Verena and Lourdes

The morning city was vague with fog and mist, quiet and still as I walked west from the albergue, through the Portico de Camino and back towards the cathedral. Only a few cafe-bars and the occasional tienda were open. I stopped into one of the latter for some bread, and the old man behind the counter asked if I was German. I said no, los Estados Unidos and he brightened. I told him I was taking a train to Palencia, and he smiled and said "muchos barcos" (many boats), thinking I had said Valencia, and I smiled and nodded and didn´t correct him.

The few people in the cafe-bars looked as if they had been up all night, and no doubt had. The night before I had walked through the start of a neighborhood fiesta in the streets near the albergue, and while I wanted to stay out and participate, I had to return to the albergue before the door was locked for the night. Then, people were still fresh and excited, and men were playing music in raggedy groups as they marched along attended by friends drinking from bottles of beer. But in the morning fog the mood was subdued, almost glum. Three teenaged boys inside a cafe sat with their heads close together on a table, starting up sleepily when a waiter brought them cups of coffee. Outside another cafe a man slept on the sidewalk, looking surprisingly comfortable on the paving stones. Young women in rumpled party clothes passed alone along the streets. A pair of young men sat on a stoop talking and smoking cigarettes. A couple blocks away another man sat on the steps of a closed shop puking, while his four friends crowded around solicitously, the women cooing to soothe and console him.

The plazas around the cathedral were deserted, the spires of the giant church hazy in the mist. I stepped inside one more time, drawn by the giant angels holding up the ornate roof above the head of gold and silver St. James. They looked truly otherworldly, no cute cherubs but strange, uncanny beings. The bells tolled the half hour, and I left the cathedral to make my way down to the train station and my 9:00 departure.

The night before when I got back to the albergue, I had sat for a time out in the public room reading. But I soon fell into conversation with a young German woman, Verena. I had spotted her on first coming in and immediately wanted to know her story. At this point in my trip I´m less shy about just asking. She had walked from Sevilla, on the Via de la Plata, and looked tired, though she had arrived four days earlier. She had small eyes and a broad face, two lip piercings, a moon tattoo on her neck, a sun on the back of her hand. And she was traveling with a dog, who lay on the floor at our feet in a sleeping bag.

She had not started her walk with a dog, only the desire for such a companion. In Zamora she learned that dogs at the local animal shelter were "killed" (a word she apparently preferred to "put to sleep") after twenty days, and she determined to rescue one. There were various complications, but she did end up with a three-month old girl puppy, just what she had wanted. The hospitalera in Zamora where she was staying had called the dog Batussi, after an African tribe, because, Verena explained, "she is all the time running and very fast, and this tribe they are too all the time running and fast." The name had stuck.

But once she had the dog for a companion she was no longer allowed to stay in albergues along the way. At one point she had slept out for five consecutive nights, mostly in the rain, and she had no tent. "This it is hard," she said and gave a pained laugh. At the albergue in Santiago she could least sleep inside, but only in the public room, not in a bed in the dormitorio.

The dog had meant a slower pace too, as it would or could walk no more than twenty kilometers a day. "Only five before a rest," she said. After five the dog would lay down and go to sleep, and Verena would sit and wait an hour or so until it awoke and was ready to continue. "It is young," she said, "too much walking is not good for her bones." When it rained she wrapped the dog in her rain jacket, because "she need it more than me, and it doesn´t matter if I get wet." She said, "we two have to make compromises," but I laughed and said that it sounded like only one of them was sacrificing. She smiled and shrugged. She didn´t seem to mind one bit. She planned to fly Batussi home with her to Germany in a few days, and had already got the dog shots and a chip and a certificate of health. She was still looking for a carrier, but they were "much expensive." In the morning when I left they were asleep together in the sleeping bag, lying back to back.

The seven-hour train ride to Palencia was a lazy pleasure. The fog burned off and I watched the green hills of Galicia pass by, eventually flattening out and giving way to la meseta, where the green wheat has turned to gold in the last weeks.

I spent a couple hours talking with a Spanish woman, Lourdes, who lives with her husband near Negraira and was traveling to the Basque country to see relatives. She was in her mid to late fifties, talkitive and attractive. We sat in facing seats, kitty corner from each other and put our feet up. She has "only the one son," who lives in London with his girlfriend in a flat she, the mother, had bought for them. She has a flat in London too, and one on the coast in Cantabria near Santander. And she told me she owns "places" in Pamplona, and lives off the rents. "But I don´t need much," she said. "I live in teh country and there is no much expense." She had lived and worked in London for a time, and so spoke fairly good English, though she didn´t think so. "I don´t use it so much. My son, his girlfriend is English, but he say to me, no, you must not speak English to her, she must learn Spanish. But when they visit for only a few days I say, it is too short, I will speak to her in Spanish." She shrugged. "It is better."

She told me that people in Galicia eat too much meat. Her son is a vegetarian, which she seemed to think was going a little overbaord, but on the other hand he apparently could do no wrong. She did say that he and his girlfriend could be a little lazy when they came to visit. "They don´t even make the beds," she said. "My husband, he say, why you do all that for them? But it is only for a few days, and I am happy."

Near Ponferrada she pulled down a large, square bag from the overhead shelf. Besides this peice of luggage--which proved to be a soft-sided cooler--she traveled only with a purse and umbrella. The cooler was packed with food and she asked if I was hungry. I was but hesitated politely. She would have none of this.

Lourdes cut me a length of baguette, cut it open and put inside a large chunk of tortilla de patata. I took a bite and spilled a bit on my lap, and she handed me a cloth napkin. This bocadillo alone, along with the plastic cup of apple and piña juice she poured me, made a meal. But when I was finished she opened another container and handed me a large triangle of empanada with tuna. A moment later she held out a couple slices of jamon serrano. Not too much meat, just enough. When I thanked her for this largesse, she said, "it is good to eat," then shrugged and added, "it is better than nothing." Much.

I had three hours in Palencia, where it was hotter than it´s been my entire time in Spain. I walked slowly down the nearly deserted Calle Mayor, under a shaded arcade. A few people began to appear, mostly clerks come to re-open the shops after siesta.

The train to Espinosa was a local and made numerous stops. I got off with one other person and walked into the village. Near the first houses Manolo stood talking to two men. He broke off from them and we shook hands and he asked, ¿que tal?" and I said, "bien, muy bien."