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The best souvenir is the one you can't share

There is a group of buskers playing an upbeat melody while tourists stand by to listen.  The trumpet player's elastic cheeks puff out like balloons.  A teenage girl wearing a skirt and high tops begins to dance, her arms stretched out wide, swinging herself in circles.  Her mouth is open in laughter and her eyes reflect the street lamp above her.  

By the river people are feeding the waterfowl.  There is a little boy running amongst the swans, shrieking with delight each time he manages to touch one, but stamping his foot at the pigeons each time a swan escapes his chubby fingers.  The little girl nearby is trying to feed the swans with the bread her mother has entrusted her with.  She, too, squeals in excitement as the swans rush to claim the chunks of bread.  The children's reactions mirror each other when a couple strolls past with their dog and all of the birds scatter; they each begin to pout, their lower lips trembling, and run to hang on tightly to their mothers' legs.  

These are moments that cannot be captured by a camera lens.  It always amuses me to be wandering around amidst hordes of tourists, all of whom have their cameras in front of their faces, snapping photos of everything in sight.  Their tour guide with a yellow duck attached to a stick blabs away about the year 1652 and that one king, and the dude from the 1300's who married that one woman.  The yellow duck bobs in and out of the crowds and the pack of tourists follow along like kindergarteners on a leash.  There are always a few stragglers, the ones kneeling down to get a good angle on that castle with their Canon Rebels that have become extensions of their noses.  The funniest part of the whole spectacle is when someone points their camera at a building to take an artsy shot of a balcony with an ornate lamp, and all of a sudden thirty other cameras point in that direction, terrified to miss something they were supposed to photograph.

  

It makes me chuckle, but quite honestly I miss their enthusiasm.  I have gotten to the point of not taking photos of everything in sight because it's not a novel experience anymore.  The massive Prague castle looming over me as the sun sets is a spectacular vision that will forever be etched in my memory, but the lighting had cast shadows in all the wrong places and there wasn't enough space in the square to get a good shot.  So I let my camera hang by my side and instead tried to memorize the flecks of gold glinting in the sun and the way the eyes of the people in the carvings seem to follow you. These are the things you just cannot capture, no matter how expensive your camera is.One of the most lasting lessons I've learned from traveling is knowing when to put your camera down. Some things are better off stowed away in your memory, where they can be photoshopped by your experiences and emotions.  The best lighting and filters come from how you were feeling at the time and who you were with. 

I don't blame anyone for trying to capture the moments, the historical cathedrals and castles, the monuments, or their extravagant dinner plates.  I do it, too.  It's a preservation technique, and our digital devices guarantee us an unlimited number of memories.  But once in awhile, it's better to soak in your surroundings instead of trying to catch them like fireflies in a jar.  You might have them, but they're not free to flit around and morph with your feelings.  After all, nobody spends that kind of money on a plane ticket just to get a photo of a landmark.  The best and most valuable souvenirs you can possibly bring home are your memories.

K

Prague, Czech Republic

Never alone

Paca was absolutely right.  The hardest thing about the Camino is letting it go.

When I got to Valencia, I felt numb.  It was disturbing to me how badly I wanted to go home, but all I could think about was curling up in my own bed, turning on some music, and tuning out the world.  I didn't want to be traveling anymore.

I allowed myself a day and a half to be mopey, but then it was time to wake up and face reality: the Camino is no longer my reality. It is a world of its own, and it exists in a tiny little bubble that eventually you have to burst. I love traveling more than anything, and the fact that I was considering booking myself an earlier flight home was upsetting.

I am incredibly lucky that I have friends all over the world, so I was able to ease back into traveling alone.  Abi, who I met in London in September, came to Valencia to spend a few days with me.  If he hadn't been there, I think I might have forgotten to eat.  When I got to Barcelona, Anton was there to meet me and let me stay at his apartment.  I met Anton a few years ago when he let me couchsurf at his place.  And the next day, Ungüento Jim drove to Barcelona from Madrid!  I went from feeling hopelessly lonely to being surrounded by people I love.

When you travel alone, you're never actually alone; you meet people at hostels or you make friends with the people you stay with.  You always have someone to talk to, someone to make sightseeing plans with, or someone to eat dinner with.  What traveling alone typically lacks, though, is that circle of support that keeps you going.  You form fast friendships because it's necessary, and you might even become Facebook friends, but you don't have anyone to share the important things with.  I feel so blessed to have been able to spend the last week with people who care about me instead of having to face this unique transition alone.  

