When I get myself moving the next morning, I’ve already
convinced myself to find a nice hotel and check in for the evening, enjoy a
rest day and let my feet heal. I’m not
terribly excited about spending another day in Belorado as I’m wandering around
– it’s very chilly and the town looks grey and cold compared to the path the
Camino takes in the distance – all warm hues of grain fields and open blue
skies. Without really intending to, I
keep following the Camino, all the while being drawn down the path by the
yellow arrows. Ultreiya, right?
Providence provides. Just
outside of town I’ve stopped to look at one of the maps (See? Lesson learned!) and I see a person who can
only be Susannah walking along the path.
I wolf-whistle.
It occurs to me that I may be mistaken, that I might have
just whistled at some stranger. But the
howl of recognition and cheer that comes back at me proves the lie. This, dear readers, is the real birth of the
Three Musketeers.
Susie and I walk for a bit to the next town, catching up on
the last few days until we find a place to stop and get coffee, and there we
find Linde, who Susannah knows already, and after the great coffee we head off
together. By the time we make it to the
village at the crossroads, I believe we’ve decided to catch the bus from there to
Burgos which, again, feels like a smart compromise for our feet and
bodies. And in retrospect this turns out
to be a smart move indeed – the three of us in the back of the bus are quick to
realize that the slog from the countryside into the city of Burgos is long and
ugly. I do feel a small sense of guilt
that I’ve skipped it, but it’s strongly counterbalanced by a deep sense of
rightness, so I’m not going to question that guilt too deeply.
Burgos is grey-clouded and seems to my countryside-adjusted
eyes tall, large, and imposing. The
cathedral and the squares around it are gorgeous – we get there after a long
walk from the bus station to the older part of the city (read: trading neon and
concrete for stone and gargoyles), crossing over a bridge and under a tunneled archway
where accordion-players are busking for change.
Nearly directly behind the cathedral lies the giant municipal hostel,
afterwards referred to as Castle Peregrino.
Castle Peregrino is a full 6 stories, can house 200-plus
pilgrims, has massive windows overlooking the city and the cathedral, enormous
walk-in showers, has elevators, a huge photo mural of the upcoming ‘meseta’
region we’ll be walking into in the next few days, a warmly painted and massive
kitchen… and one washer and dryer. There
is danger ahead, mark my words. But we
get settled in amid a room full of friendly faces (the Canadian pensioners and
the Friendly Eastern European Guy are here) and ostensibly lay down for a nap:
Susannah falls asleep but Linde and I have a long and happy conversation
instead.
Soon we muster forward in search of pants (Susie abandoning
hers at the beginning of the Camino and now found herself in need with the
cold), tennis shoes, clips, and a grocery store; long story short we basically
fail to find all of these things, but for the supermarket which is all the way
back to the bus station. I realize that
I have a mistaken belief – that you can find all of these things within walking
distance of the center of a major city, which on reflection of my experiences
back home is in no way, shape, or form accurate. It’s a good lesson on ‘walkability’ and how
nice it was that I could walk to nearly everything I needed when I lived in Boone. That’s a rare feat for most cities and towns,
apparently even in Spain. Oh, and silliness ensues:
On the way back to the hostel we decide to stop and eat at a
place called ‘Mexican Restaurant’ that promises hamburgers and fries, and I
attempt to order using my nascent Spanish, feeling confident.
It takes me a minute to realize that the Mexican Restaurant
is run by folks from either India or Pakistan, and their English is better than
my Spanish, which they may or may not speak in the first place. Horrible embarrassment aside, the burgers are
excellent and we make our way back to Castle Peregrino in good spirits.
In retrospect, it seemed like a good plan: go downstairs, do
laundry, wait on laundry, eat flan. As
you can guess, the combination of limited laundry resources and hundreds of
pilgrims caused things to go awry.
Linde, Susannah and I take turns manning the laundry and managing the
line – after I get the first round rolling I head over to where they are
sitting for dessert and find myself nearly immediately being yelled at by a
woman in Spanish. I think what she wants is to clear the table for a large dinner of
some sort – what I understand of her rapid, loud Spanish is almost
nothing. So I take the easy way out, I
pick up my stuff with the intention of heading to one of the other empty tables
– but she continues to yell at me, in fact pursuing me halfway across the cafeteria
to do so. Who knows, I certainly don’t.
In any case we take our dessert party elsewhere and there I
meet Jari – another friend of Susannah’s and the person soon to earn her place
in the Musketeers as our unofficial D’Artagnan.
She’s high-output, high-energy, beautiful in her chaos, and I want to
wrap her in a blanket and get her to calm down.
The entire time I’ll know her on the Camino, she’ll nearly always be at
top volume, top speed, and although we have the opportunity to have some
insightful, inspiring conversations later about faith and our places in the world,
the night in question I was tired and she wasn’t so I mainly just sat back and
enjoyed the show.
As the night inches closer to official ‘lights-out’ time,
the pilgrims having dinner become louder and louder – in fact the whole
cafeteria scene is pretty hectic and joyful, people are laughing and telling
jokes, running into old acquaintances, and the general din is at college party
levels. I was coming out of the bathroom
when it happened, so I’m still not sure what prompted it, but I shit you not,
the cafeteria erupts into a sing along of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’. It’s a moment to remember…
Except the hospitalero comes dashing in from the office to
shush all of us. Way to rain on our
parade, amigo – granted it was 9:30, but you’ve got to expect some chaos with
this many people in one building. Like
chastised schoolkids, we settle down for a few minutes but the volume
inevitably starts to rise once again, until we find ourselves being shushed over the intercom, like some stern,
silly Big Brother.
This isn’t the last time I’ll find myself being shushed with
the other Musketeers, but it’s the most memorable. Susannah latches onto the phrase “Don’t you
shush me!”, which will become a rallying cry for our weary spirits in the week
to come. I miss it, and the freedom that
was easy to rely on as a pilgrim, social conventions be damned.
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