to be

admitted. There must have been 15 of them.

I’m sure there must be a limit on that, like

getting tickets to a Springsteen concert. No

more than six at a time. But nothing was said

or done. That in my opinion seemed unfair.

Why hadn’t Fraulein said anything about

them?

Anyway, of the 42 spots, we came in 38,

39 and 40, which meant we had to wait nearly

another hour for our beds to be assigned,

since Fraulein had to write down everyone’s ID

number and stamp their credentials. In that

time, we had a chance to become better

acquainted with some of the other pilgrims

sharing the Camino with us. In addition to theBelgian girls who had not narked on us (but

were clearly not on speaking terms) and the

Italian scouts, we met wonderful people like

two very nice brothers from Huelva, a mellow

and kind couple from Spain (he was from

Valencia and she was Argentine), and just



behind us to wrap up the line, two young men

from A Coruña in Galicia. They had just done

our first two stages (Tui-Redondela) in onethat very morning (30kms) and were suffering

the consequences. One showed us a blister

the size of my elbow. Aching and hurting and

joking at the same time, they were a good

laugh.

This, my friends, is the invaluable

advantage to going to these shelters. By

doing that, you get to know your fellow

pilgrims better, you get to know your fellow

humans, you get to know the world…and it

makes the whole experience that much more

enriching.

Finally we reached the counter and were

admitted, but the problem at that point was

that we would have little choice about getting

a sleeping arrangement that suited us. This

proved especially delicate for Aitor because he

had a thing about using an upper bunk, which

was all that was left. His fear had somethingto do with falling out of one when he was a

child. He said he was traumatized by the

event and never fully recovered.”

“What do you mean never fully

recovered?” I asked. “Does that mean you



inexplicably forget to use pronouns in your

sentences, or freak out from time to time?”

“No, I just have a fear of falling out of beds, that’s all.”

“That’s too bad. But I think it’s time you

tried to overcome it. Is this going to require

that tie you down to the four corners or

something like that?”

“I don’t think so.” This rattled mesomewhat. I wasn’t expecting ‘I don’t think

so’ as an answer. It was sup-posed to be a

definite no. I wished he had informed me of

these little quirks in his personality before we

had departed.

“Well, you are just going to have to faceit. You got us into this thing, after all. That’s

life. That’s the Camino.”

Meanwhile I looked over on the other

side of the room and tried to find out which

was available for me. Albergue dormitory

halls tend to do for beds what low-cost airlines

do for seating. They cram them in there so

tight that what your eyes basically perceive at

first is one long and continuous row of

mattresses. This can be a little discon-certing

at first because everyone wants a little

privacy, but you soon realize that the bunks



can be shifted slightly here and there to allow

for a bit of breathing room.

On the other hand, closeness can haveits advantages. I spotted what I thought was

the only remain-ing empty bed in the entire

building, an upper bunk joined to another

where a pretty young blonde German woman

in her twenties who was lying on her back.

She had her t-shirt rolled up halfway, exposing

her belly for all to admire. “Mein Gott” I

uttered to myself. “What hath Fraulein

wrought?”

I think she was reading too, but to be

honest, I really was focused on literary detail.

Would I have to take the bed next to hers?

Would this be great opportunity to learn about

peoples from other lands? Do these things

really happen to sinners of great sinning like

me?

Just as I was looking up at the ceiling

with my hands raised and was preparing to

give thanks to God for his generosity, a larger

older blonde woman bumped me aside and

dumped her things on the bed. The two

began to speak so I could tell they knew each

other. I am assuming it was her mother. Oh,

crap! It turns out my bed was the next one



over. Excuse me for being so presumptuous.

The Camino could be so fickle.

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Pilgrim with no Direction CH12