2023-10-05 07:38:11
According to the Bavarian Pilgrim Office, every third pilgrim is under 30 years old. The Camino del Norte is popular – this part of the Way of St. James runs largely along the Spanish Atlantic coast and then turns inland to Santiago de Compostela. The crime rate there is low and the risk of getting lost is low. All you need is a ticket to Irun on the French-Spanish border and good motivation for the 840-kilometer walk to Galicia.
For Johannes Thon it looked like this: job gone, girlfriend gone, life plans discarded. Thon is now back in Germany, he has written an entertaining book about his pilgrimage – and wants to lead his life more quietly in the future “so that he can continue to hear the rustling of the Camino.”
WELT: The rustling of the Camino – do you mean the trees along the way?
Johannes Thon: Rustling is something quiet, something unobtrusive, something that can quickly fade into the background in a noisy place. For me, the Camino became a very quiet place, so I could often clearly hear its rustling. Of course this is a linguistic image.
also read
Maybe an anecdote will help you understand: One rainy afternoon I found a sleeping bag on the Camino. Where a sleeping bag is about as important as a cell phone in normal life. That’s why I packed the sleeping bag. And an hour later I actually met a young woman who had lost it on the way.
Something like this happened to me almost every day on the Camino – but not in my everyday life at home. And why not? Because my world is usually way too crowded and noisy. Far too rarely do I see and recognize the gifts of the path there, put them in my pocket and pass them on.
WELT: What happened to the pilgrim?
Thon: We walked together for the rest of the day and talked late into the night.
WELT: Can you set up camp in the great outdoors if there are no beds left in the hostels?
Thon: Wild camping is officially prohibited in Spain. But I remember one morning when I poked my head out of the tent and suddenly a police officer drove past me in an SUV. He briefly pushed his sunglasses down, nodded seriously and disappeared in a cloud of dust. It is probably not unimportant what impression you make on the law enforcement officers. Pilgrims with a backpack and a pilgrim staff are probably more likely to turn a blind eye – but trying with a boombox, handcart and folding pavilion is probably a good idea.
Johannes Thon on the road with a pilgrim’s staff and backpack
Source: Johannes Thon/CONBOOK Verlag
WELT: The fact that there are large packs of wolves and bears in northwestern Spain wasn’t a problem for you when wild camping?
Thon: Luckily this is the first time I’ve heard of this. In the quartet of my fantasies, there was room for all kinds of spiders when wild camping. Otherwise, concerns about the dangers that could be lurking in the hostel bed were much more present – keyword bed bugs. The tiny creepy crawlies can make your wandering life very difficult.
WELT: Aren’t there now effective remedies against bed bugs?
Thon: For me, the method of choice was primary prevention, and it looked like this night after night: I shone my headlamp over the mattress at the lowest possible angle and poked anything that cast a shadow. If the shadow then moves, then it probably wasn’t lint.
WELT: What was your lint rate on the Camino?
Thon: 100 percent.
WELT: Apparently bed bugs weren’t the only problem. The book also contains the following sentence: “The way I deal with old men who have a short, gray beard and come from Germany has changed since the Camino in that I now keep my encounters with them relatively short.” You have to explain that : To what extent are old men from Germany more difficult in character than old men from other countries?
Thon: You shouldn’t take this passage too seriously, as it alludes to the fact that, strangely enough, a surprising number of older men from Germany gave unsolicited fatherly advice about hiking once in a while.
WELT: For example?
Thon: I was once advised to tear out the pages of my guidebook that I had already read to minimize the weight of the backpack.
Where is the nearest hostel here? Johannes Thon learned not to drive himself crazy with this question
Source: Johannes Thon/CONBOOK Verlag
WELT: With tips like these, have you adhered to the classic six kilo limit that many airlines set for hand luggage?
Thon: No, I wouldn’t have been able to do that even with the best planning. Just because I had half a kitchen with me including a pantry shelf; As a vegan on a budget, I wanted to be able to provide for myself, and not all hostels have stovetops. So in the evenings I often sat in front of my gas stove in the garden of the hostel or next to my sleeping bag somewhere in the great outdoors.
also read
“Walking Pope” Manuel Andrack
WELT: That sounds like freedom.
