We Speak Camino

The language of the Camino is Spanish. It may seem odd that to me this is odd, but it is strange to me. So much of the world functions in English, and so many of my travels have been dominated by English that this Spanish-language environment has been a surprise.

Also shocking has been the number of Italians we have met here and their willingness to teach us Italian.

Our Spanish (and our Italian) has grown by leaps and bounds. Here is a Camino primer.

1.) Hay visto cane.

We see Paquito (from Italy) every day on the Camino and love to tell others that we saw him (in Italian of course).

2.) Hay visto farfalle. Hay visto cavallo. Hay visto Tian. We can see lots of stuff in Italian and then talk about it. It’s a handy construction. Highly recommend. 

3.) Ampolla

Blister. Also pronounced “bluster” if you are from Barcelona. Ampolla was one of our first Camino words because one of us developed a healthy family of blisters very rapidly within a couple of days on the Camino. Yup. Gross. 

4.) Vale (pronounced “vah-lay”)

Life is totally vale (okay) when you sit down every night to a glass (or bottle) of wine and a three course meal. Things don’t get much more vale than that really. 

5.) Sello

These are the sellos that we have to collect a couple times each day to prove that we are pilgrims and have walked the entire way. Being able to remember the word sello has proven challenging so sello is a word that you should start working on now. You know, for when you do YOUR Camino. 

Buen Camino.

Becoming Pilgrims

Something happened around day five on the Camino. Barely a third of the way through our 300km plus journey and we became pilgrims. I can’t find the tipping point in my memory—it just happened.

Mostly we stopped seeing the Camino as a hike and started to see the journey as a reminder of the importance of accepting life as it comes. Here is some wisdom the Camino has imparted in the last week:

1.) Follow the signs, even if you are not sure where they will take you. 

2.) Walk higher than you thought possible yesterday. 

3.) Meet lots of people, and always be nice to them (also, everyone loves a selfie—even dairy farmers in the middle of nowhere). 

4.) Even when things are dreary, keep going. 

5.) Share with people you don’t know...and people you do know. 

6.) Eat it, even if it looks yucky, because it probably is amazing. 

I suspect we knew all these things already and could have gone manny places in the world to be reminded of these lessons, but the Camino has special powers to make pilgrims. 

And so we continue. 

Buen Camino. 

Coffee Life on the Camino

I used to hate coffee. The beverage and I just were not friends. And then one day, I am not sure what happened, but we came to terms with one another and our love affair has evolved here on the Camino.

To be a pilgrim, you must drink lots of coffee. And you must drink it in little cups.

With steamed milk. Lots of steamed milk.

And sometimes you should drink it in paper cups. 

I think not participating in the coffee thing might disqualify a person from pilgrim hood because everyone rasps poetic about coffee and the places on the Camino where you can find coffee, which seems to be about every three miles. 

Coffee stop. Gracias a dios. 

Coffee helps make this a buen camino. 

Ma Lord, It's Madrid! (sorry, that's kind of a dad joke)

Oh my goodness are we just a couple of cornballs on this walk or what?

The further we walk the cheesier we get and, as we have not yet really begun to walk, things will likely only get more desperate in the coming days. 

We started this journey in Madrid after a surprisingly smooth flight across the Atlantic. Our seat neighbor was a Spanish teacher. She taught us a lot of useful Spanish, including, “I would like to check in to my room early” which we didn’t end up needing because we got lost on our way to the hostel. More on that later. 

See why we got lost? Not a worry, though! Tian has taken five years of Spanish! Bueno, right? No. The struggle was real in Madrid for the first three tourists who walked up to her asking for advice and for our initial forays into asking for directions ourselves. 

We finally figured out our little barrio in Madrid but Tian never figured out why everyone thought she knew what she could explain where they should go. She doesn’t look terribly Spanish but all the Spanish-speaking tourists thought she did so Tian was bombarded with requests for information. And her Spanish improved with each awkward exchange!

Maybe it’s the black t-shirt?

We walked out of the hostel this morning at 5:30 to catch the 7:00 am train and found the streets FULL of partiers. It was pretty exciting stuff what with the couples doing the unspeakable in dark crevices, puddles of vomit, and the squares full of singing and dancing in the predawn hours. No one asked for directions and no one stopped us even once as we dashed through the streets. 

And now we are in Oviedo, on the pilgrimage route, preparing for 16 miles tomorrow. 

Wishing us a Buen Camino during which so many people ask Tian for directions. It’s good for the Spanish!