The camino starts after the camino

In Finisterre my physical camino ended. But people say: The real camino starts after the camino. I had no idea how true that was.

When I got home everything was so much brighter. I remember walking home from the train station in my home town and noticing all those little details I have never paid attention to. My senses were heightened. I was very sensitive to everything, yet very happy and grateful. I was buzzing and full of energy. That lasted about two months, then the real camino started.

Some people think that when you have walked the camino you are enlightened. You are all balanced, tolerant and non-judgemental. That’s complete bullshit. In my opinion enlightenment can only be experienced in little moments, like in meditation. You are still having a human experience and no matter how strong, balanced and happy you are, there will always be problems and challenges. Otherwise life would get boring. Otherwise we would stand still. Otherwise we wouldn’t develop. And how sad would that be?

So what happened? Well, first I didn’t get into university. I had given up my job as a self-employed English and guitar teacher to get a proper degree in education. I was very certain (and arrogant!) that I would get in (“who else, if not me?”), but I didn’t. Suddenly this big dark hole was in front of me. It was also the very first time I did not get what I wanted (except with boys – I never get the ones I want to have, haha!). I had never experienced failure and rejection (again: It’s a whole different story when it comes to love). I have always been the best student both in school and at university. The teachers had always loved me. I had been the geek. And now, a university rejected me. I felt like a complete failure.

On top of that, the same week I received the rejection letter, one of my best friends had a psychotic attack (yes, it is a mental illness) and stabbed his family and himself. Luckily all survived, though with my friend for days it really wasn’t sure if he would. My friend then tried to commit suicide twice more. It was the darkest week of my life and I nearly went mental myself.

The media went completely crazy about it and there were a lot of exaggerations and assumptions made nationwide that just weren’t true. Since then I had been a part-time journalist. But it was then that I decided to make a clean cut. I handed in my resignation at the newspaper that I had worked for for the past three years. I had dreamt of being a journalist since I was seven years old, but reality looked different than I had imagined back then. Saying goodbye completely to my dream from childhood wasn’t easy either.

But I had to be strong, at least for my friend. So I tried my best to support him and to get my job as a teacher back. And so I did. To drown all of it, I did 12-hour shifts, fives day a week. At the beginning of this year I experienced severe health problems and was later on diagnosed with a burn out.

A burn out? After doing the camino? How is that possible? Have I learnt nothing from all my experiences? I believe I have. I honestly believe that I was only dealing with all these challenges, because I was ready to handle them. Through the camino, I had become strong enough to get through them. I always like to compare life with school. It starts of very easy. You kind of start your learning process while playing around. But it gets tougher and tougher. But it has to, otherwise you won’t progress. If you are a real geek and your teacher’s favourite, (if it is a good teacher), you will get extra difficult tasks to do to challenge you even more. That’s what life is like for me too.

So, if you ever face challenges and you ask yourself: “Why me? Why is my life so damn difficult?” The answer is: Because you are strong enough to get through them.

As mentioned above, this past year I struggled. A lot. It was the toughest year of my life. There has been a lot of crying, there was a lot of anger, disappointment and self-pity. But in my darkest times, where I was literally giving up on life, I remembered my camino experience and that made all the difference. Suddenly I was full of energy again and could move on. The camino gave and will always give me the strength to keep going, no matter how hard it will get.

You make all these beautiful experiences in your life and you think they make you feel better forever. They won’t. Life is a roller-coaster. It will always go up and down. But do treasure your memories and these will always make you keep walking. Just keep on walking. Santiago might seem far away, but with every step you take you will come closer to it. Just keep on walking.

I am writing this with teary eyes now and I am well aware that I am giving myself some confidence with this. Today, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, is my last day here in Germany. If I glance into the corner to my right I can see my packed backpack, my hiking pole and my hiking boots that I will pick up tomorrow to do yet another camino. This time I will attempt to walk the Camino del Norte, which starts in Irun, on the French-Spanish border and leads to Santiago. It is a slightly longer walk, mostly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the ocean, the weather will be mild, but the path itself is supposed to be much harder than the other camino that I did last year. Someone on the internet called my last year’s camino “a walk in the park compared to the Camino del Norte.” I am actually scared! There will be less people around, which is good and bad at the same time. Good, because I might find that peace and quiet that I was missing so much on my camino last year, but it’s also bad, because there will be less people to help me when I am struggling. I know the mountains are my weakness, especially going down has often been painful and scary (me being very scared of heights and falling).

