"Regarde, Papa, regarde!" says the little boy in front of me, the only soul speaking in this car. Why are French children so cute? Ah, well. So yesterday was Professor Langer's goodbye party for all us students in the Bois de Vincennes, and it was nice but awkward, of course. Jenn and I left at 4:30 or so, and she then accompanied me on my last evening in Paris, which was pleasant. Maybe not something I will cherish until the end of my days, but nice enough for some closure.
Left the Bois we did, and then headed over to the Rue des Ecoles first, to get me a last-minute poncho before the 37,000 Au Vieux Campeur stores closed. Next we headed back up to Shakespeare's so I could get an English-language traveling book. I chose The Three Musketeers: it seemed high adventure and some serious swashbuckling was in order. On the way, we walked the Rue St. Jacques, the street I have always assumed was the Camino out of the city as Paris used to be, of course, a major starting point for the pilgrimage. And you know what? Even though I've walked it a million times before, up on a wall above some tourist shop I found what I'm pretty sure was a scallop shell sundial. Maybe not, but I took it as a sign nevertheless.
After Shakespeare's I paid my final respects in front of Notre Dame, and we then headed back up past Rue des Ecoles to find a cafe in the Latin Quarter. We found a popular but only moderately picturesque cafe on Rue Descartes, where I enjoyed my last glass of wine. Next door was an unassuming pita restaurant, where we got falafel for dinner. I had expected that to be all the ceremony I needed, but it seemed I was not quite ready to say goodbye yet, so we went up and over the hill to Rue Mouffetard for a nutella and banana crepe then, which we ate by the fountain, amongst the students and the tourists.
Oozing Nutella, we then walked to Cardinal Lemoine to board the metro and bid a somewhat sad goodbye where the no. 4 splits and Jenn goes south towards Porte d'Orleans and I north to Porte de Cligancourt. I then caught the 1 at Chatalet because I wanted to bid farewell to the Arc de Triomphe and make the slow walk down the hill home, weighed down by 15 lbs. of kinder chocolate with which to line my suitcase.
And as I walked I made my peace, even got a little sad, actually. Goodbye FNAC! I said, I shall miss your four floors of technological and librarial goodness. Goodbye overpriced brasseries full of beautiful French people. Goodbye movie theatre that usually plays crap but once had an Audrey Hepburn marathon that filled my weekend. Goodbye sushi restaurants I never tried but always meant to. Goodbye green scaffolding and metal and wood boards plugging up the holes in the sidewalk from construction work I've never seen anyone work on. Goodbye post office on the corner, little market livrasion with sketchy fruit on display down the street. Goodbye left turn, Rue Laugier, with your sidewalks plugged up by old ladies or nannies with small children. Goodbye tiny cars parked haphazardly on street corners or perpendicularly with their back wheels up over the curb, no tickets on the dash. Goodbye green gate, gate code, courtyard with slippery stone and a strange fountain. Goodbye buzzing door, elevator the size of a coffin, checking my makeup in the mirror inside. Goodbye light switches two feet off the ground. Goodbye opening the door slowly so Madame won't wake up and offer me fruit juice 87 times. Goodbye hallway, bedroom, broken bed. Goodbye window with automatic shutter as loud as an oncoming train. Goodbye sleeping in a comfortable Goodbye... goodbye Paris! You were awful mean to me at times, but I came to love you in my own way by the end.
Well I guess I have made my peace with my departure. I've got all I need to survive for a month in Spain in a pack I can run with stashed on a luggage rack -- a most freeing feeling. Soon enough I shall be training through the Pyrenees, and well, life is pretty good. I am starving though... never thought about food. Well, dining car here I come...
(9:35pm in Pamplona)
WHAT a successful day! I've already had such an adventure--as well as realized just how green I am at all of this. And that being green can be dangerous. But since it is too late to regret my mistakes, let me explain instead.
First of all, that cute French child in the seat in front of me was not actually cute at all. He terrorized me for five hours and his dad didn't seem to care. So, I was tired and crabby by the time we pulled into Irun.
Stepping off the train the obvious struck me: Holy crap, they speak Spanish in Spain. And I speak zero Spanish. How am I going to survive this? And when I couldn't figure out which train was stopping in Pamplona, not that there were many options, I began to panic a little bit. That's me--always stressed. But of course someone helped me eventually and I was on my way then, up and over mountains, and sometimes even with views of the ocean, all of it shadowed with a gray mist.
Miraculously the clouds parted and the rain stopped as we pulled into Pamplona, and I started my trek to the main albergue (pilgrim hostel) in the humidity with a light foot. First impression was that Spain is much more colorful than France. One bridge I saw, for instance, was strung like a loom with many colored objects, which turned out to be plastic bottles in a recycling campaign--something so beautiful and so humble and so not-ever-going-to-happen in France.
I was nervous walking up my first hill into the old city, feeling the burn, the weight of my pack, my shortness of breath, etc. Wondering if I was up to the challenge. Then I got mad lost, first of my own accord as I had time to be lost and didn't much mind wandering through the winding medieval streets. But you know, eventually it stopped being fun. Or funny. My map was for the Camino alone and hardly sufficient, and I could not for the life of me find the albergue. It seemed like the place where it was marked on the map was not just a skeletal structure covered in scaffolding, most vacant. So I walked around and around hoping it would appear... up and over and around the city's many hills, and for some time... around and around and around... before I finally got up the courage to ask a Spanish woman loading a box into the trunk of her car if she knew where it was.
