The Road to Brisbane.
Siesta, Fiesta and Sundays: Part 5.
My completion certificate, according to this I'm forgiven of my sins and will now get to go to heaven, where I'll be sure to sort out their no doubt archaic archival system and whip the place into shape. You get one of these at the end, as long as you tell them you're Catholic and you walked for religious reasons.
We spent overall four days in Santiago including the day we arrived. We left the hostel after the first night and moved into a nice hotel which was pleasant but also not that great because I'd booked it for two people and they wanted to give us a double bed for me and my dad, so we ended up spending an extra 30e on getting a room with two beds. It overlooked this nice flower garden and a square with a few bars in it.
The day before we were due to leave Spain we took a bus tour to see the end of the walk. We'd walked from St Jean to Santiago which is the traditional pilgrimage path, but there is a bit after it where you walk to a town called Finisterra which was for a very long time considered to be the furthest west you could go in mainland Europe(there is a place in Portugal which is further west but it took a really long time for anyone to work that out), the name of the place in Latin literally means the End of the World. Pilgrims would go to Santiago, go to the mass, get blessed and then walk on to the ocean. A lot of people I knew were going to do the rest of the walk and some people I found in Santiago barely stayed in town they were so keen to keep going. I could understand it, I felt weird to not be walking all day, I went around the city a few times and got a couple of KMs just because I was so in the habit of it by this point I barely thought about the distance. However I wasn't up for walking to Finisterra in the two days I might have had if we'd set off the day after we arrived in Santiago(it is another 100+kms from Santiago). So we took a bus. There were two options available, we could take a regular bus which would drop us in town and then walk 7kms to the Ocean and 7kms back or we could take a tour bus which would drop us right off at the point and then drive us back to the city. I was up for the walk, especially considering it wouldn't require a backpack or anything but the day we were going was a Saturday and the time between buses coming and going was something like six hours after we would have got back from the walk. The idea of sitting around for six hours didn't appeal to me very much and the idea of walking didn't appeal to my dad very much so we took the tour bus.
As you drive along there are a ton of people walking by, I can't say it enough, it really is amazing how many people you see walking this road.
The bus drove us to a few places before it got to Finisterra, mostly nice places that I have little to no memory of because I didn't really care about anything except Finisterra by this point, I'd seen over six hundred kilometers of Spanish tourism sights so this wasn't much to me. The views and some of the little places we went to were nice as I said but I just didn't care. Then we went to the town of Finisterra, where we stopped to have lunch and then drove up the hill to the cape where the world ended.
There is nothing in this direction until you reach Maine, it really is a weird feeling to actually think about it like that.
The cape was a windy place, I wasn't sure what it was going to look like, I thought it would be more like a beach, I didn't realise it was so far above the sea and that it would feel so isolated. The tradition was for pilgrims to bring the pack they carried and the clothes they wore on the trip and then strip naked and clean themselves in the ocean, change into new clothes and then burn their old things at the cape. To symbolise letting go of their old life and starting anew or something.
My bag cost me $250 and I needed it to get home, but I didn't need the pants I'd worn a hole through, the underpants I was afraid of, the pair of socks I'm pretty sure were haunted and the T-Shirt from my mates bucks party. So I bought some matches with me and the clothes in a bag and I torched them. The local tourist office just behind the cape doesn't stock toilet paper because people would use it as kindling and they'd run out all the time, thankfully I'd bought my own paper with me. My dad actually had to start the fire because I honestly suck at lighting fires on a windy Spanish seaside, one of the few skills I lacked.
I set my friends face on fire and it was glorious to see it burn. Next time I do this walk I'm going all the way back here to do it proper. I'm burning everything I bring with me and walking back down the hill in my underpants.
We watched it burn for a while, then the appeal gradually wore off. You can see my dad maintained a clean shaven face the entire walk, as a result he could pass for a pilgrim or a tourist, I on the other hand, there was little chance of mistaking me for anything but a pilgrim.
Some people didn't opt to burn their stuff, they left it there to face the elements, we found some really nice things, a few notes written to loved ones who'd passed on, pictures of families. I'm pretty sure someone has the unhappy job of taking these down after a few weeks.
While I was the only person willing to burn my stuff in the forty minutes we were there there were a lot of people willing to photograph my burning underpants. And then show this to their families back at home, telling them the tale of this made Australian who walked the Camino and set his clothes on fire at the end.
We left Finisterra and went from there to Muxía, which was where the body of Saint James was meant to have been bought ashore when it came to Spain. The ending to the movie The Way was filmed there and it was pretty nice, I have photos but nothing really dramatic, it was a nice way to end my time in Spain, I believed my adventure was over now, I was prepared to go back to my hotel, get some dinner and then sleep before flying out of the country the next day.
What I had not counted on was Kyle. Kyle was the guy who gave me the Swiss Army Card thing I kept on me at all times and we'd met about a week before I took the bus from Fromista and made my goodbyes. He was the last person I saw before I took the bus from the hostel and he was a really genuine guy who was planning on walking to the very end. He was a great guy with a lot of energy and charisma, he even tried to eat Vegemite once, he didn't care for it. He'd arrived in Santiago while I was out at Finisterra setting my clothes on fire and he saw me as I was going back to my hotel after I'd gone out for one last look around the city. I hadn't noticed him until I suddenly heard some lunatic smashing on the door behind me screaming my name out. I was initially concerned that I was somehow being robbed by the stupidest person ever until I saw who it was. We'd said goodbye almost 400kms before and suddenly there he was again.
The thing about Santiago is that the pilgrims and tourists generally congregate around the cathedral and rarely leave that area if they can help it. So pilgrims get a good opportunity to actually run into each other if they were separated on the walk, but this was just amazing, he caught me at the last possible second as I was going inside to basically go to sleep before waking up at dawn to go to the airport. He greated me with a huge bear hug and I was in a mild shock at it all.