Last year I felt very weak. I often walked very slowly and seemed to struggle so much more than other people. Then my camino friend Mark (Marathon Man Mark) said to me: “Actually you are the strongest of all. Yes, you might be slower, yes, you might be more scared and yes, you might be struggling the most, but yet every day you arrive in the albergue like everyone else, despite your fears of falling, despite your pain and your emotions, and that makes you the strongest of us all.”

Not comparing myself to others was certainly one of the biggest lessons I learnt on the camino. But what else has taught me my last year’s camino? Of course I learnt to be patient, to be grateful and tolerant. I learnt never to give up. I learnt how to deal and overcome pain and through that my relationship to my own body completely changed. I started to see my body as my friend, as my team mate, rather than my enemy. I learnt to trust myself and I found out that I can do anything if I only believe in myself. And one of the biggest gifts of the camino are the people that I met. Not only can I now make free holidays pretty much everywhere in the world (haha!), but these people I met have given me so much support and inspiration. Maybe it might interest you what happened to all these people.

You might remember Dani, the Spanish man I met in Roncesvalles, very early on my camino. Though we had problems communicating with each other, he was always there to help me out, when I needed help. Sadly, I could not keep up with him and after about a week, I decided to take it slow, while he pushed forward. Well, coincidentally (or not), Dani lives in Irun, the starting point of my next camino. He will pick me up from the train station on Thursday and I will most probably spend two days visiting the city with him. On Saturday, July 26, I will start my camino and Dani wants to accompany me for the very first day, before he has to go back to work.

Of course I stayed in contact with my amazing walking buddy Jens, who I visited in Norway for a couple of days last year in August. I also met up with Philipp from Berlin. I have also very recently visited Julia in the Black Forest. On my camino I had to say goodbye to her in Leon. Thanks to modern technology it is so easy to stay in contact with people. I have an amazing network with my camino friends on Facebook and I am always overjoyed when I receive an email from my Marathon Man Mark, in which he tells me about his recent adventures. He has since travelled the world – America, Australia, Nepal, and by now I think he is back travelling Europe. Mark has also published a little book with poems about the camino. This book also contains drawings from his fellow pilgrims (me included), who he asked to be inspired by the camino and draw a picture for him. It really is an amazing poetry book and if you are interested, you can order a copy here:

Read Between The Arrows – Mark Larson: UK version please click here:

If you are from the US, please click here:

Last but not least, I want to mention that writing this blog has given me so much inspiration, energy and hope. Everytime I wrote about my camino experiences, I could let go off all my stress and challenges that I was facing throughout the year. When I was writing, I felt like I was right back on the road, writing about it was like doing the camino all over again.

A big thank you goes to all my readers, the comments, the interest, the love, and the appreciation, motivation and encouragement to keep on writing. My blog has nearly 3000 hits and people from over 30 countries have accessed it, which to me, is unbelievable and so amazing. Thank you all for your support and your interest.

Day 40-45: Camino to Finisterre

June 15-19

After a day of rest and exploring Santiago a bit more, Jens and I set off to Finisterre on June 15. I wanted to go to the ocean, to the end of the world, to the point where I could walk no more. If you walk long distances, you can do these 90 kilometres to Finisterre in three days. But we weren’t in a hurry and decided to slow down a lot. We took five days. We didn’t want to arrive in Finisterre, as it meant the end of our pilgrimage.

Looking back: leaving Santiago and its beautiful cathedral behind.

