2: Preparations

On the entire Camino de Santiago, I was the least prepared pilgrim I encountered. I may have been the only one who took a trenchcoat along, but I was also the only one with no maps or guide books. I was also the only one I met who started out on the pilgrim journey with a guitar on his back.

My formal research for the "Camino de Santiago" was done in about five minutes. I typed the words into a search engine. I found out that there were several pilgrim routes to Santiago. I decided on the northern one, because it 1. went by the sea, and 2. was less busy than the Camino Frances. I made vague plans to start my pilgrimage shortly after Easter somewhere around that point where the French/Spanish border meets the Atlantic coast.

On March 19, 2007, I hitch hiked out of Amsterdam to Grenoble. I spent 10 days working at Champfleuri, a sort of campground near Grenoble. I also made my first attempts at downhill skiing. This might have been a mistake, considering I would still need those legs for a long walk. There is a video here that shows a typical scene of my attempts to ski.

The view from Champfleuri

For Easter Week I went to Taize. This was probably the wisest thing I could have done as a prelude to a pilgrimage. Taize is an ecumenical monastery near Cluny (France). The prayers, the songs, the long periods of silence, the walks through the beautiful surrounding area, the conversations with monks and workshops led by them, and the interactions with other people who came to participate... all these things laid a good groundwork for a pilgrimage.

The Taize sanctuary

On Easter Sunday, after the celebration and lunch, I got a ride in one of the buses taking a group of Portuguese young people to Lisbon. Around 2 AM on Easter Monday they dropped me off in St. Jean-de-Luz. I was now a pilgrim.

Soon after arriving in St. Jean-de-Luz I found myself on this street, named (in French and Basque) after the pilgrim route to Santiago.