KYLE! Seriously I was not expecting to ever see this magnificent bastard ever again. It really was a shock.
Kyle insisted that we go to the cathedral square because some other people I knew were there as well and I got reunited with all these people I'd left behind weeks ago, they were all happy to see me and it was a great moment. And then the lights of the Cathedral came on from the darkness and I smiled at the little world I'd stumbled into. The whole square went from darkness to light and the pilgrims and tourists and the various hawkers trying to sell us stuff all just enjoyed the moment before we parted company again.
The lights don't look like much in this photos but seriously in person it was amazing.
About an hour later I left them, I was beat and needed sleep, I wished them all luck on the rest of their walks and crashed out asleep. My dad was already asleep when I got back. I'd called him while I was at the cathedral but he didn't want to come out because he was already too tired when we got home and was basically in a coma once we got to the hotel.
The next morning we put our shoes on, our backpacks and our walking hats and walked to the bus stop which would take us to the airport. We had our paper tickets, confirmed and locked in so we'd never have to worry about them not accepting us this time, we were ready and roaring to go. I was in great spirits and we got to the airport and hit a snag, the flight was delayed. This wasn't such a big deal for us, my dads flight home from Paris was due the next day, we'd set this entire plan in motion on the assumption that this could happen and gave ourselves almost twenty hours of wiggle room. The flight left almost two hours late because of a strike amongst the fuel truck drivers union.
These were the bags going to the airport, as you can see there are quite a lot of walking packs.
The plane eventually took off and it was an okay flight, I got some scotch, I read the in flight magazine and wrote some stuff in it, the staff were friendly and then we landed into Paris Airport and discovered a reason why the staff on Vueling Airways might have been so friendly. Our luggage, which we'd checked in back in Santiago, was still in Santiago and wouldn't be back until the next day. The woman who told me this said it in a way that implied it was just her bags which were still in Santiago. It was not the case, it was everyones bags. The people with carry-on only just ran while they could. The airline staff had long since vanished leaving just the three poor ladies from Charles De Gualle Airport(they have a company called Swissport who manages all these types of disasters) to deal with the tsunami of rage. I myself was pretty panicked, my Compostella was in my dads bag, my incomplete novel was in my bag, my clothes were unclean and pretty much everything I relied on was in Spain. I had my watch, my Camera, my Passport and all my essentials(minus the knife and the Swiss army card) and nothing else but the clothes on my back and also no phone/camera charger(I used the same charger for both) so I was weary of using my camera or my phone that evening in case I never got my charger back.
The one thing I did have was my journal and I was happy I hadn't left that in my bag because my raw hatred for the airline was pretty well expressed on the page. If I had a picture I'd probably have to blur out half the words because it was pretty vulgar.
Of all things my dad was the calmest I've ever seen him, I was kind of on the edge of panic but he was a rock, he had nothing he was afraid to lose in his bags, the ladies behind the counter were taking ever complaint as carefully as they could, they had a form you had to fill out, you put your luggage number on it, your address, email and phone number and where you were going to be in the next twenty four hours and then they'd move the bags as close to you as it was humanly possible in as short a time as they could manage. If you were flying somewhere else they needed to know the airlines name and flight details so they could organise with them to courier the bags to your home city/next destination. It was not a fun afternoon.
We ended up staying in a hotel near the airport, I've never stayed in an Airport hotel before, it was interesting, everyone had a different story at the restaurant which catered to this weird little hamlet of hotels in the commune of Roissy-en-France. There was an American desperately trying to pay with Dollars instead of Euros because she didn't have any Euros because she'd spent hers thinking she was going home that day, people who'd missed their flights or been delayed. Everyone had a story. If I ever get writers block I'm going to move into an Airport hotel and just talk to people until I find a story to write about. Our hotel wasn't very great, it was a weirdly designed room with a three person bunkbed and a view of a tree. It was weird to not hear Spanish anymore and I had to start thinking about French instead which took some time.
The next morning we had the free breakfast we were promised at the hotel(toast and coffee, that was their free breakfast) and then went back to Terminal three where our flight the day before had finished. The idea was to go back now even though the luggage was seven hours away minimum just so we could go over the paperwork without a screaming crowd trying to eat itself. When we got there we met a girl called Pam who'd flown from Madrid and had the same thing happen to her. She'd spent the evening before researching lost luggage online and was getting really really stressed about it. Her luggage was due a long while before ours was but was coming out of the same arrivals hall so together we managed to bully our way into the sealed off part of the terminal building meant only for arrivals and then confronted the Swissport ladies, one of whom was pregnant(well played by Swissport putting ladies I was unwilling to scream at on the front desk). My dad and I went over our paperwork and found we'd made an error on our form in the hurry from the day before which was corrected and then I was told our bags would arrive at 4pm and they'd send my bag to my hostel and my dads bag to Brisbane. I told them I wasn't willing to risk them screwing it up and giving me his bag so I told them I would wait at the airport until the bag arrived.
While we were waiting the mornings flight from Madrid arrived with Pams bag, which was a good sign. It turns out that the fuel drivers strike meant the planes had to decide between getting people there without their luggage or getting no-one anywhere. I'm still angry about the fact that we were left so utterly destitute when we got to Paris.
This was Pam, she was American and had done the research into lost luggage, I told her it was worth wasting a photo from a limited battery to keep her smile forever on record. Also it gave me hope to see my own luggage as well.
My dads flight to Australia was due to leave long before our luggage was due to arrive so eventually he left to fly to Hong Kong and then to home without any luggage except whatever he had in his pockets. He gave me his phone because it was a Nokia and I could get a charger pretty much anywhere if I needed to. My own phone had been off for the most part since I landed in Paris.
