Journey to Santiago

Journey to Santiago

I have already found the blue and yellow signposts in the shape of a shell in northern Europe, in my native Germany and in remote places in my current adopted country, and the marked network of paths now stretches throughout Europe. The signposts show the ancient sign of recognition of all pilgrims: a shell, named after the saint to whose bones people went on pilgrimage, the heart of the shell always pointing in the direction of the pilgrim's destination and giving the walker the necessary orientation.

Nowadays, thousands of people flock along the well-trodden paths every year, just as they did centuries ago. It is said that solitude and seclusion can no longer be found on this path. The motives of today's pilgrims are certainly different from those of the people who set out back then to rid themselves of their sins (or those of their patrons) at the end of the journey. And who knows how many sins they committed on the months-long return journey? Today's pilgrims have it easier, as they usually make the return journey by modern means of transport, which is quicker and reduces the temptation to fall into sin again on the way back.

The fire has burned down again, the teacup in front of me is empty, it's still raining and I'm eager to hear more of the writer's experiences from a time when he and I travelled the same country and visited the same places without knowing or meeting each other.

It's a day when it only rains once. It started early in the morning, initially as a fine, barely perceptible veil. Now, in the afternoon, a steady, never-ending trickle fills the water barrels behind the house as a supply for the dry summer weeks that are sure to come. The fire in the stove demands nourishment, one or two logs every hour, at first it blazes up powerfully from the grey embers, only to change shortly afterwards into the familiar calming flicker, it spreads enough warmth to sit comfortably in the living room and through the open doors it keeps the rest of the house, which is a little higher up, comfortably warm without overheating.

The second pot of tea is already on the teapot, a utensil that doesn't seem to be particularly well known in the country I'm currently living in, which has no distinct tea culture. On a rainy day like this, I prefer a strong East Frisian or even a malty Assam, which carries me through the grey inertia of time, flowing just as smoothly as the ever-burbling music.

Every now and then, with a glance at the flames, I read the essays of a man from a country in central Europe who travelled to another country in southern Europe several times 30-40 years ago in search of inspiration for my own literary experiments. Centuries ago, the then rulers of his host country fought an 80-year war with the renegade provinces in his country of origin. This war, which I read about for the first time in his reports, obviously left a formative impression on the history of his country of origin; he often mentions names and events that he was obviously taught at school. It is also very impressive: the king at the time ruled from his newly built giant palace in the southern wasteland over such a widely scattered territory that he could no longer keep the individual provinces in the north, which were striving for independence, under his control. This war is long in the past, and both countries have now been members of the EU for decades. However, in the years in which the travel reports I am now reading were written, the southern European country, together with its smaller neighbour, had only just joined the then still young European alliance. I remember the mood he describes very clearly, because I happened to be travelling there too, not knowing that 33 years later I would be reading essays by a man who was the same age as I am today and who was capturing the spirit of optimism throughout the Iberian Peninsula.

I am trying to copy the style of a man I never met, slightly older than my own father, a writer and journalist throughout his life, who travelled to the same huge country in the same summer as I did. Apparently he was similarly overwhelmed by the diversity of the landscapes and cultures of his provinces as I was back then, he just travelled much more mobile with his own car and stayed comfortably in former palaces run as hotels by the state, while I explored parts of the country by train, equipped with a tent, rucksack and cooker. Nevertheless, his descriptions of the atmosphere of that time are strangely familiar to me, and I also remember individual place names and pause now and again to refresh my memory with my few photographs from that trip.

There is a strange connection between me and the author, who was previously unknown to me: we were both on the way, or, as he writes, "diversions" to the centuries-old destination of European pilgrims, the city of Santiago de Compostela. This pilgrimage route, named after the biblical saint St James, is once again very popular today. There are actually many paths with the same destination, the former "finis terrae" or "end of the world".

I have already found the blue and yellow signposts in the shape of a shell in northern Europe, in my native Germany and in remote places in my current adopted country, and the network of marked paths now stretches throughout Europe. The signposts show the ancient sign of recognition of all pilgrims: a shell, named after the saint to whose bones people went on pilgrimage, the heart of the shell always pointing in the direction of the pilgrim's destination and giving the traveller the necessary orientation.

Nowadays, thousands of people flock along the well-trodden paths every year, just as they did centuries ago. It is said that solitude and seclusion can no longer be found on this path. The motives of today's pilgrims are certainly different from those of the people who set out back then to be rid of their sins (or those of their patrons) at the end of the journey. And who knows how many sins they committed on the months-long return journey? Today's pilgrims have it easier, as they usually make the return journey by modern means of transport, which is quicker and reduces the temptation to fall into sin again on the way back.

The fire has burned down again, the teacup in front of me is empty, it's still raining and I'm eager to hear more of the writer's experiences from a time when he and I travelled the same country and visited the same places without knowing or meeting each other.

(Translated from German by using DeeL Translator)