- Time of past OR future Camino
- Some in the past; more in the future!
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The nastiest curse in the Tinker lexicon is "may you walk many roads / may you live many lives"; the kindest blessing "May all your roads be straight". I wish you a straight road Faye, and sunshine and shade enough.If I walk again, I want it to be uneventful and uncomplicated. I don't know if that will ever happen.
Yeah. Maybe, maybe not.If I walk again, I want it to be uneventful and uncomplicated. I don't know if that will ever happen.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I'm so glad you had two special arrivals after this first traumatic one.Arriving in Santiago the first time I was full of fear and anger... something terrible had happened at home in my absence and I felt that all my efforts to find my own peace had been punished. I believe it very possible that I cursed that saint, the road, the everything.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I'm so glad you had two special arrivals after this first traumatic one.
how do you feel when you finish a camino?
Spot on! I had really found a lovely rhythm within nature and the cadence of horses, sheep and cattle wearing bells. Entering the outskirts of Santiago was tough, and the plaza was teeming with Disney-like conveyances and throngs of humanity. I felt as though I was having a panic attack, which disappeared the next day when Santiago was in my rear view mirror heading to Finisterre. I felt as though I was back on the path to sanity! I don't believe I am the only one to feel that way.My usual reaction is more in the shock and awe department. Where did all these people come from? Who are they? Look - shop windows! Look out - cars! Cars? Traffic? Traffic lights? What is all this commotion? What is all this noise? What's with all this pavement? Signs! Advertising! Everywhere! On everything!
After weeks of quiet and mostly solo walking, mostly in woods and farms, where the largest town rarely exceeds 500 residents, it's all quite overwhelming.
Exactly @VNwalkingI feel both full and empty.
There's the fullness of satisfaction, tinged with profound gratitude and wonder that I actually did that. Theres also a poignant sense of loss, an ending of something simple and precious.
I sometimes feel like celebrating and crying at the same time. It takes a while to process.
Have you tried the ErasmusU website? I recently found an apartment in Ourense through the site, which I rented for one month this summer. You don't have to be an Erasmus student to use it. They do charge a finder's fee, but it's more reliable than dealing with individuals on Idealista, and the prices are reasonable overall.Now I just really need help renting an apartment somewhere on a decent train line in Galicia between the Ourense-Vigo-Tui line and SdC.
I keep writing to apartment ads in Idealista... and not receiving replies. Getting nervous, and I don't even mind if I have to rent a place for a year in order to have it from now forward to when I am supposed to arrive, and well past when I leave.
I'll take any advice or connections... My budget is modest, but I've seen lots.. and I have to stay modest to cover the needs of my son at home.
Thanks for the tip! ...it may come down to it, but so far on ErasmusU I've only found rooms to let in shared housing and I'm really a bit old and bit of a solitary oyster for such things.Have you tried the ErasmusU website? I recently found an apartment in Ourense through the site, which I rented for one month this summer. You don't have to be an Erasmus student to use it. They do charge a finder's fee, but it's more reliable than dealing with individuals on Idealista, and the prices are reasonable overall.
Love it. Thank you, Jenny.Some 'pilgrims' say that walking the Camino changed them or changed their lives. I don't know if that is - or will be - true for me. I guess it's too early to say. But The Camino gives you many opportunities every day to give and receive kindness, compassion and laughter - and that's a gift - and it reminds you every day of life lessons you've already learned but have forgotten or 'misplaced'. One new lesson I learned is that I am much stronger - physically and emotionally - than I imagined. And most days I think The Camino brought out the best in me. So that's not a bad outcome, just for putting one foot in front of the other, taking one day at a time, one step at a time.'
Well, that too! lol! If I were younger, I would definitely make that move. But my kids, grandkids, cousins, are all settled in here.I want to rush home, gather my belongings and family, and move to Spain. Every time.
I have a plan... but getting adult children to buy into it is a hard row.Well, that too! lol! If I were younger, I would definitely make that move. But my kids, grandkids, cousins, are all settled in here.