I watched my dad leave and felt a bit better knowing I was now on my own, I'm better at travelling when I don't have to worry about other people. I found a quiet spot in the airport and bought some paper and a pen to write with and started to try some story ideas to kill time. Then I went on a walking exploring tour of the airport. Then I found out I'd lost my hat somewhere and I never saw it again, which was a tragic shame to be honest because I loved that hat. Because I'd been literally everywhere in the airport there was no-way to retrace my steps, so it was gone.
Eventually I returned to Terminal three and waited some more, I phoned my hostel(seriously this exact same thing happened the last time I stayed in Paris in the same hostel except that time I didn't bother waiting at the airport) and told them that my bag might arrive before I did and that I'd be checking in much later than I'd said on their website. And then, the flight from Santiago arrived. With the luggage from the people who'd been on the flight coming out first followed by the luggage from the day before. I and two other guys were waiting like baying dogs at the entry to the arrivals hall when they let us in. I sorted out my bag, took some stuff out of my dads bag and then made 100% sure that the ladies knew where his bag was going and that all the details were correct. I had to sign some paperwork I think to confirm I'd taken my own stuff.
Me with my bag. It felt good, not as good as the idea that I might actually get some clean clothes to wear soon, but good.
Finally equipped with a bag I went to my hostel by the train and got a little lost because I couldn't remember the exact location of the hostel(it was one street over from where I thought it was, it had been five years since I'd been there last). The hostel was called Hotel Rue Caulaincourt and whenever I'm in Paris I stay there, they have clean beds, decent enough people staying there and are close enough to a train station. Also they're on top of a hill so if you get a Vélib bike you can just cruise downhill easily.
I asked the receptionist at the hostel if there was anywhere around that I could buy some clothes because I set my spare underpants and pants and shirt on fire two days earlier. She told me it was a long walk down the hill to this place nearby, she recommended I take a train because it was almost 2kms of walking. I nearly took offence at that.
The next morning I went for a walk around Paris, I got a map(I had two maps actually, one had a better train map on it and one had a better street map so I used both accordingly) and took in the sights. The next few pictures are from the following two-four days. On the first day I walked a 16km loop of the city over the next few days I rode a Vélib bike(the Paris rent-a-bike system which is fantastic) most places or occasionally took a train.
I saw the guy who wrote this writing it. I can believe he knows what he was talking about, he had a beard.
I saw Craig Ferguson do a story during his week in Paris about this bridge. I had to see it. I found out on my journey to this bridge that nearly every bridge in Paris which crosses the Seine has locks on them wherever possible.
I went in here and bought myself a copy of The Divine Comedy, A Farewell to Arms and Murukamis collected short stories Blind Woman, Sleeping Willow. It is a very nice bookstore, I can see why it is famous.
The last time I was in Paris I saw the sign for this place and had no idea what it was so I ignored it, it was a ten minute walk from my hostel, I went up there a few nights later with this girl I met from Brisbane and we watched the city in the dark from there. My pictures from that night are super blurry sadly.
That ugly monolithic building jutting up in the middle of everything is Gare Montparnasse, where over a month earlier I'd nearly missed my train to Bayonne. My adventure kind of started there and I was glad I never ever had to go back(although I do regret not going back and getting some photos of the place to see where I'd been that day).
I have no idea what anyone was thinking when this was implemented.
The police were doing something and marching in a giant line with police cars behind them, it looked like they were going to face off against a riot or something but I never saw any evidence of that. It was kind of worrying to see it to be honest.
Some graffiti outside the wall of my Hostel.
On the Friday I went to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the BNF, to see the library itself and to see the Asterix display they had on. I wasn't allowed to take photos inside but I decided to risk it anyway. The BNF is stupidly big, it seems like it was built underground with a pit of a courtyard in the middle filled with trees and vegetation, surrounding the pit are four giant L-Shaped towers which I realised after a while were meant to look like four open books standing upright around the library. The towers seem to be office towers, I'm not sure if they're used entirely by the library, I have a feeling that they are. Oddly enough according to Wikipedia the library doesn't have a wifi network at all.
The Asterix display was a lot more than I thought it was going to be, it was a nearly complete history of the character and the creators and the history of what they did when they created a little village of Indomitable Gauls. My only problem was that everything was obviously in French so I picked up most of what I was looking at but had issues occasionally with some parts.
After that I eventually went and saw The Way, the movie about the Camino which inspired so many people to walk it, I was a slight hit with the crowd who all spoke English and wanted to know about the walk I'd just finished, I told them it was hard but very rewarding.
I couldn't get a photo of all four "books" but I did get a photo of one of them, now imagine three more. That is what the BNF looks like from the street. These towers are pretty huge, I think there was some controversy about the cost
The Romans formed a Tortoise Formation, Obelix would basically smash into them.
Asterix in nearly every language it was ever published in.
This was Goscinny's office when he was writing the Asterix comics, perfectly preserved as it was when he died. I fear that someone will do this to my "office" one day and it will just be awful and terrifying.
At some point I lost my phone while cycling one morning, I think it fell out of my pocket but it was dead and gone. So I had to use the computers in the hostel which was not a really good option. I took it, but I didn't like it. Thankfully I'd already used Skype on my phone to call up a friend on her birthday. So after that the phone was mostly useless.
High TECH! Also the Webcams didn't work nor did the microphones, seriously this was not fun. I love the place but their computers sucked. The wifi was fantastic which kind of compensated for it. Plus their free breakfast was actually decent, especially because they didn't mind me putting my remaining Vegemite on the toast I was having every morning.
