Camino de Santiago: Day Zero

So the train started and I quickly realized that sleep was going to be hard to come by that night. Uncomfortable seating, people talking loudly and then ... a baby ... the edition that screams .. a lot ... and that is the story of that night. I sat there, drank water, fell asleep for brief moments but largely stayed awake sipping away the water from one of the many bottles of water I carried in my way too oversized backpack for the camino.

I mustered people in the train and identified a girl who looked like a professional/seasoned camino hiker with walking stick and everything. Also people in the train were talking about the fact that this train was used by the peregrinos(pilgrims) and somehow my backpack betrayed me, so I was labelled as one of them.

Finally the time of arrival was approaching and I put my five fingers on. Since I had never really worn them for longer periods of time(I basically had just bought them) I thought it was wise to have a pair of regular shoes with me especially considering all the warnings that as a beginner you shouldn't wear them for extended per..blalala.

I was ready to go and the train soon came to a stop. It was 6 am and dark. Most of the people who left the train headed to the cafeteria at the station. Mistrusting as I am of places close to 'people hubs' I thought a tea would be nice, but it would be horrible and overpriced in that place and I kind of wanted to get started as well so I got out my pile of printed out pages describing the camino and thought: "Oooops, maybe I should have done some kind of preparation"(I literally just printed out that guide - not reading it - and bought tickets. It didn't say anywhere where it starts.
I decided to just walk on, but after following a dark road for a while I thought that this was possibly not the best approach and decided to head back to the peregrinos who were chilling in the cafeteria. Luckily the professional looking girl from earlier was about to leave and after pondering that it would seem weird to silently stalk a girl down a dark street .. I bested my fears of getting into a crazy religious debate about my lost soul and chatted her up in a very sparse way with my broken Spanish. She turned out to be from Madrid as well and had a good pace for a girl.
Further she had attempted the camino before and had to give up after a while, saying that she hadn't been properly prepared. Another oooooops-moment. I started to be worried, but it was just walking! I In the end however she didn't really know where it started either and we just pressed on cluelessly for a bit, finally we walked around in the streets until we encountered someone who was able to give us directions.
Following those directions I realized that my initial dark street was spot on.
We left the village and suddenly encountered a lot of walking christmas trees ... walking in our direction. Hmm something was not right here they were peregrinos coming from where we were headed... ok we gave in and asked them and yup same plan, only they were obviously christmas trees. In the end we followed their light and noticed that we missed a little bridge to the right. Darkness began to be driven away by the sun so we surpassed the christmas trees and were able to see the markings of the camino, a stylized scallop.

After walking for a while my trapezius muscle began to hurt since the whole weight of the backpack weighed on it, but I didn't want to adjust the straps, so I fought against the pain by holding the backpack up with my thumbs and shifting it around to not have the same area affected the whole time.
We passed a chatty old lady who seemed interesting to talk to, but alas the professional pilgrim girl I had chosen as a walking partner didn't seem willing to talk to people, so I gave up on conversation attempts.
We arrived in a small village and the girl told me we had to get stamps, also her father came from there. Another thing I had no clue about, you have to get at least three stamps inbetween albergues in order to be allowed to use a public albergue. Good thing I hadn't dashed on on my own... For a moment I panicked since I didn't find that pilgrims passport I had to buy in Madrid, but thankfully it showed up after some searching. I also saw that I was already one stamp short, everyone else got one in the cafeteria. Oops again. We got our stamps and kept walking past a lot of people.
Finally I thought the pain was getting too much and .. I adjusted the straps. Woah awesome. I could have avoided a whole lot of pain, but at least now I just had to survive this day and the next day would be better. So we walked on and I think we didn't really rest even once. Then roadside advertisements began to appear advertising hot and 'deserved' showers after all this hard walking and even massages. At that point I began to realize how big an industry this whole St. James way thing is, especially in this first stage(afterwards a whole lot of people realize that walking is too much of an effort).
Finally we arrived in Portomarín and uh my quiet companion headed to the funky looking church.

I was afraid that this would be a religious moment and she would start to talk about faith, but luckily she just entered for a moment and kept to her regular quiet self. I think we arrived at the albergue about an hour earlier before it opened, but there were like 4 people before us and we all had to neatly line our backpacks up so that everyone got his rightful spot in the line to get the abono for the albergue. When it opened I was quite surprised at how many beds there were in one room. It might have been 40. Since we were among the first we were able to pick and I decided to pick an upper one in the far corner of the room, wisely thinking that that way I would avoid having the noise of someone above me(although I had heard that on the camino you'd get so tired that you'd be sound asleep no matter what).
A little group of Italians arrived after us carrying an ukulele, yup the typical kind of 'artist' using an instrument in order to score girls. So they sat outside doing their little show to harvest the attention of most of the girls, forming a party to besiege the village. Well this was the part I was utterly unprepared for, whole afternoons of nothing to do in small villages. I had a book and sought refuge in my bed reading a scifi story. Then I received a few angry SMS from the person I care most about(making me be worried for the rest of the trip) and afterwards checked out the village a bit. Being hungry I tried a pilgrim's menu -expecting a fulfilling and savoury meal - and ended up with a weird joke of a meal (it was a small portion of spaghettis with ketchup and a fried egg).
Somehow I got into conversation with a 'bicigrino' which is a pilgrim on bike who told me it was awesome to do by bike you just have to cover twice the distance every day. Then I went out to finish my book(unfortunately) at some point my quiet companion showed up and we went to a small supermarket to buy food for the evening and morning and she told me she loved cold cuts and asked me whether I liked them as well. I found that to be an odd question, because what the hell it's a category of food. I then decided to 'rest' and in the bedroom overheard the Italian gang planing to party and keeping a window open to overcome the curfew. For a brief moment I considered to be mean and close the window but then thought that I couldn't be that cruel and so decided to ignore it.
Little was I to know about the menace that would bring over my nighttime.