I never walked the camino before, so my post here maybe irrelevant, but I do want to add to this conversation as I loved reading all of your answers.This morning I was editing our podcast about arriving in Finisterre in June and I was struck by re-listening to @Wendy Werneth describe her emotions - or lack thereof - at the end of caminos in general.
This is what she said in the episode:
“The emotions that I feel are never the emotions that I think I’m supposed to feel or that I expect to feel. And in some ways I don’t feel many emotions at all. I just feel kind of empty, and that’s what it’s always felt like coming into Santiago.
“It’s never been this celebratory, joyful moment. And I think that’s partly because it means that the experience is over, and so I’m sad about that. The emotions that it does bring up are overall rather negative I would say.”
She had hoped that walking to Finisterre for the first time would provide the emotion she was looking for that Santiago hadn't, but that turned out not to be the case for her.
Do you have similar feelings or if not, how do you feel when you finish a camino?
I think you speak for many of us...especially the retirees.I usually feel quite healthy, but tired and ready for my bed and my bathtub.
One of my sons has a plan, but getting his parents to buy into it is a hard row.I have a plan... but getting adult children to buy into it is a hard row.
What a beautiful story…I am in with what most of you feel: relief, sadness it's over; mixed.
However, being retired, I know: "I'll be back!". But my Caminos have certainly changed me: My companera said so already after my first.
One year, as I was leaving Burgos, close to Tardajos (started in Pamplona), a younger man (40-ish) started talking to me, asking all sorts of questions, talking all the time (Naturally: He had future political ambitions in his home country) .It was his first Camino, and he was happy to have started his holiday, as he called it, from Burgos. After a few hours, knowing him more, I told him: "In Santiago, you will be crying". "Yeah, right!" he said with a laugh.
3 weeks later we entered the front of the Cathedral together. He had become less talkative the last week or so (Gracias Dio; tu existe). We sat down in the middle of the square, me two metres in front of him. I suddenly heard him crying loud and hard behind me for a long time, before he shaped up and we went for a cold beer. He told me:
"When you said, 3 weeks ago, that I would be crying in Santiago, I said to myself: What an old idiot! I am here for my holiday! But you were totally right: I have had many days to think, and I have treated my former wife terribly, I never cared about my own children, and I have always treated my younger brother disrespectfully and always bullied him. The last two weeks, walking and talking with you, have given me lots to think about. The first thing I will do when back home, is to ask forgiveness for the a**hole I've been to my closest. I shall lead a different life from now on".
The Camino gives you what you need, not neccessarily what you want. If you are lucky and listen to it. He did, eventually.
Dear Faye Walker: I'm planning on walking my first camino in October 2022, and was about to pose this same question asked here about how people feel at the end, and came across your response here, albeit 5-6 months after you wrote it. I just wanted to say that it is a beautiful, compelling, moving, wonderfully written account. I'm wondering - do you have any more writing about your experiences you might share with me?Arriving in Santiago the first time I was full of fear and anger... something terrible had happened at home in my absence and I felt that all my efforts to find my own peace had been punished. I believe it very possible that I cursed that saint, the road, the everything.
But one very special friend propped me up, and even though I could not see Santiago (the place, the idea, the saint, the process...) through tears of fear and rage that did not leave for weeks after my return home to my injured son... (and don't get too excited; he's still recovering from what happened in 2014, and we might not ever get to a functional recovery).
That very special camino friend stayed in touch; we've just had a series of letters back and forth across the Atlantic... reminding me of life's gifts...
In 2018 I went to make my peace with the camino and not to find peace. The way I figure(d) it, peace is not mine to have, but I could stop feeling angry that so many seemed to have exactly the #vanlife, #summercamp experience that saw them sharing, landing in giddy groups in Santiago declaring that it had freed them from their problems. If going on a walk can *solve* one's problems (rather than alleviate stress), they surely are not very big problems.