I think I then just kind of went exploring around Paris, I met up with my friends who'd gotten married who I met weeks previously in Astorga, they were finishing their honeymoon in Paris for a week so we went down into the Catacombs to look at skulls and bones. After a while the place really does start to depress you. So many dead people, just stacked on top of each other like cards in a deck or books on a shelf. But the workers down there still found things to do to occupy their time. Like building elaborate underground models. We left the underground world and went cycling with Vélib's along the river and around the city through the Latin quarter and past Notre Dame. It was awesome. We parted company late at night and I walked a long way to a train to get home, mostly because I could, there was a train station much closer to where I was I could have used but I didn't mind the walk in the dark.
This was a pretty thing I found underground, not like the creepy as hell bones I'd later encounter.
Cycling along the Seine.
I found a shopping/Bazaar type area and in the middle of it was a UFO.
Near the UFO was a retro fashion clothing store with half the wardrobe department from Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries jammed in there.
One of the many Vélibs I found. If you took them above a certain height, like say to the docking station next to my hostel, you'd get 15 free minutes of credit on top of the usual 30 minutes you had. When I left I had almost forty minutes of credit from literally dragging the bike up some stairs one time. You can see my journal in the front basket along with my still unfinished novel.
I went to the graveyard and people were kissing Oscar Wildes gravestone.
Someone here really loved their dog.
My ten days in Paris was a good way to wind down after my month of walking across Spain. I did a lot of things I didn't really write about here, but I'm really really tired right now and most of what I did were the things every tourist does in Paris, although I did see a knife fight break out in a Kebab shop. Which was fun. Once I left the city I felt pretty good about everything, I flew safely to Hong Kong, then to Brisbane and then promptly slept for two days as Jet Lag is a killer. I don't know why but going East kills me, going West I get over really fast.
I was going to miss Paris, this was to be my last meal in the city. I'd opted to try and never eat in the same place twice, which meant I'd run out of restaurants in my price range which were local to my hostel. Causing me to find an actual shop and buy food. There was a shop across the road I didn't know about until the second last day, I'd been going a long way to the next nearest shop for eight days at this point.
I told myself I'd have one drink and then I'd write a short story about a painter who murdered people with her drawings, so I made sure it was a big drink. It took a while to finish both the drink and the story.
In the Paris airport, for no logical reason, there was a piano. I can not play the Piano.
I was going to write about how this experience changed me as a librarian, I think the main thing I really learned was that when the language barrier exists you'll sometimes find yourself just nodding along in order to not offend the person talking. I did that a couple of times, I'd stress over and over that I understood almost no Spanish but they'd talk loudly and slowly and try to ease me into their language which was interesting to experience from the other side. Going forwards I'd hope that I can use this to help people who don't know English and to better talk to them, using either more visual cues, simpler language or technology like Google Translate and similar sites. If I can get through to people better then I'll be a better librarian than I was before.
What I also learned was that there is a great value in a small town library, people used them a lot, even in very small towns, they helped out with the children a lot and provided a service which is vital to the community they're in.
My Day.
My day was pretty good today, I was up until almost 4am writing what I wrote for yesterdays BlogJune post, my word count is now officially stupid. I'm midway to the length of a novel if this were NaNoWriMo. This makes me happy because I am really really keen to try this year to actually get that done in November, the word count they're after is 50,000 and I've knocked over half of that off in under six days, at this rate I'll have written 125,000 words by the end of the month. I read an article the other day about this it said that books over 100,000 words are almost impossible to publish for first time writers, so I'd have to edit it down if I got that far obviously. I'm hoping for 100,000 words in November, any more and I'll be probably drowning in stupid subplots and messy themes. I have my broad outline halfway done already, it's a murder mystery set in Brisbane.
I worked out today I could have stopped last night in Sarria, finished up to Paris today and just ended it there. Paris was fun for me but it wasn't anything special or different compared to the Camino. Oh well, learning the write way to plan things like this out is part of my practise for November.
I woke up at about 11am and went to do my volunteer work at the Toy Library, I was expecting my mate to be there so we could go to lunch and then start work but he was in training on the other side of the city, this meant I had lunch alone before I went in and started sorting out the shelves. Today I concentrated on the broken toys and missing pieces of things. Something which really seems to set a toy library apart from a book library is that Books rarely lose a piece, with puzzle sets and musical toys with parts on them it is very easy for something to get lost between the centre and the kids house and back again. I sorted things into three piles:
After about three hours of this I had the room looking pretty good, I also helped return the stuff in the returns box, I still don't know the password to get into the system so I couldn't just do it when I arrived. I'll have to ask them to either give me a password or give someone a password they can use to access the catalogue for me so I can get a head start when I get in next week.
After that I'm going to look at their catalogue system and the one they're planning on switching to and see if I can't help make it go a little bit faster or better. I doubt I'll find much but anything I can do to help will be good.
After that I went to the post office at Mt Ommaney and got my passport photo taken, tomorrow I'm going to apply for a new passport so I can go overseas later this year. Once I had my photos done I went to my brothers house, grabbed my USB stick I'd left there and then came home to write except I stopped writing around 9pm and went and saw Edge of Tomorrow the new Tom Cruise film, it was pretty damn good. I don't know why but Cruises last two movies(this and Oblivion) have been really decent sci-fi action films and he's been great in both of them.
That movie ended at 11:30 so I finished up there and came home to finish writing. Thankfully next week I'll be writing a lot less I hope and I won't be up at stupid hours anymore.
Once I start writing I really can't stop.
YouTube Clip of the day.
Another Hockey Video, this time throwing Rats on the ice, because hockey people are crazy.
My completion certificate, according to this I'm forgiven of my sins and will now get to go to heaven, where I'll be sure to sort out their no doubt archaic archival system and whip the place into shape. You get one of these at the end, as long as you tell them you're Catholic and you walked for religious reasons.