Thon: Yes, that was it too. At first it was more out of necessity, because what I completely underestimated was that there often aren’t enough beds in the hostels.
WELT: And if you come late, life punishes you with a romantic night under the stars?
Thon: You could say it that way too. Although being stranded in a foreign country initially felt like a powerful push out of my comfort zone. So I moved pretty quickly at the beginning. I basically got up in the middle of the night just to be one of the first ten or 20 people queuing at the hostel door in the next town. The hospitaleros open the doors promptly at 4 p.m. and then distribute the beds strictly according to the order in which pilgrims arrive.
Only over time was I able to face the fear of not having a place to sleep. And I learned that I don’t have to know in the morning where I will sleep in the evening. A realization that I later applied to my life.
Rough and beautiful: the coast in northern Spain
Source: Johannes Thon/CONBOOK Verlag
WELT: In what way?
Thon: For example, my book: At the beginning of writing, I didn’t know whether it would become a book or whether I would find a publisher for it. Now the book is in stores – and I don’t have to know what happens next.
WELT: German tourists say they would tend to avoid other Germans abroad. Did you also experience this on the Camino del Norte?
Thon: In fact, I didn’t experience it that way; If this phenomenon also occurs on the Camino, it is probably at most at the beginning of the journey. That’s such an amazing side of the journey: you develop, shake off old thought patterns, talk about personal things and less about topics that you would otherwise discuss in the canteen. And then it can even be beneficial if you speak the same language.
More tips and information about the Way of St. James:
WELT: Can anyone who is plagued by a broken relationship or wanderlust, a mid-life crisis or even just the daily monotony, tackle the Camino del Norte and set off on a pilgrimage from now on?
Thon: If you’re setting off spontaneously and haven’t done any 30-kilometer hikes before, I would advise you to approach the first week carefully and give your body time to get into a symbiotic state with the heavy backpack and the clunky hiking boots.
WELT: And mentally?
Thon: In terms of mental strain, the whole thing is like jumping into cold water anyway. Before my trip, I said to a friend: “If I’ve been on a pilgrimage for a week, and then another week, and then another, then I’m not even halfway there.” You can’t prepare for this situation.
WELT: Did you get so bored on the road?
Thon: No, I don’t mean boredom. It is the daily confrontation with yourself that can be challenging. It’s not just the 20 or 30 kilometers that you run every day. In the light hours you look for pilgrims’ arrows, supermarkets, free beds – yourself. And in the evening you cook, wash yourself and your stuff, pack and unpack your backpack, sleep 120 centimeters above or below someone, sometimes share space with 40 people Dormitory, showers, electrical outlets, the air and the light.
And in the morning you get up again very early and everything starts again. It’s exciting in the first week, but at some point you long for a space that you can close behind you. It’s a long journey of acceptance, but fortunately you don’t walk it alone.
During his hike, Johannes Thon threw old thought patterns overboard and came to new insights
Source: Johannes Thon/CONBOOK Verlag
WELT: They stayed in 37 different hostels along the Camino del Norte; where did you feel most comfortable?
Thon: The nicest hostels weren’t the ones with a clean shower curtain or comfortable lawn chairs. If after a tiring day you are greeted with a smile and asked how the journey was, then it doesn’t matter if there are only two toilets for 20 people. It is the encounters with the pilgrims and the hospitaleros that make the hostels such special places.
WELT: Do the hospitaleros even have time for conversations?
Thon: Not everyone, because hostels like this require a lot of work. But I still remember a hospitalero with whom I had a wonderful conversation for an entire summer evening. Born in Argentina, he asked many smart questions and listened attentively. At that time I wrote in my diary: Who knows how many more people will have to listen to me before I fully understand my path.
Johannes Thon, born in 1992, comes from Eichsfeld, a Catholic enclave in northern Thuringia. After his pilgrimage, the social worker decided to become a writer. Thon now lives in Leipzig. His book “The Backpack Was Never My Home. Truths and other errors of my Way of St. James” was published by Conbook Verlag, has 352 pages and costs 16.95 euros.
#Pilgrims #James #time #lost #fear #hiking