A rebel without a clue.

Day three begins in another Happ. At 5:30 I was very much awake as the church bell rang in the hours. By six it added back the quarter chimes too. It is not such a bad thing: I've got quite used to the quarter and hourly chimes from so many years sleeping in and around monasteries, churches, abbeys and cathedrals. Last night I discovered that there is a special pilgrim gathering in Frankfurt and I was invited by the main organiser for the Jakobus Hessen association in Salmünster which suggests I won't be walking on Saturday - unless I get to within Frankfurt suburbia by lunchtime tomorrow.  On Sunday there is also a concert in the same venue, which is part of this weekend's gathering, but I was hoping to be leaving Frankfurt for Mainz then. I'm obviously in a little quandary. The coincidence of the meeting these folk in the local Brauhaus last night and all possibilities envisioned by meeting other pilgrims and pilgrim hosts tomorrow means I may have to hang...

Beechwood valley to my left and the distant sounds of a couple of trains as I come down from the snowbound hills above Schlüchtern. In to the town through an industrial sector and then I looked for a café to rest before the next part of the day. After I'd spotted one then walked around the centre I headed back to the first at it suggests relaxation! Wohenzimmer café for oolong and a free croissant. Truly too many instances of déjà vu. Just now as I turn left and see end of today's etape I am instantly back in Saint Bertrand de Comminges in the Pyrenees. It is the Weg/Chemin but that's nearly in Spain! But that didn't work. No where to stay. It's not a Catholic town ... and almost the same thing happened in St Bertrand because the gîte d'étape was a chambre d'hôtes. The thing with German Jakobsweg seems to be that there is a huge disconnect with its deeper meaning. In a hugely capitalist nation there seems little time for what I am trying to do. O...

That was one damp night's sleep. At 5am I had to get off the bottom sheet and decided I'd try my luck above the duvet, but below the blanket. Now I'm ready for my Geniesser Happen Frühstück(€6.50) in Bäcker Happ after seven and I don't think I'm crawling with bites from the blanket...today is a mere 21 kilometres to Steinau an der Straße. It's a big German breakfast at Happ, but three huge crusty brötchen which I cannot bite anymore without cutting into petite morsels and I've discovered the reason for a knife and folk! When you have bad or missing teeth they do the job for you! For how many millennium did humans suffer to eat tough, sharpe, crisp, crusty without a knife and a folk then some clever soul decided they no longer needed teeth but utensils? Day two begins shortly and it's neither raining nor snowing, there are some fast moving clouds heading eastwards so the conveyor belt will keep it forever changing and meeting me on the path?

Ash Wednesday in Flieden means I struggled to find dinner! Until I went into a florist and was instructed up the hill to Gasthaus Zentrum. The pilgerherberge has only a bed and a toilet area so I can't go and self cater. Perhaps the next etape will provide me the opportunity to save money that way? Well I could sit on this tiled room and eat from a can, but I'd like a little humanity to face and not four walls as all I've met all day was Poseidon in his ethereal sphere. Ash Wednesday means no meat, which I think is in accord to what I believe Lent forbids, however for a moment I thought that it was for all 40 days and I really don't eat fish this far from the sea! Really it's not up to me this evening and, as fatigue takes me, I'll just eat whatever then go and crash on the narrow bed! Tomorrow isn't Ash Wednesday and my trial is walking with a backpack pushing 10 kilograms without the addition of snow as it lingers then melts into the sack! And now I'm ...

End of day one, I'm bushed because it's been a fair few months since I had all the weather could throw at me (December) but, thankfully, now I'm safe for the night in a small room which has been provided for one passing pilgrim next to the church office. My shoulder is so sore I'm beginning to feel it was more than a tendon I damaged, however it might just be a very bad sprained ligament? It's time to stop a while, but first I must locate the dripping tap and what can I do about the pain but ride it out? It's a religious holiday being Ash Wednesday so I'm reduced to trying to find any place open for a post walk restorative beer and the only option was Eiscafe bei Franko but the crap pop music drove me out after one really average Franziskaner Dunkel. It was a very very ordinary place and just must be the same owners as the kebap shop it's next to? I think the central Gasthaus opens at five? After a hasty, frigid, walk around the town centre I...

