Rabanal – Manjarin (12er Mai)
Because i will not be stressed out by other pilgrims in the morning, ill stand up lately. Nearly everybody has left and so i start preparing my breakfast. The hospitalieros already started cleaning, so i promise to help them in a minute, so i also get in touch with them in a better way. As i recognize lots of the hospitalieros do their work voluntarily, some of them even are pilgrims as well. They had to stop, because of blisture problems or have been asked by the albergue admins for helping them a while and so they do. What me worries a bit is that most of the pilgrims who arrive here everyday do not appreciate it, they more enjoy the service they get from the people and nearly nobody asks them how they feel and why they do it. Sometimes they feel like being in a hotel, they get served at the counter, recieve their beds and (sometimes) get served with dinner and food, nobody knows or get to known that they get served by people who took their entire holidays for being hospitaliero, even do not recieve any cent for it and work the entire day. For people interisted in beeing host they are associations like the Amigos of the Camino where you can register, they allocate you to the places for an approximiate time of around 2 weeks. But there are also a lot of private places, where you can call and ask for. During the winter lots of albergues are closed, but some of them are really looking forward for recieving hosts to work for the pilgrims. In my head i play with the idea to do it during the winter time, i collected some great adresses and emails of albergues id like to stay for a while serving and cooking for the pilgrims around the globe.
Today my way is not that long, i heard about a temples albergue at the mountain, it is maintained by Tomas, a “weird” person which counts his own to the templar knights, an albergue with no fluent water and an toilette in the open. I gonna check this out and hope to meet some interesting persons like in San Bol once. As i arrive in Manjarin i recognize an self-made house of stones and a wooden roof. In front of it stays a van with a guy sitting inside, who is quite concentrated in reading his book. I knock on his door as he opens and we get into a conversation unfortunately just in spanish, but here we go. Later on he shows me his house and im quite impressed, he did everything by his ow. Although it looks like a simple shelter, but inside he even has an own stove which can be switched in an open one to make a small bon fire. He said that this land is not owned by anybody and the people here respects that. He build everything from stuff around. The fundamental already exsisted, he used the ruine next to him for getting the stones and binded them with mud. The roof is done with wooden trees and pine brances. The only thing which worries me is that inside its quite dark, because he just has 2 small windows and in the winter it rais a lot, you cannot do anything as reading books and hang out in the nature. A good spot for leaving ivilisation for a while, but for a long time it could be quite depressive in my point of view. After speaking with him a while he tells me his name Jesus, i thought he is Tomas and was about to ask him if he minds when i stay here for a night. After he tells me about the albergue and i carry on to meet the legandary Tomas. 50m later i come to a kind of hut where i meet the people from the albergue. All up there are 5 people living here.
First i do not like the albergue that much, they sell a lot of tourist stuff and bell if tourists pass by, but as i decided i gonna stay here. The conversations with the people is quite reduced, everybody is doing his things: playing with the dog, speaking with pilgrims, getting wood for the fire. As i meet Tomas he is not speaking any word with me, so today i decided to be just an invisible guest, after some trials of conversation i stopped forcing things, quite weird – with Fernando and Maria i can exchange few words, but as they are used to lots of pilgrims they are not asking me any questions, i regret but can understand that. Later on Tomas serves a great soup for the whole village, it is very delicious and im quite grateful for that. After the people leave to their bed chambers and i go up the roof flor and enjoy the silence and the heat exposed by the stove beneath me.