We spent overall four days in Santiago including the day we arrived. We left the hostel after the first night and moved into a nice hotel which was pleasant but also not that great because I'd booked it for two people and they wanted to give us a double bed for me and my dad, so we ended up spending an extra 30e on getting a room with two beds. It overlooked this nice flower garden and a square with a few bars in it.
The day before we were due to leave Spain we took a bus tour to see the end of the walk. We'd walked from St Jean to Santiago which is the traditional pilgrimage path, but there is a bit after it where you walk to a town called Finisterra which was for a very long time considered to be the furthest west you could go in mainland Europe(there is a place in Portugal which is further west but it took a really long time for anyone to work that out), the name of the place in Latin literally means the End of the World. Pilgrims would go to Santiago, go to the mass, get blessed and then walk on to the ocean. A lot of people I knew were going to do the rest of the walk and some people I found in Santiago barely stayed in town they were so keen to keep going. I could understand it, I felt weird to not be walking all day, I went around the city a few times and got a couple of KMs just because I was so in the habit of it by this point I barely thought about the distance. However I wasn't up for walking to Finisterra in the two days I might have had if we'd set off the day after we arrived in Santiago(it is another 100+kms from Santiago). So we took a bus. There were two options available, we could take a regular bus which would drop us in town and then walk 7kms to the Ocean and 7kms back or we could take a tour bus which would drop us right off at the point and then drive us back to the city. I was up for the walk, especially considering it wouldn't require a backpack or anything but the day we were going was a Saturday and the time between buses coming and going was something like six hours after we would have got back from the walk. The idea of sitting around for six hours didn't appeal to me very much and the idea of walking didn't appeal to my dad very much so we took the tour bus.
As you drive along there are a ton of people walking by, I can't say it enough, it really is amazing how many people you see walking this road.
The bus drove us to a few places before it got to Finisterra, mostly nice places that I have little to no memory of because I didn't really care about anything except Finisterra by this point, I'd seen over six hundred kilometers of Spanish tourism sights so this wasn't much to me. The views and some of the little places we went to were nice as I said but I just didn't care. Then we went to the town of Finisterra, where we stopped to have lunch and then drove up the hill to the cape where the world ended.
There is nothing in this direction until you reach Maine, it really is a weird feeling to actually think about it like that.
The cape was a windy place, I wasn't sure what it was going to look like, I thought it would be more like a beach, I didn't realise it was so far above the sea and that it would feel so isolated. The tradition was for pilgrims to bring the pack they carried and the clothes they wore on the trip and then strip naked and clean themselves in the ocean, change into new clothes and then burn their old things at the cape. To symbolise letting go of their old life and starting anew or something.
My bag cost me $250 and I needed it to get home, but I didn't need the pants I'd worn a hole through, the underpants I was afraid of, the pair of socks I'm pretty sure were haunted and the T-Shirt from my mates bucks party. So I bought some matches with me and the clothes in a bag and I torched them. The local tourist office just behind the cape doesn't stock toilet paper because people would use it as kindling and they'd run out all the time, thankfully I'd bought my own paper with me. My dad actually had to start the fire because I honestly suck at lighting fires on a windy Spanish seaside, one of the few skills I lacked.
I set my friends face on fire and it was glorious to see it burn. Next time I do this walk I'm going all the way back here to do it proper. I'm burning everything I bring with me and walking back down the hill in my underpants.
We watched it burn for a while, then the appeal gradually wore off. You can see my dad maintained a clean shaven face the entire walk, as a result he could pass for a pilgrim or a tourist, I on the other hand, there was little chance of mistaking me for anything but a pilgrim.
Some people didn't opt to burn their stuff, they left it there to face the elements, we found some really nice things, a few notes written to loved ones who'd passed on, pictures of families. I'm pretty sure someone has the unhappy job of taking these down after a few weeks.
While I was the only person willing to burn my stuff in the forty minutes we were there there were a lot of people willing to photograph my burning underpants. And then show this to their families back at home, telling them the tale of this made Australian who walked the Camino and set his clothes on fire at the end.
We left Finisterra and went from there to Muxía, which was where the body of Saint James was meant to have been bought ashore when it came to Spain. The ending to the movie The Way was filmed there and it was pretty nice, I have photos but nothing really dramatic, it was a nice way to end my time in Spain, I believed my adventure was over now, I was prepared to go back to my hotel, get some dinner and then sleep before flying out of the country the next day.
What I had not counted on was Kyle. Kyle was the guy who gave me the Swiss Army Card thing I kept on me at all times and we'd met about a week before I took the bus from Fromista and made my goodbyes. He was the last person I saw before I took the bus from the hostel and he was a really genuine guy who was planning on walking to the very end. He was a great guy with a lot of energy and charisma, he even tried to eat Vegemite once, he didn't care for it. He'd arrived in Santiago while I was out at Finisterra setting my clothes on fire and he saw me as I was going back to my hotel after I'd gone out for one last look around the city. I hadn't noticed him until I suddenly heard some lunatic smashing on the door behind me screaming my name out. I was initially concerned that I was somehow being robbed by the stupidest person ever until I saw who it was. We'd said goodbye almost 400kms before and suddenly there he was again.
The thing about Santiago is that the pilgrims and tourists generally congregate around the cathedral and rarely leave that area if they can help it. So pilgrims get a good opportunity to actually run into each other if they were separated on the walk, but this was just amazing, he caught me at the last possible second as I was going inside to basically go to sleep before waking up at dawn to go to the airport. He greated me with a huge bear hug and I was in a mild shock at it all.
KYLE! Seriously I was not expecting to ever see this magnificent bastard ever again. It really was a shock.