One night in Valencia, I told Abi I had a headache and was feeling really sad.  He told me to take a nap, and when he woke me up he had cooked dinner for us.  We spent a few days wandering around the city at a leisurely pace with no agenda.  Having someone walk me to the train station and wait for me to turn around and wave one last time... there are few better feelings in the world.  It's the feeling I get every time my dad battles a snowstorm to drive me to the airport in Detroit so I can travel the world, or the feeling when my best friend Matt takes me to the airport and hugs me for a full minute, telling me he has watched the movie "Taken" a few times to refresh his memory on how to save me if something goes wrong.  It's the feeling I got today when Jim woke up at 4am to drive me in his rental car to the airport so I can fly to Prague, and it's the feeling I have right now knowing that my mama is meeting me near Chicago in a few weeks to take me home.  The people who love me and support my wanderlust by making my travels possible... I owe them the world.  Literally.

K

Barcelona, Spain

It's the end of the world as we know it

I watch Galicia blow past me outside the window at 300 kilometers per hour.  I feel sick; I've been walking at a mere 5kph for more than five weeks.  The lush, green landscape of the mountains reminds me of Guatemala, except I'm on a train wearing a scarf and a fleece jacket instead of on a chicken bus wearing shorts and flip flops.

On Saturday we drove to Finisterre, which is known as "the end of the world," and for many pilgrims, the end of the Camino.  After arriving to Santiago, many people continue walking another eighty kilometers to get to this quaint little town on the ocean.  I suppose for some the draw is reaching the coast, but for others it is because they haven't accepted the end.  They feel the need to keep walking, or to spend just a few more days with their treasured companions.  To be honest, if my schedule was wide open I probably would have walked it, too.  The Camino is addicting; I can see how people lose themselves entirely to it.  We have met people who stay on the Way for years, walking back and forth, working here and there at different albergues, repeating the same trek over and over again.  As Paca wisely said, "I think one of the lessons of the Camino is learning to let it go."

It is proving to be one of the hardest lessons yet.

We have faced countless ups and downs in the last few weeks.  There were times that I was so miserable that I seriously considered quitting.  Walking in the nonstop rain for days on end, wearing a raincoat that wasn't actually waterproof, knowing that everything in my pack that was dry was getting soaked and everything that was already wet from the day before was never going to dry.  Having to sit down every night and stick a sterilized needle and thread through my blisters.  Tromping through puddles in sandals, my socks filled with water, mud, and cow shit for eight hours straight.  (And then having to peel the skin off my raw blisters because the tiny needle-holes got filled with cow shit water.)  Walking through the endless Spanish plains in the blazing sun with kilometer after kilometer of nothing but empty fields and haystacks, my mind slowly turning itself inside out.  There were showers that would electrocute you every time you pushed the button to keep the water going, bed bugs around every corner, rude waiters and hospitaleros, and people who snored so loud that even with wax earplugs you couldn't sleep through it.  It's actually quite incredible that people can make sounds that loud without being conscious.

Through all of the bad times, though, were some of the most incredible experiences of my life.  There was one day that we were at a restaurant having lunch and the four of us were laughing so hard we were nearly crying.  I felt on top of the world in that moment, surrounded by my friends and laughing about Jim's foot cream. We spent hours and hours each day just laughing about the silliest things. We had serious conversations about how to change the world, we ate chocolate all day, and we slowly made our way across Spain.  Seeing the world on foot was the most intimate way I have experienced new places.  When you're in a train or a car, you miss the little details.  You don't get to see the old men playing bocce in the park, you don't notice the people carefully cutting grape bunches from the vines during harvest.  You don't get to stop and chat with the old woman who tells you about how her dog humps the throw-pillows every day.  Walking between these tiny rural villages in Spain gave us the chance to become part of the Way.  When you can feel the ground beneath your feet and smell the grapes ready for harvest, you connect with the land.  When you wash your socks and underwear by hand and carefully bandage your feet, you feel alive and veritable.  The raw emotion that you feel every day, the connections that you form with complete strangers as you brush your teeth together, they make you realize how precious each and every moment is.  

As the mountains fade back into plains outside the window, memories flash in and out of view.  My mind, body, and soul are exhausted.  I feel like I am a hundred years old, but I also feel like I have earned it.

