Hape Kerkeling - Im Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago

I m off then! I didnt tell my friends much more than that before I started outjust that I was going to hike through Spain. My friend Isabel had only this to say: Have you lost your mind?

Id decided to go on a pilgrimage.

My grandma Bertha always knew something like this would happen: If we dont watch out, our Hans Peter is going to fly the coop someday!

I guess thats why she always fed me so well.

I could be lying on my favorite red couch right now, comfortably sipping a hot chocolate and savoring a luscious piece of cheesecake, but instead Im shivering in some caf at the foot of the Pyrenees in a tiny medieval town called Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. An enchanting postcard idyll, minus the sun.

Unable to make a complete break with civilization, I sit down right by the main road. Although Ive never even heard of this place before, there seems to be an unbelievable amount of traffic whizzing down the road.

On the rickety bistro table lies my nearly blank diary, which seems to have as hearty an appetite as I. Ive never felt the need to capture my life in words beforebut since this morning Ive had the urge to record every detail of my unfolding adventure in my little orange notebook.

So here begins my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

The journey will take me along the Camino Francs, one of the official European Cultural Routes. Ill be trekking over the Pyrenees, across the Basque country, the Navarre and Rioja regions, Castile and Len, and Galicia, and after about five hundred miles I will stand right in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. According to legend, this is the location of the grave of Saint James, the great missionary for the Iberian people.

Just thinking about the long trek makes me want to take a long nap.

And heres the amazing part: Ill hike it! The entire length. I will hike . I have to read that again to believe it. I wont be alone, of course: Ill be toting my twenty-four-and-a-quarter-pound, fire-engine red backpack. That way, if I keel over along the routeand there is a real chance of that happeningat least they can see me from the sky.

At home I dont even take the stairs to the second floor, yet sstarting tomorrow Ill have to cover between 12 and 18 miles a day to reach my destination in about 35 days. The couch potato takes to the road! Its a good thing none of my friends knows exactly what Im up to. If I have to call the whole thing off by tomorrow afternoon it wont be too embarrassing.

This morning I took my first wary peek at the start of the official Camino de Santiago. Uphill from the city gate, on the other side of the turrets and walls of Saint-Jean, is the entrance to the Spanish Pyrenees, and the first segment of the Camino Francs is marked by a steep cobblestone path.

My route begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

I see a gentleman of around seventy who has difficulty walking, yet is evidently quite determined to undertake this pilgrims marathon. I watch him in disbelief for a good five minutes until he slowly disappears into the morning fog.

My guidebookI chose a wafer-thin one, since Ill have to lug it with me over the snowcapped peaks of the Pyreneessays that for centuries, people have undertaken the journey to Saint James when they have no other way of going on with their livesfiguratively or literally.

Since I have just dealt with sudden hearing loss and surgery to remove my gallbladdertwo ailments that I think are perfectly suited to a comedianits high time for me to readjust my own thinking. Its time for a pilgrimage.

I paid the price for ignoring the inner voice that had been hollering TAKE A BREAK! for months. When I forged ahead with my work, my body took revenge and shut down my hearing. An eerie experience! I was so furious at my own folly that my gallbladder exploded, and the next thing I knew, I was back in the emergency room with the symptoms of a heart attack.

I finally paid attention and drifted into the travel section of a well-stocked bookstore in Dsseldorf, looking for a suitable destination with one thought in mind: Ive got to get away! It was high time for a time-out.

The first book I happened upon was Bert Teklenborgs The Joy of the Camino de Santiago .

What an outrageous title! Eating chocolate can be a joyful experienceor maybe drinking whiskeybut can a route bring you joy? Even so, I bought this presumptuously titled book. And devoured it in a single night.

The way to Santiago de Compostela is one of the three great Christian pilgrims trailsthe others are the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome and the pilgrimage to Jerusalem from anywhere.

According to legend, the Santiago trail was used by the Celts in pre-Christian times as a path of initiation. Veins of electromagnetic power in the earth and lines of energy (called ley lines) are said to be aligned with the Milky Way along the entire trail, all the way to Santiago de Compostela (which may mean field of stars), and even beyond that to Finisterre at the Atlantic coast in Spain (then considered the end of the world). The Catholic Church kindheartedly forgives the sins of people who complete a pilgrimage to Santiago. But thats not my primary incentive; Im drawn to the idea that the pilgrimage will help me find my way to God and thus to myself. Thats certainly worth a try.