Posh breakfast. No conversation. There never is. How often do I despair in this environment. However there are no pilgerherbergen in a town where the pilgerweg begins. Or there is but I didn't speak directly to the association in Fulda diocese. Earlier, looking out from my rooftop cell, facing south, I saw that there was a little snow on the pantiled roofs below the monastery. In the distance cars pass on a road and further the pastel shades merge with the bare trees blowing in a subtle breeze. At seven I am packed and it is time for breakfast. It's too much! I'm guided by the maître to the toilet perhaps in case I stray into the cloister proper and never come out again? So day one begins and I'm having real trouble with eating excellent, but crusty, German bröt. Without front teeth I'm left with cutting the slice into smaller pieces I can push towards my mollars and masticate. It's impossible to rip or tear anything. I think it's time to ablute ...

Climbing into the bed in my hotel "cell", in the Franziskaner Kloster on Frauenberg, and I feel cosy surrounded by a luxurious duvet, deep pillow and starched white sheets, but somehow Saint Francis of Assisi is absent. A mendicant friar order should surely be closer to the poverty of the ideal and shouldn't have a hotel next to their monastery and keep themselves to themselves while I battle with those reformation ghosts again Once, many years ago, as I cried on the threshold of another Kloster, desperate for a place to sleep, those brothers took me in for the night. This was at a Capuchin order in 's-Hertogenbosch. Perhaps I was more "bare" for all to see because I really didn't know why I was traipsing across the Netherlands and was falling lower and lower mentally. In my memories of that occasion I recall feeling pushed, briefly, towards that way and seriously contemplated signing up. While I sat there at the same table with the monks, fo...

It seems I've no choice but to find €45 this night in the Kloster Frauenberg however on the positive side my last two nights were with Steffi and Mike so my allowance for Germany is still workable ... If only not everywhere is so expensive. The price difference in Germany is proportional to the distance it is from Santiago I am sure. It nearly worked that I was going to stay with a private individual who is part of the association running Fulda's Jakobsweg towards Frankfurt, but she isn't around until 8 PM and hasn't had a chance to clean the space. It's fate. I fought it a while, but I know the Camino will balance itself out from the moment I stumble on the path? It's definitely time to be horizontal and peaceful a while as I cool off from the steep incline that brings on to the Franzikaner Gasthaus at Frauenberg Kloster?  ... I didn't really go to Lala land with so many differing emotions. Mainly I was relieved to be somewhere warm and dry, but...

Yesterday Mike showed me around the old centre of Frankfurt: a city utterly destroyed during the latter years of WW2. To be honest I didn't really like the modern rebuilding of the pre-war Altstadt and this was flavouring my feelings about Frankfurt. Tall banks and pseudo antiquities taking all the money don't do anything for me ... But was it ever possible to just leave the ruin for people to reflect up the brutality of the USAAF and RAF? Thankfully, once we left the north side of the Main, across the Eisener Steg, and reached Sachsenhausen, a vibrant and more cultural area presented itself. With plenty of Wirtshäuser selling Apfelwein and vending Bratwürst, with beautiful tangy Sauerkraut and gentley steamed Kartoffel, nothing could feel warmer! Mike is almost tee-total and I am far from it! Too often I get absolutely carried away by locally frequented bars - ones without Chinese faces gapping open mouthed and oblivious everywhere - and plates of truly loved combustibles pile...

Late on Sunday evening I caught a overwhelmingly crowded Flixbus, which departed Cologne/Bonn Airport on time, for the penultimate leg, of this very tiring day, to finally connect with Mike and Steffi, who were waiting to collect and bring me the short distance to their home in the northern suburbs of Frankfurt am Main. At around two thirty am, European time, I was snug and exhausted in their office room where they had a sofa-bed made and where I was to be housed for the two nights prior to connecting the last dots in the journey to begin on the Jakobsweg in Hessen. It's early on Shrove Tuesday and I am collecting my thoughts, brewing coffee and turning my considerations towards the following fourteen days. As of Ash Wednesday I will be walking south east from Fulda on the direction of Trier and it's been such a struggle to get back to where I do belong! The Way will be stretching out ahead of me, in all kinds of seasonal weather's, with the unknown path feeding my feet, du...

The beginning of the end. The beginning has ended so I am walking away from my increasing shadow. That path is growing over: the browns and greens, becoming impenetrably interleaved, do not brush my face, shoulders or back. Facing into the sunrise, the darkness is cast out, I'm given mana and am strong. My life has been divided along a very stubborn ridge yet I'm clambering down off that barren jagged escarpment, standing on virgin fresh soil and smiling at my lengthy procrastinations. Walking onwards in strength with courage and without fears. To turn to Love, for all it is to give me, and dwell whole: as I am. Nothing can now stand in my way.