My first day was actually two days.
Two days in a bus, and in bus stations, or stumbling around looking for the bus.
I had, like many others, meticulously planned how to get to my starting point – St. Jean. The bus was supposed to take me from my home country to Bayonne, and from there I wanted to take the train to St. Jean. One change from bus to train, very easy, right? Back then I was suffering from severe depression, social anxiety, insomnia and panic attacks. My French was very rusty at best and my Spanish non existant, and I had never done anything like the Camino before. So I wanted to be sure I at least knew exactly how to get to my starting point without problems.
Well, you all know it didn‘t work like that!
First, the bus stopped in Brussels, and the passengers were divided into two different groups, each into a new bus. None of those two had a stop in Bayonne (different from what the guy selling me the ticket had said!), and therefore none of the busses wanted to take me.
Also, both were full and apparently even overbooked. Somehow they made room for me in one of them, and I found myself in a bus with no other pilgrim or even tourist – no, it was filled with Spanish and Portuguese people only, all on their way home to celebrate Easter with their families, chatting around loudly non stop. The only other non spanish/portuguese person was a quiet frenchman who I later found out was on his way to work as a hospitalero on the via de la plata.
Of course, the only languages spoken were Spanish, Portuguese and French.
So, I was already kind of on the Camino in the bus. The Spanish people fed me cookies talking to me as if I could understand them. The hospitalero noticed my shell and gave good advice of which, sadly, I only understood one part -
„Don‘t be afraid, don‘t run“ - a sentence that is still very important to me, 6 years later. The first moment of Camino magic! There was a lot of snoring, too. Welcome to albergue life!
The Portuguese bus driver was very protective, and therefore decided he certainly would NOT let a lone female pilgrim out of the bus all alone in Bayonne in the dark in the early morning hours. Too dangerous. No idea how I understood, but it was clear. All the Spanish passengers agreed.
I was furious.
What a macho!
I can make my own decisions!
How dare he! Later I learned that it was around the time Denise Thiem had vanished…
So, instead of leaving the bus in Bayonne, I was taken to San Sebastián.
I had never been there, I didn‘t even know it existed, and I had no idea how to get to the Camino from there (of course I didn‘t know I already
was on the Camino there, back then
). I wasn‘t let out at the central bus station but at a deserted stop who knows where, and had no idea what to do.
I walked around the city in the dark, with my much too heavy backpack, and got my first blisters. It was a beautiful warm night though, you could smell the mediterranean plants and the ocean, the stars above were shining, and many young people were on their way home from the clubs and bars. They helped me find the way to two different railway stations, but it seemed that there was no train going to any city on the Camino I knew the name of. I walked back to the bus stop, confused on how to continue.
At around 8am a café at the corner opened, and while I had my first cafe con leche there, I suddenly noticed a bus parking close by with the direction „Pamplona“.
Yes!!!
I ran to the bus, screaming and waving my arms so that it wouldn‘t leave me behind, only to learn that you can‘t buy a ticket in the bus in Spain, and that I needed to get one from the office. Of which I didn‘t know where it was, of course.
Until I had found it and bought a ticket, the bus had already gone. Of course!
I got on the next bus to Pamplona though and had already prepared myself to start walking from there, but when I arrived at the famous underground bus station, I found out that there was a bus going to St Jean in the afternoon. So I waited another 5 hours or so for that bus, underground, because I didn‘t want to spoil the experience of walking through the town.
I was on the road for more than 30 hours already then, without sleep and without a shower. Being all smelly and lying on a bench completely tired, I was seriously afraid of getting kicked out of the bus station. I guess the large shell saved me from that fate.
When I finally arrived in the gîte in St Jean, it was almost two days since I had left home.
My first day of walking therefore was actually the third day of my Camino.
I still get goose bumps thinking back to that bus trip. What would have been a disastrous bit of travel for many, was not only a perfect start of a wonderful pilgrimage for me, but the beginning of a new life, a life without depression, anxiety and panic attacks.
Nowadays many say the Camino is just another hiking path. Not for me. Not back then, not now, not ever.