Kyle insisted that we go to the cathedral square because some other people I knew were there as well and I got reunited with all these people I'd left behind weeks ago, they were all happy to see me and it was a great moment. And then the lights of the Cathedral came on from the darkness and I smiled at the little world I'd stumbled into. The whole square went from darkness to light and the pilgrims and tourists and the various hawkers trying to sell us stuff all just enjoyed the moment before we parted company again.
The lights don't look like much in this photos but seriously in person it was amazing.
About an hour later I left them, I was beat and needed sleep, I wished them all luck on the rest of their walks and crashed out asleep. My dad was already asleep when I got back. I'd called him while I was at the cathedral but he didn't want to come out because he was already too tired when we got home and was basically in a coma once we got to the hotel.
The next morning we put our shoes on, our backpacks and our walking hats and walked to the bus stop which would take us to the airport. We had our paper tickets, confirmed and locked in so we'd never have to worry about them not accepting us this time, we were ready and roaring to go. I was in great spirits and we got to the airport and hit a snag, the flight was delayed. This wasn't such a big deal for us, my dads flight home from Paris was due the next day, we'd set this entire plan in motion on the assumption that this could happen and gave ourselves almost twenty hours of wiggle room. The flight left almost two hours late because of a strike amongst the fuel truck drivers union.
These were the bags going to the airport, as you can see there are quite a lot of walking packs.
The plane eventually took off and it was an okay flight, I got some scotch, I read the in flight magazine and wrote some stuff in it, the staff were friendly and then we landed into Paris Airport and discovered a reason why the staff on Vueling Airways might have been so friendly. Our luggage, which we'd checked in back in Santiago, was still in Santiago and wouldn't be back until the next day. The woman who told me this said it in a way that implied it was just her bags which were still in Santiago. It was not the case, it was everyones bags. The people with carry-on only just ran while they could. The airline staff had long since vanished leaving just the three poor ladies from Charles De Gualle Airport(they have a company called Swissport who manages all these types of disasters) to deal with the tsunami of rage. I myself was pretty panicked, my Compostella was in my dads bag, my incomplete novel was in my bag, my clothes were unclean and pretty much everything I relied on was in Spain. I had my watch, my Camera, my Passport and all my essentials(minus the knife and the Swiss army card) and nothing else but the clothes on my back and also no phone/camera charger(I used the same charger for both) so I was weary of using my camera or my phone that evening in case I never got my charger back.
The one thing I did have was my journal and I was happy I hadn't left that in my bag because my raw hatred for the airline was pretty well expressed on the page. If I had a picture I'd probably have to blur out half the words because it was pretty vulgar.
Of all things my dad was the calmest I've ever seen him, I was kind of on the edge of panic but he was a rock, he had nothing he was afraid to lose in his bags, the ladies behind the counter were taking ever complaint as carefully as they could, they had a form you had to fill out, you put your luggage number on it, your address, email and phone number and where you were going to be in the next twenty four hours and then they'd move the bags as close to you as it was humanly possible in as short a time as they could manage. If you were flying somewhere else they needed to know the airlines name and flight details so they could organise with them to courier the bags to your home city/next destination. It was not a fun afternoon.
We ended up staying in a hotel near the airport, I've never stayed in an Airport hotel before, it was interesting, everyone had a different story at the restaurant which catered to this weird little hamlet of hotels in the commune of Roissy-en-France. There was an American desperately trying to pay with Dollars instead of Euros because she didn't have any Euros because she'd spent hers thinking she was going home that day, people who'd missed their flights or been delayed. Everyone had a story. If I ever get writers block I'm going to move into an Airport hotel and just talk to people until I find a story to write about. Our hotel wasn't very great, it was a weirdly designed room with a three person bunkbed and a view of a tree. It was weird to not hear Spanish anymore and I had to start thinking about French instead which took some time.
The next morning we had the free breakfast we were promised at the hotel(toast and coffee, that was their free breakfast) and then went back to Terminal three where our flight the day before had finished. The idea was to go back now even though the luggage was seven hours away minimum just so we could go over the paperwork without a screaming crowd trying to eat itself. When we got there we met a girl called Pam who'd flown from Madrid and had the same thing happen to her. She'd spent the evening before researching lost luggage online and was getting really really stressed about it. Her luggage was due a long while before ours was but was coming out of the same arrivals hall so together we managed to bully our way into the sealed off part of the terminal building meant only for arrivals and then confronted the Swissport ladies, one of whom was pregnant(well played by Swissport putting ladies I was unwilling to scream at on the front desk). My dad and I went over our paperwork and found we'd made an error on our form in the hurry from the day before which was corrected and then I was told our bags would arrive at 4pm and they'd send my bag to my hostel and my dads bag to Brisbane. I told them I wasn't willing to risk them screwing it up and giving me his bag so I told them I would wait at the airport until the bag arrived.
While we were waiting the mornings flight from Madrid arrived with Pams bag, which was a good sign. It turns out that the fuel drivers strike meant the planes had to decide between getting people there without their luggage or getting no-one anywhere. I'm still angry about the fact that we were left so utterly destitute when we got to Paris.
This was Pam, she was American and had done the research into lost luggage, I told her it was worth wasting a photo from a limited battery to keep her smile forever on record. Also it gave me hope to see my own luggage as well.
My dads flight to Australia was due to leave long before our luggage was due to arrive so eventually he left to fly to Hong Kong and then to home without any luggage except whatever he had in his pockets. He gave me his phone because it was a Nokia and I could get a charger pretty much anywhere if I needed to. My own phone had been off for the most part since I landed in Paris.
