1st stage: Leon - Hospital de Orbigo (38 km)

On my first day on the Camino I made the second grievous mistake during my so far short journey. I decided to walk the long distance given in my guide book with the recommendation not to do it if it’s the first stage of the pilgrimage. I underestimated the physical stress, in particular the stress of my shoulders because of the heavy backpack. But from the beginning:


Early in the morning at 7 o'clock I left the pilgrim's hostel and my car at a parking area in front of the local police headquarters trusting that it will be there when I will return nearly 2 weeks later. So I made my way to the hostel of the Benedictine monks in the inner city to get the pilgrim's pass and started to walk the path along all place of interest slowly out of León. It didn’t take such a long time I got talking to another pilgrim: Hong San from Korea, but we separated at the exit of León with him taking the northern route along the road and me heading south to Villar de Mazarife on a field road. The southern way is supposed to be the more beautiful one but also more difficult. The way itself was a bit boring, particularly from Villar de Mazarife to Hospital de Orbigo on a straightforward asphalt road without any diversion along with the flatness of the landscape. Halfway trough it got very windy and my shoulders started to hurt very bad. I had to take a couple of long breaks and began to doubt whether it was the right decision to make this journey. After 11 hours and 38 km I arrived Hospital de Orbigo completely exhausted and was searching for a place to spend the night. I wanted to get rid of this heavy backpack and out of this heavy boots, which already made me a lot of blisters. Fortunately there was at least one pilgrim’s hostel opening and only 7 other pilgrims I had to share the shelter with. It was a coloured mixture of 2 Spanish (Francisco and Jeordie), 2 Finish (Arto and Ilka), 1 French guy (Pascal), an American woman (Elisabeth) and the Korean guy I met in the morning. After introducing ourselves and a short conversation we went out to a bar to have one of the popular pilgrim menus for dinner. On this lovely evening I forgot all the discomfort I felt during the day. I couldn’t imagine that people of so much different countries get along with each other within minutes, even less some of them would accompany me the next days.

How I got around to doing the "Camino de Santiago"

First thing to mention is that this is my first web blog in English, so I need to excuse for all mistakes, slips in the grammer, wrong tenses etc. School time is pretty long ago. ;-)

In the middle of March this year I was preparing for my internship and Master thesis in Hamburg from the 1st of April, as I received a message that plans have changed and that I'm going to start at the 1st of May. At this time my appartment in Köthen was cancelled already and all my stuff was stored in a garage. So I had no place to call home and no want to move to Hamburg one month before my internship will start and to spend money just to have a place to pass time. I wanted to use the given time in another respectively more sensible way. In search of a possibility to do something on my own due to not depending on somebody, who would accompany me, the "Camino de Santiago" came into my mind. I always planed to make a journey like this, like walking the hole day and just enjoying the landscape, getting to know people easily or not really knowing where to sleep next night. But I never got the courage to bring myself to do such an unusual trip. In this moment I thought I won't do it in the future as well, if I don't use the chance and decide spontaneously. And that's what I did.

Because of this very spontaneous decision my preparation for the journey only consisted of withdrawing money, buying a guidebook, route planing and packing my bag. No time to book a plane, to check a bus connection or to prepare for the sporty challenge. On the evening before the start I didn't really know if I will dare to do it actually. But I did it.

So I took my 15 years old Ford Fiesta and made the long way from Halle to Leon in Spain on the 26th of March. You might ask why I've chosen Leon as the starting point of my journey to Santiago de Compostela, because the distance is only one third of the hole spanish "Camino". Well, on the one hand I needed to be back home 2 weeks later at Easter as I had a date with my family during the holidays and the walk from Leon to Santiago wouldn't take me more than 12 days. On the other hand I read on the internet about the possibility to get my "credential", the pilgrim pass in Leon, which is necessary to be allowed to sleep in the "albergue", the pilgrim's hostels along the way.

After 20 hours of driving and a very hard night in the car at the motorway station I arrived in Leon in the evening of the 28th of March and searched for a pilgrim's hostel. I asked a couple of mainly young people in expectation they would speak a bit English or at least know where I could find a "Albergue de pellegrino". But no chance!
Fortunately I met a pleasant couple that was so kind to get in my car and showed me the way to the hostel with the address given in my guide book. It was a surreal situation to have these unknown people with me and communicating only via "Left" and "Right" instructions, because this were the only words they were able to speak in English. It was very impressive that they trusted me as much, a stranger and foreigner from Germany.

As I arrived in the hostel and layed in the bed I had to admit that I wasn't as good as prepared as I could have been. I spend over 120€ for tolls in France, which I didn't expect. So at this point, after the first 2 days my budget for the whole journey was already burdened too much. The other thing was that I arrived in Leon with pain and misery. Next time I thought I would take the plane.