The decadence of the Camino. A semi-serious account
Dairy of the Camino MMXVIII -Part 1
(Disclaimer: this piece is a caricature. Not meant to denigrate anyone or to dissuade people from doing the Camino. I'll try to prove that the Camino keeps on being a wonderful experience in the next parts of my dairy, which however may never be written)
My arrival in Burgos has been a tough one.
Getting elbowed out of the way by the madding crowd at the entrance of the pilgrim's hostel triggered a critical reflection...
Has the Camino become a wholly commercial/ mainstream experience? ..."An adventure for dummies"?
Racing past roasted calves all day made us feel totally ON the beaten track, at times...
All I see are retired German men - overdressed in expensive clothes, studying the pages of the latest SaintJakobskreeg guide, their Bible itself.
Probably wealthy as hell, but filling up municipal hostels at 2pm already. Eating uber-packaged supermarket food..
Their lack of adventure is planified in the utmost detail. Ticking off boxes, locations, and making redundant pictures is what sends shivers down their spines. Tick, tick, tick.
The guy who knocked me off in the queue is now showing off his blisters. A bunch of curious fellows of all shapes, ages and sizes gathers, all with painful feet.Their baby skin, softened by a sedentary lifestyle cannot stand the rubbing of (I guess) a few kilometers of flat land. So they all share great interest in the smelling feet of their unfortunate travel companion.
Most faces are well roasted by the ruthless Spanish sun. Except one guy, covered in sunscreen, looking whiter than Pierrot, reminding me that life is masquerade...They are having 'blister talks', stereotypical pilgrim chitchat ,which is -believe me- even worse than talking about the weather.
The infrastructure along the way seems to mirror their blandness: aseptic dorms lodging hundreds of cattle but in a comfortable way and on standardized premises (a non-place...), pilgrim rest areas with fully automated vending machines (a non-human interaction..) , booming villages like Hontanas with rows of albergues competing to fill their shanty dorms with zombies...The hypocrisy of all this summed up in the note: "No alcohol allowed in this kitchen" right on a beer vending machine.
The hostel is a show of perfectly organized Tupperwares, high-tech fleeces, titanium walking sticks parked in a line at the entrance. I struggle not to laugh in front of some ridiculous sandals...but they must be comfy in combination with those socks...)
To start the walk by assisting a capital sin, here it is, a pilgrim throwing away perfectly good food right in front of my face..he's probably off back home soon and can't be bothered to offer... My faith in humanity will be thankfully restored shortly afterwards by a French hippy lady who shared the excess of her last dinner with me and dispensed some precious advice (brownie points for showing some healthy contempt for the commercialization of the Camino). Beware of the 'Tourgrim'....the Tourist-Pilgrim Minotaur... new figure now in vogue: Aggressive, invasive, demanding - she warns. "A tourist demands, a pilgrim is thankful" reads a note I see a few days later in Leon.. this should be written in capital letters on every Credential, goddam'it!
But the spotlight cannot fail to turn inwards at some point. Am I stereotypical, too? Pathetic? With my bandana to look cooler? My anonymous attitude (shy, and with a slight preference for talking to ladies) and my Walden book? Maybe S. and I should wait to be 70 before doing the Camino? Or we, too, are sleeping zombies already? How to unleash our genius during the walk? And what if there's no one to receive it?
They all seem too busy gulping down in delight overcooked pasta and low quality meat (aka the Pilgrim's menu). Thankfully I cannot make out a single word out of the loud buzz, but they're probably having the most boring conversations about their jobs. Jobs dictated to them by others, and that they have being doing obediently all the way through, never breaking the law, never doubting, never questioning...I don't wanna listen to the retired Swiss executive living in a mansion who served Big Finance for 40 years... telling us all about his dog's liver transplant! I don't wanna settle for sub-standard interactions..wanna live in my own world and bring in those who are open to a different paradigm..
What are the questions, asked to anyone, which can unleash real interactions? And, even more importantly, how to ask them?
