Day -1:
I took a free afternoon and hurriedly started to prepare everything to embark on the Camino de Santiago.
Originally the plan was to do this on Sunday, but for various reasons(one of them being the potential change of weather lurking in a not so immediate future), I changed my mind.
The first issue was that the food I had left, was originally supposed to last until Sunday, so I decided to prepare a pizza stuffing as much on it as possible. This consumed a large part of the time(preparation and consumation and afterwards being slowed due to over-eating). Add to that a couple of mails to write to inform people that my lack of answers to their mails would not be a sudden demise on my side and ultimately it was a rush to get to the train station to buy a ticket and catch the train, which to my shock only departed from the station in the north that's half an hour away with the metro instead of the one that's 10 minutes by foot.
I made it to the station on time and immediately used a machine which in the final moment bailed on me: "Failure to print, your booking has been canceled". I thought: "Yeah that was to be expected." Another attempt, didn't help. So I tried the only other machine. That one however didn't even like my debit card and I was almost convinced, that it wasn't meant to be, that I'd board the train that day. Yet I had one last option: human interaction. There was one woman at the counter and she was organizing some things.. I approached her and said I need a ticket for the train to Sarria, then I patiently waited, so she could finish her work, while my time was ticking away. Finally she was done and managed to conjure forth a ticket .. in time. I was about to dash away when I remembered that I should ask for the platform (something which I'd normally forget to do), forgetting to thank her I dashed away and made it.
Yet the torture was only to begin. I entered the train and an old woman was sitting on my seat. I informed her of that and offered that I could just as well take her seat when her 'friendly' neighbour offered the same thing and immediately got up and took her real place. Now this 'friendlyness' was born in the fact that we are talking about the horrible seats where 4 seats face each other (2 vs 2) and in tourist class for RENFE this means that the space in between is really just enough for one row. So I had to squeeze my legs into an unnatural position sitting very uncomfortably on a train ride of 7 hours and 10 minutes. Add to that, I still had sore muscles from abusing my legs for biking the days before (remember originally I had some more days for regenaration but then again, hiking is just walking..right?).
Waiting for the train to start, this was to be the prologue of my journey.
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| Image courtesy of: http://www.espormadrid.es/2010/10/los-otros-caminos-de-santiago.html |