Anyway, I digress. I met Spouse half way across Spain and walked the Meseta again (something I'd sworn I'd never do) just to be with him. We'd not travelled together in 7 years at that point, and hadn't had a straight-up vacation together in 27 years...
When I landed in Santiago, I just sobbed; it started with the piper bringing us in. Relieved we had made it without a debacle at home as punishment, we sat on the ground and sobbed. But that very intimate, shared feeling was punctured by bus tourists taking our photo as "inspiration". I recall Spouse standing up to tell them to leave us alone... but I recall little else except for withdrawing into myself. We packed up and left the square to the jumping/singing/drinking youth and to the bus tours.
2019... I went back... on a short camino... the Portugués... I was on an over-due sabbatical, had walked through another round of fire with our son in the spring of 2019.... and sought out a brief journey late in the autumn season. It was a sodden walk, but I was gifted with another friend whom I've kept since that camino ended. And I walked into SdC in yet another rain-storm and came up the hill to the large hotel at the SW of town where we had stayed in 2018... familiar cafes, and then the garden, and the 2 Marias... and I felt *embraced* by SdC.
I went to mass presided over by Father Manny at the chapel... and I could not speak to participate in the readings.... I ate alongside the "free lunch" people at the Parador (but paid my own ticket as I'd not thought to get in that line-up in the morning)... I went to the San Pinario museum and finally, finally understood "ecce homo" and the appeal of Mary... I don't mean that I "grasped the concept"... I mean that I felt it in my bones, in my cells. And even though acute tonsillitis with sepsis was not a great way to end my Camino back down in Nazarre, I felt like the whole journey culminated in the life-saving surgery to remove my wayward glands.... and that Santiago had had a hand in it.
If I walk again, I want it to be uneventful and uncomplicated. I don't know if that will ever happen.
@Embee12 Thanks for the kind words.Dear Faye Walker: I'm planning on walking my first camino in October 2022, and was about to pose this same question asked here about how people feel at the end, and came across your response here, albeit 5-6 months after you wrote it. I just wanted to say that it is a beautiful, compelling, moving, wonderfully written account. I'm wondering - do you have any more writing about your experiences you might share with me?
I’m planning my first as well in case OctoberDear Faye Walker: I'm planning on walking my first camino in October 2022, and was about to pose this same question asked here about how people feel at the end, and came across your response here, albeit 5-6 months after you wrote it. I just wanted to say that it is a beautiful, compelling, moving, wonderfully written account. I'm wondering - do you have any more writing about your experiences you might share with me?
I walked the Primitivo last April ( thanks Jungleboy for the advice prior to walking). I think the last day walking into Santiago was quiet solemn. A sense of sadness of what was about to come. One last day of walking with my camino family. Infact, we kept stopping for coffee trying to prolong the inevitable. When we arrived at the Cathedral, yes, we were happy but then came the transition from Pilgrim to Tourist. As I was in Santiago for 3 days, I saw the pilgrims arrive who were behind me, and I felt left out. That I wasn't one of "them" anymore. I did take a bus ride to Finisterre and walked up to Fero 4km and almost felt like a Pilgrim again. Enjoying the fleeting memory that only one experiences during Deja Vu....then it was gone. And that is why I think Pilgrims continue to walk to recapture that sense of belonging that only a few can relate to.This morning I was editing our podcast about arriving in Finisterre in June and I was struck by re-listening to @Wendy Werneth describe her emotions - or lack thereof - at the end of caminos in general.
This is what she said in the episode:
“The emotions that I feel are never the emotions that I think I’m supposed to feel or that I expect to feel. And in some ways I don’t feel many emotions at all. I just feel kind of empty, and that’s what it’s always felt like coming into Santiago.
“It’s never been this celebratory, joyful moment. And I think that’s partly because it means that the experience is over, and so I’m sad about that. The emotions that it does bring up are overall rather negative I would say.”
She had hoped that walking to Finisterre for the first time would provide the emotion she was looking for that Santiago hadn't, but that turned out not to be the case for her.
Do you have similar feelings or if not, how do you feel when you finish a camino?
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