K

Valencia, Spain

Santiago de Compostela

Yesterday felt like an absolutely normal day of walking.  We woke up and packed our bags.  We had coffee and toast at a cafe.  We walked.  I peed behind a bush.  We ate a second breakfast of eggs and ham.  We walked.  We stopped and ate some chocolate.  I peed behind a tree.  We stopped and had a few afternoon beers.  We took some goofy videos.  We entered a big city.  We stopped at a cafe so I could pee.  We walked some more.  As we neared the historic part of Santiago, I was excited, but not overly emotional.  I had expected to cry when we arrived, but I didn't feel any emotion welling up.

I know I keep saying this, but it's difficult to explain the feeling of walking around the corner and seeing the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.  I felt an overwhelming urge to drop to my knees, but I was worried I might not be able to get back up.  Plus it had been raining all day, although in hindsight I was already soaked and it wouldn't have mattered.

My first emotion was relief.  Pure, delicious relief.  I was tingling with what I can only imagine as every single cell in my body rejoicing with the prospect of healing those damn blisters once and for all and giving my poor hips a break.  The next emotion was sadness.  I realized as I stared up at the cathedral, still linking arms with Emily, that we were done.  Our little family would be split up in a few days.  I would no longer be surrounded by people who understood.  41 days of fun, pain, love, suffering, joy, and fellowship... done. Then came the awe.  I think this was the point at which I started crying.  With Emily hugging me, Paca jumping up and down, and the cathedral in the background, I realized the enormity of what we had just completed.  We walked across a country.  We walked over 500 miles.  I knew all along what we were doing, but the incredible feeling of having accomplished something so massive... This photo says it all:

We all danced around and screamed and cried.  Emily threw her bag on the ground and beat it with her walking stick.  Nina spoke on the phone with her grandfather.  Paca started jabbering excitedly about the celebration that we would have later that night.  Jim took photo after photo after photo.  It was one of the most incredible moments of my life.

Later on, before the pilgrim's mass at the cathedral, I wandered down into the crypt of St. James without knowing where I was going.  I saw someone praying, read the sign and realized with a jolt: this is why I just walked 800 kilometers, and I stumbled upon it by accident.  I stood awkwardly behind the gawkers, trying to come up with a plan on the fly.  How do you pray to a saint you just walked across a country for?  Especially if you didn't do it purely for that reason?  Eventually I just knelt down, closed my eyes, and thanked him for keeping us safe during our journey.  That was it.  That's all I could come up with, but I think he understood.

The mass was the most beautiful service I have ever attended.  The priest spoke directly to the pilgrims in a way that touched me more than any sermon has.  He listed the pilgrims by country and where they started from.  And the Botafumeiro... I have never experienced anything like it.  Six men in red robes working together to swing a massive incense burner across the entire cathedral, the smell wafting through the pews, the little rush of air you could feel as it swung past.... it was surreal.

We did it.  

We walked the Camino de Santiago.

K

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Once a pilgrim, always a pilgrim

It's very difficult to describe the Camino to people who have not walked it, but here I am, trying to put words to something that is next to impossible to explain.

How can you possibly describe the people you spend 24/7 with? I mean literally 24/7.  We sleep in the same room, wake up at the same time, walk for 8 hours or so together, and when we get to the albergues we are miraculously not sick of each other yet and spend the entire evening together.  We have inside jokes, we know each other's shitting habits, we know how each person takes their coffee and what to order for each other if someone is in the restroom when the waiter comes.  Emily likes an Americano with her breakfast and will take a napolitana pastry any time of day if the restaurant has them.  Paca will have one coffee with breakfast and another coffee to take outside to smoke a cigarette, and she will also have a napolitana whenever possible.  Jim likes cafe con leche but has switched to Americano because he's trying to avoid dairy.  Nina drinks tea and cannot stand coffee.  They know that I want a cafe con leche and that I like croissants, not napolitanas.  

How can you explain the incredible people you meet along the way?  The people who touch your life in a lasting way, even if you only know them for a few days or even a few minutes.  The hospitalera who dried my soaking wet sleeping bag on our very first day, even though the wait for laundry was hours long.  She took my face in her hands, saw how exhausted and frustrated I was, and said, "I wouldn't want my daughter to sleep in a cold room in a wet sleeping bag."  The random man who stopped Emily and I one day when we took a wrong turn.  "Peregrinas!  Están fuera del camino!"  He then took the time to explain to us where we needed to walk to get back on the path.  José, the owner of the pensión in Sarría, who we first thought was a miserable old grump but who turned out to be cheerful and generous, giving us loads of free pintxos (like tapas) while we sat at the bar for a few beers.  There's Roland, the guy with the donkey who we ran into constantly.