I watched my dad leave and felt a bit better knowing I was now on my own, I'm better at travelling when I don't have to worry about other people. I found a quiet spot in the airport and bought some paper and a pen to write with and started to try some story ideas to kill time. Then I went on a walking exploring tour of the airport. Then I found out I'd lost my hat somewhere and I never saw it again, which was a tragic shame to be honest because I loved that hat. Because I'd been literally everywhere in the airport there was no-way to retrace my steps, so it was gone.
Eventually I returned to Terminal three and waited some more, I phoned my hostel(seriously this exact same thing happened the last time I stayed in Paris in the same hostel except that time I didn't bother waiting at the airport) and told them that my bag might arrive before I did and that I'd be checking in much later than I'd said on their website. And then, the flight from Santiago arrived. With the luggage from the people who'd been on the flight coming out first followed by the luggage from the day before. I and two other guys were waiting like baying dogs at the entry to the arrivals hall when they let us in. I sorted out my bag, took some stuff out of my dads bag and then made 100% sure that the ladies knew where his bag was going and that all the details were correct. I had to sign some paperwork I think to confirm I'd taken my own stuff.
Me with my bag. It felt good, not as good as the idea that I might actually get some clean clothes to wear soon, but good.
Finally equipped with a bag I went to my hostel by the train and got a little lost because I couldn't remember the exact location of the hostel(it was one street over from where I thought it was, it had been five years since I'd been there last). The hostel was called Hotel Rue Caulaincourt and whenever I'm in Paris I stay there, they have clean beds, decent enough people staying there and are close enough to a train station. Also they're on top of a hill so if you get a Vélib bike you can just cruise downhill easily.
I asked the receptionist at the hostel if there was anywhere around that I could buy some clothes because I set my spare underpants and pants and shirt on fire two days earlier. She told me it was a long walk down the hill to this place nearby, she recommended I take a train because it was almost 2kms of walking. I nearly took offence at that.
The next morning I went for a walk around Paris, I got a map(I had two maps actually, one had a better train map on it and one had a better street map so I used both accordingly) and took in the sights. The next few pictures are from the following two-four days. On the first day I walked a 16km loop of the city over the next few days I rode a Vélib bike(the Paris rent-a-bike system which is fantastic) most places or occasionally took a train.
I saw the guy who wrote this writing it. I can believe he knows what he was talking about, he had a beard.
I saw Craig Ferguson do a story during his week in Paris about this bridge. I had to see it. I found out on my journey to this bridge that nearly every bridge in Paris which crosses the Seine has locks on them wherever possible.
I went in here and bought myself a copy of The Divine Comedy, A Farewell to Arms and Murukamis collected short stories Blind Woman, Sleeping Willow. It is a very nice bookstore, I can see why it is famous.
The last time I was in Paris I saw the sign for this place and had no idea what it was so I ignored it, it was a ten minute walk from my hostel, I went up there a few nights later with this girl I met from Brisbane and we watched the city in the dark from there. My pictures from that night are super blurry sadly.
That ugly monolithic building jutting up in the middle of everything is Gare Montparnasse, where over a month earlier I'd nearly missed my train to Bayonne. My adventure kind of started there and I was glad I never ever had to go back(although I do regret not going back and getting some photos of the place to see where I'd been that day).
I have no idea what anyone was thinking when this was implemented.
The police were doing something and marching in a giant line with police cars behind them, it looked like they were going to face off against a riot or something but I never saw any evidence of that. It was kind of worrying to see it to be honest.
Some graffiti outside the wall of my Hostel.
On the Friday I went to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the BNF, to see the library itself and to see the Asterix display they had on. I wasn't allowed to take photos inside but I decided to risk it anyway. The BNF is stupidly big, it seems like it was built underground with a pit of a courtyard in the middle filled with trees and vegetation, surrounding the pit are four giant L-Shaped towers which I realised after a while were meant to look like four open books standing upright around the library. The towers seem to be office towers, I'm not sure if they're used entirely by the library, I have a feeling that they are. Oddly enough according to Wikipedia the library doesn't have a wifi network at all.
The Asterix display was a lot more than I thought it was going to be, it was a nearly complete history of the character and the creators and the history of what they did when they created a little village of Indomitable Gauls. My only problem was that everything was obviously in French so I picked up most of what I was looking at but had issues occasionally with some parts.
After that I eventually went and saw The Way, the movie about the Camino which inspired so many people to walk it, I was a slight hit with the crowd who all spoke English and wanted to know about the walk I'd just finished, I told them it was hard but very rewarding.
I couldn't get a photo of all four "books" but I did get a photo of one of them, now imagine three more. That is what the BNF looks like from the street. These towers are pretty huge, I think there was some controversy about the cost
The Romans formed a Tortoise Formation, Obelix would basically smash into them.
Asterix in nearly every language it was ever published in.
This was Goscinny's office when he was writing the Asterix comics, perfectly preserved as it was when he died. I fear that someone will do this to my "office" one day and it will just be awful and terrifying.
At some point I lost my phone while cycling one morning, I think it fell out of my pocket but it was dead and gone. So I had to use the computers in the hostel which was not a really good option. I took it, but I didn't like it. Thankfully I'd already used Skype on my phone to call up a friend on her birthday. So after that the phone was mostly useless.
High TECH! Also the Webcams didn't work nor did the microphones, seriously this was not fun. I love the place but their computers sucked. The wifi was fantastic which kind of compensated for it. Plus their free breakfast was actually decent, especially because they didn't mind me putting my remaining Vegemite on the toast I was having every morning.