Miraculously, the woman I chose spoke a pretty British English, if only to tell me that the building I was searching for was in fact a working construction area, and that maybe I could find help at the cathedral, and that she didn't know how I would survive the Camino with the insufficient maps I had. But of course when I got to the cathedral, it too was closed.
You know, all I needed was a pilgrim's passport, a credencial, the official document that gets stamped at each town you sleep in to prove you've walked that day. I had read you could get one at the main albergue in town. When it came to sleeping though I did have reservations at a hostel god knows where in the city. But I figured if I were to go and find it it would take half the night, and then if I spent the morning searching for the credencial, I would lose half a day's walking. Not a pleasant thought.
So I decided to wander in the direction of another albergue, most vaguely marked on my Camino maps, and as I walked I would try and calm down and make a rational decision. But things were looking grim. I couldn't find the other place, the sun was beginning to set, I didn't freaking know where to go, and honestly I was just wandering aimlessly trying not to panic... and then. Then an elderly Spanish gentleman started rambling at me. In Spanish. My first instinct was to pull a Paris and say no hablo espanol and run off, but then I realized.. I knew what he was saying. I heard the word peregrino--pilgrim. He was asking me if I was a pilgrim, and if he could help me find my way.
And so for the first time I was able to say yes--si--I was am a peregrino. And so with a combination of Spanish (him), English (me), and French (us) he was able to tell me that there was a little white roofed German albergue down in the river valley. "Casa... house... il y a... blanca *point, point*" he said, and sure enough, down below there was white roof, easy enough to get to. I thanked him, and he seemed so happy to help, which melted my cold Parisian heart then and there.
I was alive, I wasn't stuffed into some closet in a shady Pamplona bar somewhere, and in fact soon I was to be safe... and what is more, random Spanish people were going out of their way to help me! And so I went literally skipping down the hill. There was an awkward encounter at the door -- a nice looking German lad around my age said hello to me, and his open welcome confused me. I thought maybe he worked there, and I rambled the question to him in energetic, I've-just-run-down-into-a-river-valley English. Turns out he did not say hello, he said hallo, which is German. And he barely spoke English. And he didn't work there. And he thought I was crazy. Great first impression Rachael--turns out pilgrims really are that friendly.
I didn't expect anything more than my credencial and directions to the hostel of course, but when I stepped inside I was offered a chair and some juice--and a bed as well. I was so relieved I didn't have to go back and try to find the hostel, but more relieved I didn't have to leave the world of the Camino, with its warm welcomes and (sometimes) English-speaking-German crowd. I didn't even care that my bed was in the male dorm, although certain roommates did not appreciate my presence there. But so it was, I was safe and happy.
Leaving my pack behind, I bounded back up the hill for a sandwich and a peek at the street named in my man Hemingway's honor. In fact there was even a bust statue of him in front of the bull fighting stadium. I laughed, took a picture.
I then happened to find a little store run by an asian-spanish couple that sold watches with alarms, which I needed. I walked in tentatively--so used to the instant grimace of Parisian faces--but instead I was met with smiles. In Pamplona, in the middle of the touristy area, and at closing time no less, I smiled and said.. brace yourself.. "Yo necessito.. *points at wrist*, pero.." and then I made the most god-awful alarm clock noise you're ever heard in your life. I did.
The woman laughed and repeated my noise back to me, and then reached under the counter and began to pull out a number of exactly what I needed. I picked out one, but puzzled by how to set it, her husband took it out of the box and did it for me, set the time, the date, even the alarm for 6am per my request. I was so flipping grateful--again. And I couldn't help beaming as I blended back into the streets of Pamplona.
The streets were full of happy tapas eaters, sporting an unsettling amount of mullets. I chose to think it a Basque thing. And as much as I would like to pass an evening tapas-crawling through the streets of Pamplona with friends, maybe I liked knowing I was on the verge of doing something entirely different better. I had been branded a pilgrim. I was set apart from the mulleted masses now. I had a purpose and a challenge that begins tomorrow, and a bed in a room with older, smelly German men waiting for me in the valley below.
Pilgrim. The title comes even now with a spiritual significance even though I haven't walked anywhere yet. And I am trying to learn how to see others as pilgrims do, as that German lad I made an ass of myself in front of earlier saw me. A... team member, I guess. An equal, with whom one can talk despite differences in country, sex, language, age, or what have you. It's been awkward so far. I'm not a very open person, or at least not with strangers. Not used to having polite conversation with strange German men in their underwear. But I'll learn.
Said strange German man is actually the author of one of the German guide books. A "professional peregrino" he called himself. He also said not to worry, most people do accomplish their camino. So I won't. Worry, that is. Instead I'll try to fall asleep at 10 before the sun goes down, listening to the frogs babbling outside my window, sitting in the river that runs right next to the house. Not me, the frogs. So lovely.
Goodnight.
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