The camino to Finisterre was less crowded and led through more eucalyptus forests. I loved it. I felt the need of walking alone, so often I would fall behind, take longer breaks to be able to walk on my own. Every once in a while, Jens took a longer break to catch up with me and see if I was doing all right. Now that there was hardly anyone around, I could meditate while walking. These forests had something very magical and I felt so connected to nature, the earth, the universe. I was becoming aware of my friends and family in the spirit world. I know that they have been walking next to me all the way, but now that I was all alone, I felt them closer than ever before.

This is what I had imagined the camino to be like before I started. But for the most part of the camino I was busy dealing with pain, struggling with emotions and working on my earthly problems and issues. But after six weeks I had decluttered my mind with everything that needed to be sorted and cleared out, so I was finally able to work on a more sensitive level and become one with my spiritual self. So really, my camino had four parts: The physical, the mental, the social and then at last the spiritual.

And on a lighter note:

The village was actually called “Fornos”. Naughty pilgrims. Naughty, naughty, naughty!

By day 43, however, the mood changed. I really started to struggle again. It was raining cats and dogs. I was wet to the bones. But that wasn’t the only problem. They hurt a lot too, these bones. I could feel my knee screaming for attention, my back got really grumpy from carrying this heavy bag all the way through Spain and now my hip also joined in this moaning choir.

Diary entry, June 17: “Today is the end of week six on the camino and I’m so tired of walking. In Santiago I didn’t feel ready to stop walking, but now I feel like I’m done. I’m tired and soooo looking forward to get to Finisterre, my final destination.”

By day 44, June 18, we could see the ocean for the first time. It was still another 16 kilometres to Finisterre, but seeing the ocean, in my mind, always seemed like seeing the end. I have had many dreams at day and night about this moment. In my imagination I was jumping up and down the moment I would spot the sea. I was surprised about my actual reaction. There was no euphoria. It was a very still happiness, satisfaction, a very quiet, gentle feeling.

first view on the ocean

While I was so close to the end, my thoughts wandered to what would be after the camino. Here is a diary entry one day before Finisterre: “I don’t know what is going to happen when the camino is over. I know that I can’t and don’t want to travel all the time so it’s gonna be a bit tricky – but I guess what the camino has taught me is just to wait and see. A lot of people on the camino have asked me: ‘And where are you planning to stay tomorrow?’ My answer was always: ‘I’m not making any plans. I’ll just walk and see where I will end up.’ It would be really cool to adopt this to real life too. Not worrying about the next day actually feels quite good….I also feel the need to be on my own much more now. Today I had to take a break and went out for a walk to get some me-time. I was so happy that I was listening to my own needs, which were just to be alone for a little while. After a few hours I felt much better and was happy to return to have dinner with Jens. I love the fact that he is so understanding and gives me that space when I need it.”

Day 45 was the day! I arrived at the end of the world, in Finisterre. I didn’t walk, I crawled. By then I was in so much pain. My hip was killing me. I could really walk no more. I had been walking from one side of Spain to the next and have come to my limits. Now my body screamed at me to stop. I had no choice. I had arrived at the end anyway.

A lot of people have asked me how I felt arriving after such a long time. My answer always disappoints them. They expect some different. I have expected something different. Here is what I wrote in my diary on that day, June 19: “I left my bag at the hotel and went to the Cape de Finisterre – ‘the end of the world’. Of course it was a huge tourist trap. It really wasn’t the place to contemplate and meditate to realize I’ve come to the end of my journey. I didn’t feel particularly happy and excited about my achievement and I didn’t feel sad about ending this adventure. Actually, I didn’t feel anything. But must that be a bad thing – not feeling anything? Am I numb? Where have all my emotions gone? Or am I maybe that balanced and non-judgemental that there are no ups and downs anymore?”

the end. No kilometres left to walk. Last camino sign.

I made it.

Jens and I.