There's Matthew, the firefighter from Texas, who I had an instant connection with.  A classic Texan gentleman mixed with the chivalry you find only in veterans, Matthew is easily one of my most memorable Camino friends.  I won't deny my affection for him, and I'm sure he wouldn't deny his, but it wasn't meant to be.  The Camino is funny like that, bringing people together under such an intense circumstance when we all know it has to end eventually.  We walked with him for a few days before he left to catch up with the group he started with.  When he left, I felt empty for awhile.

There's Pepe, the Italian soccer commentator who we have somehow managed to cross paths with constantly for the last week and a half.  We've only really gotten to know him in the last few days, and the more we see him the more we love him.  There's Dani, the Swiss techie who is in between jobs right now.  He is one of the sweetest guys I've ever met, and extremely intelligent.  There's the group of Korean teenagers and their teacher, who never stop giggling.  I don't know how they're so damn happy all the time, but I love them for it.  

The people on the Camino are unlike any group of travelers I've ever met.  We all have the same end goal, but we all have different reasons.  We all have different bodies and different limitations, different needs and different desires, but we're all the same at heart, where it matters.  The Camino is meant to put everyone on the same level.  It doesn't matter your heritage, your age, or your net worth: we all have to face many of the same struggles.  We all get blisters at some point, we all have to deal with the pouring rain, and we all have to sleep in a room with a hundred other people, thirty of whom are snoring.  

At the end of the day, a pilgrim is a pilgrim, and it's a state of being that challenges me to find the right words.

K

Pedrouzo, Spain

In attempt to describe my friends...

I've been avoiding this entry for awhile now, because it's the most important of all. It's very difficult to describe my friends on the Camino, but I'm going to try.  To my friends, the closest friends I've ever met while traveling, I apologize for my feeble attempt to put words to how I feel about you all.

Jim

Emily and I were staying in a beautiful old monastery in San Juan de Ortega when we met Jim.  Emily was at the restaurant downstairs icing her bug bites, which at the time she thought were from bedbugs; she was having a massive allergic reaction to them and was not a happy camper.  I was tending to my poor feet, putting antibiotic cream on the blisters that I had threaded.  A man walked over and peered down at my feet, examining my handiwork.  "Compeed fucked up my feet," I said to him, glancing up.  (Compeed, the European version of second skin, had failed to prevent blisters and had instead ripped the skin off of them.)  The man then launched into a lengthy explanation of his successful use of Compeed and how the sleeping conditions tonight were going to be ideal due to the draftiness of the monastery and the cold air coming in through the windows.  "I really like it to be around 55 degrees when I'm sleeping," he told me.  After a few more exchanges about blisters, ideal temperatures, and where we were from, he went back to his bed and I continued with my feet.  A few minutes later, he announced that he has found a bedbug, but that it could be an ant because he was by the window.  I begged him not to mention this to Emily.  We lost him for a few days in the hustle and bustle of the city of Burgos, but later ran into him and have been walking with him ever since.

Jim loves to talk and converse.  When he finds something he likes or thinks is useful, he wants everyone to know about it.  For example, he'll tell anyone who will listen how effective his jar of ungüento is.  "It's this cream made especially for pilgrims.  It has a blend of things like aloe and mint.  You should try it!  I haven't had a blister since I started using it!"  We tease Jim incessantly about ungüento, but I think what it really comes down to is his love for connecting with people.  He wants to take care of everybody, and he does that in the ways he knows how.  From explaining how the stock market works to giving me aqua-heal bandaids, Jim has an answer for everything.

I don't always think he's right, though, which is where we clash.  He's extremely intelligent and also ridiculously stubborn.  This combination, when mixed with my own stubborn, opinionated attitude, can sometimes be a bit like gunpowder.  I have walked away from him before, fuming mad, over a conversation about prescriptive versus descriptive linguistics.  At the top of the mountain where we stopped for lunch, he walked over, gave me a wordless hug, and then it was like nothing ever happened.  That's what I love about Jim.  He knows he gets under my skin, and I know I get under his, but I think that's why it works so well.  He makes me think about things in a way I normally don't, and I challenge him to defend his opinions.

Jim has kids my age, but we're peers.  He knows how to cheer me up when I'm sad and knows more about me than most of my friends my age.  He's reliable, loyal, goofy, and has a really big heart.  He cares about his friends and would do anything for them, from giving Emily his poncho in the pouring rain to bringing over a bottle of wine for me when I was having a bad night.