I think I then just kind of went exploring around Paris, I met up with my friends who'd gotten married who I met weeks previously in Astorga, they were finishing their honeymoon in Paris for a week so we went down into the Catacombs to look at skulls and bones. After a while the place really does start to depress you. So many dead people, just stacked on top of each other like cards in a deck or books on a shelf. But the workers down there still found things to do to occupy their time. Like building elaborate underground models. We left the underground world and went cycling with Vélib's along the river and around the city through the Latin quarter and past Notre Dame. It was awesome. We parted company late at night and I walked a long way to a train to get home, mostly because I could, there was a train station much closer to where I was I could have used but I didn't mind the walk in the dark.
This was a pretty thing I found underground, not like the creepy as hell bones I'd later encounter.
Cycling along the Seine.
I found a shopping/Bazaar type area and in the middle of it was a UFO.
Near the UFO was a retro fashion clothing store with half the wardrobe department from Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries jammed in there.
One of the many Vélibs I found. If you took them above a certain height, like say to the docking station next to my hostel, you'd get 15 free minutes of credit on top of the usual 30 minutes you had. When I left I had almost forty minutes of credit from literally dragging the bike up some stairs one time. You can see my journal in the front basket along with my still unfinished novel.
I went to the graveyard and people were kissing Oscar Wildes gravestone.
Someone here really loved their dog.
My ten days in Paris was a good way to wind down after my month of walking across Spain. I did a lot of things I didn't really write about here, but I'm really really tired right now and most of what I did were the things every tourist does in Paris, although I did see a knife fight break out in a Kebab shop. Which was fun. Once I left the city I felt pretty good about everything, I flew safely to Hong Kong, then to Brisbane and then promptly slept for two days as Jet Lag is a killer. I don't know why but going East kills me, going West I get over really fast.
I was going to miss Paris, this was to be my last meal in the city. I'd opted to try and never eat in the same place twice, which meant I'd run out of restaurants in my price range which were local to my hostel. Causing me to find an actual shop and buy food. There was a shop across the road I didn't know about until the second last day, I'd been going a long way to the next nearest shop for eight days at this point.
I told myself I'd have one drink and then I'd write a short story about a painter who murdered people with her drawings, so I made sure it was a big drink. It took a while to finish both the drink and the story.
In the Paris airport, for no logical reason, there was a piano. I can not play the Piano.
I was going to write about how this experience changed me as a librarian, I think the main thing I really learned was that when the language barrier exists you'll sometimes find yourself just nodding along in order to not offend the person talking. I did that a couple of times, I'd stress over and over that I understood almost no Spanish but they'd talk loudly and slowly and try to ease me into their language which was interesting to experience from the other side. Going forwards I'd hope that I can use this to help people who don't know English and to better talk to them, using either more visual cues, simpler language or technology like Google Translate and similar sites. If I can get through to people better then I'll be a better librarian than I was before.
What I also learned was that there is a great value in a small town library, people used them a lot, even in very small towns, they helped out with the children a lot and provided a service which is vital to the community they're in.
My Day.
My day was pretty good today, I was up until almost 4am writing what I wrote for yesterdays BlogJune post, my word count is now officially stupid. I'm midway to the length of a novel if this were NaNoWriMo. This makes me happy because I am really really keen to try this year to actually get that done in November, the word count they're after is 50,000 and I've knocked over half of that off in under six days, at this rate I'll have written 125,000 words by the end of the month. I read an article the other day about this it said that books over 100,000 words are almost impossible to publish for first time writers, so I'd have to edit it down if I got that far obviously. I'm hoping for 100,000 words in November, any more and I'll be probably drowning in stupid subplots and messy themes. I have my broad outline halfway done already, it's a murder mystery set in Brisbane.
I worked out today I could have stopped last night in Sarria, finished up to Paris today and just ended it there. Paris was fun for me but it wasn't anything special or different compared to the Camino. Oh well, learning the write way to plan things like this out is part of my practise for November.
I woke up at about 11am and went to do my volunteer work at the Toy Library, I was expecting my mate to be there so we could go to lunch and then start work but he was in training on the other side of the city, this meant I had lunch alone before I went in and started sorting out the shelves. Today I concentrated on the broken toys and missing pieces of things. Something which really seems to set a toy library apart from a book library is that Books rarely lose a piece, with puzzle sets and musical toys with parts on them it is very easy for something to get lost between the centre and the kids house and back again. I sorted things into three piles:
- Perfect: These were in perfect condition.
- Missing Labels: Everything has a little label with the item description on it and item number, the item number is usually written on the object itself as well but the label had more details, like a picture of the toy and a description of it plus the age group it was intended for.
- Missing parts: This was in two categories, one was the kits which were missing a part and the other were the random missing parts which were floating around. My first job next week is to connect as much of this as possible together again.
After about three hours of this I had the room looking pretty good, I also helped return the stuff in the returns box, I still don't know the password to get into the system so I couldn't just do it when I arrived. I'll have to ask them to either give me a password or give someone a password they can use to access the catalogue for me so I can get a head start when I get in next week.
After that I'm going to look at their catalogue system and the one they're planning on switching to and see if I can't help make it go a little bit faster or better. I doubt I'll find much but anything I can do to help will be good.
After that I went to the post office at Mt Ommaney and got my passport photo taken, tomorrow I'm going to apply for a new passport so I can go overseas later this year. Once I had my photos done I went to my brothers house, grabbed my USB stick I'd left there and then came home to write except I stopped writing around 9pm and went and saw Edge of Tomorrow the new Tom Cruise film, it was pretty damn good. I don't know why but Cruises last two movies(this and Oblivion) have been really decent sci-fi action films and he's been great in both of them.
That movie ended at 11:30 so I finished up there and came home to finish writing. Thankfully next week I'll be writing a lot less I hope and I won't be up at stupid hours anymore.
Once I start writing I really can't stop.
YouTube Clip of the day.
Another Hockey Video, this time throwing Rats on the ice, because hockey people are crazy.
Click to view