Though I did not enjoy the Cape of Finisterre too much, due to the many tourists, I did have one special moment, which might have been one of the most important on the whole camino. On my very last day of the camino, in a restaurant, while having dinner, I met a woman, who I have met on my very very first day of the camino, walking through the Pyrenees. Here is my diary entry on seeing her: “While we were struggling to get through the Pyrenees on the first day, I said to this lady: ‘What a wonderful world’, referring to Louis Armstrong – suggesting that we should not feel angry at this mountain and feel bad about struggling so much, but remember to be grateful for this planet and seeing its beauty. I didn’t just say it to that lady, but also to myself. A few hours later I met her again and she said: ‘Thank you for that comment. That really helped.’ I often had thought about her, my comment and how much impact it had on her and I heard me saying to myself very often: ‘What a wonderful world.’ Isn’t it just magical that I saw this lady again on my very last day of the camino? She just said: ‘Isn’t it a wonderful world?’”

This is better than fiction. What an amazing circle, what an ending!

And it really is a wonderful world. I saw mountains and forests and rivers and the sea, many different animals and lovely cities – and even in the ugliest and dirtiest and darkest places, it still was a wonderful world as it is filled with so many great people who I was allowed to meet on the camino.

Day 38: Santiago, Santiago!

June 13

Walking distance: 4 kilometres

I started walking the last 4 kilometres to the cathedral of Santiago on my own very early in the morning. I had dreamed of walking it with the sunrise. Ironically, it was raining cats and dogs. But I didn’t mind. I was happy.

This was not the end of my camino. I don’t have special connections to churches, I wanted to walk to something that means something to me. So I had always planned to walk to the ocean, another 90 kilometres to Finisterre, a point, where I can’t go any further…if I don’t learn how to walk on water.

However, walking to Santiago was my proof that I could do it. I proved all the doubters wrong. I was and am strong enough to walk through the whole of Spain with a ridiculously heavy backpack and incredible pain in my body, to cope with all weather conditions and many many different types of people. Of course I was proud!

spotting the cathedral for the first time

Just before the cathedral I ran into Felice and her mum. I had met those two lovely Dutch women on my very first walking day and had bumped into them for the first two weeks, then they sped up and were nowhere to be seen. On my way to Santiago that morning I had thought of Felice and there she was.

It was her birthday and she was just looking for a nice place to have a breakfast, so she invited me to come along. In a dry and warm bar I found out that she too was thinking of me that day, hoping that we would meet. She had arrived in Santiago a week ago and had already walked to Finisterre and got back with a bus the day before. They had been quick. I had been slow. So what. This is not a competition.

celebrating Felice’s birthday with her mum and a camino friend

After catching up with her and her mum, I went to get my Compostela, a certificate stating that I had walked the camino. In the middle ages this piece of paper was like a green card, a ticket to heaven, no matter how many times you had sinned. With this piece of paper you were forgiven everything. In Spanish I would say: Es una tonteria como un castillo!

my Compostela

Then I went to the pilgrims’ mass. A must for all pilgrims and tourists in Santiago. There is a mass every day at lunch time for the arriving pilgrims. I thought I would be very emotional, but I really wasn’t. I didn’t understand a thing the priest said, the cathedral was packed with pilgrims and even more tourists, who were only interested in getting decent pictures done and I found the whole thing orchestrated. It was a big show. I even got a bit sad and angry. It showed me that I really don’t feel very comfortable with Christianity. I am a Spiritulist through and through. All I wanted to do was crawl into a nice Spiritualist church, where I could feel the warmth and love of spirit. I did not get the same feeling in the cathedral at all.

the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

It got a bit more exciting though when the priests got out the Botafumeiro, the huge and very famous thuribe. It is a massive swinging metal countainer, where incense is burned. It weighs 80 kg and is 1.60 m high. It just swung through the whole church. It did look very impressive.

After the mass I had lunch with Felice and then met up with my men, checked into a hotel and was off again to hang out some more with Felice. We met Philipp from Berlin, who was just about to make his way to Finisterre and we met Chris, the non-stop talking American, who I met on my second day. I had also bumped into him in Carrion de los Condes quickly. Now he popped up again. It’s funny with these pilgrims. They come and go and suddenly they are back again. We had dinner together with his pilgrim gang and went to a concert.