Paca

A few days after Burgos we stopped for breakfast in San Bol, where we ran into Jim.  He was very grumpy, going on in his Jim-like fashion about how the camino isn't a race, and racing to catch up to people will just give you blisters, and how he was done chasing after the group who always walked just a little bit too far.  We told him we were only going 18 kilometers that day, which would give him a 13k day, and that he should join us and forget about that other group.  He went outside to discuss this new plan with a dark-haired girl, and when he came back he announced that he and Paca would be coming along.

Her feet were destroyed.  To this day, I don't know how she managed to walk on them.  Her blisters had almost sent her to Barcelona to wait on the beach for her friend to finish the Camino, but Jim somehow managed to convince her to give it a couple more days.  I took a liking to Paca immediately after leaving San Bol.  Her zest and sassy attitude are my favorite things about her.  We skipped all of the introductory conversations and went straight to discussing some pretty heavy stuff about the Camino and what we had already learned from it.  By the time we got to what we had begun referring to as "second breakfast" in the next town, I felt like I had known Paca for the whole Camino.

Within a few days, I felt like I had known Paca for my entire life.  She is one of the funniest people I've ever met and still incredibly sweet at the same time.  Her witty remarks never fail to make me laugh and her humor is contagious.  I can talk to her about anything and know that she is going to not only listen and help me, but also make me feel better about it.  She has a very wise view of the world and always knows just what to say.  She knows how to maneuver through any social situation with grace, whether it be rescuing me from a creepy old man talking my ear off or lightening the mood when it's getting tense.  

Nina

We met Nina at the top of a small mountain before descending into Astorga.  There was this little shack with a snack bar outside called Casa de los Dioses.  It was a donativo, meaning you put in a few coins and take what you'd like.  Emily, Paca and I were making fun of Jim about his ungüento, which he was explaining to Nina.  "It's really amazing!  Let me find it and show it to you!"  He began digging frantically through his bag to show off the foot cream, but couldn't find it.  He accused Paca of taking it, which only increased the hilarity of the situation.  Nina giggled along with us and later told us that watching the four of us interact was like watching a really funny TV show.

Nina is kind, gentle, and incredibly sweet.  She is soft-spoken but has a heart of gold, always watching out for all of us.  She is very observant, and after two days or so she began stockpiling napkins from restaurants in her fanny pack because she noticed that I stop to pee almost every hour.  She is a chocolate fiend and the best at grocery store pit stops, coming out with gummies, chocolate, and a salty trail mix that Paca has dubbed Gringo Mix.  Nina is the kind of person you can always rely on to be there with open arms.

And of course...

Emily

Emy is my best friend, mi media naranja, the sister I never had.  I've known her since we were Girl Scouts at age 5 and she knows me better than I know myself.  When she asked me to do the Camino with her, I jumped at the chance to travel, to do something exciting, and most of all to spend an entire month with her since I hardly ever get to see her.

Emily is the most amazing person I know.  She's intelligent, funny, athletic, goofy, down to earth, and freaking gorgeous to boot.  Everything she does, she does with heart, passion, skill, and an open mind.  She's a fearless traveler, having lived all over the world: Argentina, Egypt, Australia, and most recently Paris (to name just a few!) and she has also done extensive travel throughout her whole life.  I contracted the travel bug from her and she is always an inspiration to me.  A year and a half ago, she called me and told me she was moving to Paris.  I told her I already knew that, and she said, "No, I mean next week.  Next week I'm moving to Paris."  She's going to medical school next year and I know she'll be the most incredible doctor.

Our group knows Emily as the hero of the Camino.  From carrying someone else's backpack for 10 kilometers while already carrying her own to being our navigator, she freaking rocks the Camino's socks off.  She can climb mountains as if they were simple little sledding hills and always has the most level, even-keeled mindset.  Every single day, my best friend amazes me with her intelligence and capabilities.  Oh, did I mention she's an amazing cook?

Emily is the one who will go to the grocery store to buy supplies for dinner and always come back with a little treat that she knows I love.  She will tell me if I have a booger or if what I'm wearing is absurd.  She will call me out on my bullshit, but still be on my side and not judge me.  She can tell within a few seconds if I'm upset and always knows what to do to cheer me up.  She could walk much faster and much longer each day, but she doesn't because she knows my pace and my limits.

She is my favorite person in the whole world.  Thank you, Emy, for sticking with me no matter what.

K

Portomarín, Spain