Chris and I

seeing a live band in Santiago

Chris, Felice and I

Jens and I took a day off and enjoyed Santiago. We said goodbye to Harald and Andy, who had officially finished their camino. Here are a few words from my diary about Santiago: “Santiago is such a cool place. There are so many bars, people just sit in front of the cathedral and hang out with groups drinking wine. Festival atmosphere. There are buskers on nearly every street corner. Santiago is the city of joy! Never had a city more atmosphere!”

buskers

party time in front of the cathedral

But this was not the end. In the next few days I was walking another 90 kilometres to Finisterre, a place that was considered “the end of the world” in the Middle Ages. The end of the world would be my end of the camino.

 

Day 22: El Burgo – Mansilla de las Mulas – The birth of The Monkey Song

May 28, walking distance: 19 kilometres

Diary entry: “Another day without pain, another day where I was flying on the camino. Yesterday was Day 21 on the camino and this Italian girl Manuela said that it’s special, because after 21 days you change your thinking patters. Today, I could really feel that.”

My thoughts had shifted from being occupied by physical pain to my inner self. From the outside to the inside. People also say that the first two weeks on the camino are very physical, as one has to cross the Pyrenees, and that everything after Burgos becomes more mental. I have been walking straight for over a week now. A lot of people skip this part, saying the Meseta is boring, because you just walk straight, without any hills. But I think that is exciting. Your body is allowed to rest and your mind can deal with stuff that is usually suppressed in one’s day to day life.

Today I felt so connected, not only to the people here on the camino, but also to nature. This walk was really quite spiritual. After a few hours of walking I sat down to have a break and because the sun was shining so beautifully and I was nearly alone on the resting spot, I closed my eyes and tried to meditate for a while, to become even more connected to my surrounding.

It did not even take a minute, when I heard someone shout: “Are you okay? Do you need help?” I opened my eyes again and told them that there is no problem at all, except being disturbed in my meditation (thought I didn’t say the last part out loud). I sighed, closed my eyes again and focused on my breathing, bringing me gently into a meditative state. A few minutes later, a man approached me and asked: “Is everything all right?”

What’s wrong with these people? Sure, they just want to help. On the camino everyone looks out for everyone. But this is really a bit over the top. Imagine you are in a park. Would you go to a person, who is sitting on a bench with eyes closed and ask if everything is all right?

I had thought the camino would be a spiritual path. I expected much more spiritual people here and thought they would spend half the day sitting cross-legged on the camino meditating. Instead you just get disturbed. It seems to be impossible to meditate on the camino! When the third person asked me if I needed any help, I got so pissed off, I nearly wanted to shout back: “No, but you soon might need some help!” I got up and walked, or better ran, because I was angry. So angry!

Once the anger was gone, I got inspired. I was reminded of Alberto, who I met yesterday. I named him “Monkey Man” because he carried a stuffed monkey on his bag that was a present from his now-ex-girlfriend. He wanted to burn it in Finisterre, at the West coast of Spain, 90 kilometres off Santiago. I still thought this was a heart-breaking but yet hilarious story and I couldn’t get over the fact that he was carrying a stuffed monkey all this way just to burn it at the end. Imagine this cute monkey seeing all this beautiful Spanish scenery only to be killed at the end of it. Very tragic!

I immediately had an idea for a new song. I couldn’t wait to come to the next bar to sit and write my ideas down. I practically ran. Once I found the bar, I sat down with a tea and a croissant and wrote a song about Babu the monkey. Guess who sat down next to me after a while? Alberto, the monkey man! I finished scribbling my ideas down and then we walked together the last 6 kilometres to Mansilla de las Mulas. Normally, a pilgrim walks 3-5 kilometres in an hour – it is hard to walk fast with a heavy backpack. Somehow, Alberto and I walked those last six kilometres in less than an hour. I really was flying.

We hung out together for the rest of the day and I couldn’t help noticing how attractive this young man is. We cooked lunch together, picked beds next to each other in the albergue, where we had a siesta nap and had dinner together with Stefano and Manuela. In the albergue I also met Julia again. Jens, Harald and Andy had taken hotel rooms for this day. In the night, I sneaked out of the sleeping room and finished writing the lyrics of “The Monkey Song”.

Here is a video of this song, with English and Italian subtitles: