Tarragona
It's too damn hot for September/October.
Spain is becoming more and more impossible to cope with, personally, as overheating isn't the ideal condition for an Englishman who considers 20°C perfect - especially when the bag I am carrying is 11.5kg too heavy! And in the last two days I've heard numerous complaints from locals who are also infuriated by non stop baking sun.
The final morning is tomorrow, but this morning I walked back the way I went yesterday, along the coastline from the campsite (Trillas, Tamarit €33 for a cabin), to return to Tarragona to give it a second chance.
On Wednesday I had one too many Vermuts, wines and beers and then slept, fitfully, in a busy, overheating cramped hostel (Hotel Tarragona €18 dorm/€45 private). With a heavy heart I have decided to give backpackers a final goodbye as I have developed a real hatred of these establishments which are aimed at the 'joven' crowd. Happily, I can still cope with youth hostels, and their equivalent, across the world, but I have drawn a 50 year old line firmly underneath their other bonkers, drunken, haphazard, multiplexing and kaleidoscopic cousins. Some backpackers begin in a more progressive manner, but the broken things remain broken and the overwhelming smell accretes to the mould growing vertically to meet the crap individuals groping each other... and end life rotten.
A complete ballache, apart from the pleasant walk back along the beach, cliff and shoreline, to walk into the testing centre and hand over €80 to tell me, Boris and co., I don't have Covid.
Truthfully, apart from the sleep deprived Thursday morning, I've not felt healthier for a while. Although I only managed 7 days on the Camino Santiago, between Perpignan and Lleida, and stumbled to a grinding halt just prior to Lleida in Organyá, carrying too much weight in the sudden heat around there (and bruised from a bad fall in the rain just after Vinça) it was a very good week of el Camino. The nasal swab was done in seconds: one piece up both nostrils and put in a plastic container. Easy money for pharmacy...
Only a week! Seldom have I managed less, except for the stop start affair in Alsace last summer. Covid wasn't part of the equation before February 2020 when I had a breeze in my steps.
Covid is meant to effect taste buds but for me it's disrupted my attempts at conversation and comprehension of Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and, like a beginner, French. I'm deaf to it all. And I stand, I am sure, without any happiness in my body language, like a witless kid! People respond to much more than words. Such a flaw in attempting the Camino. In Organyà I really couldn't be bothered staying there and trying to build a rapport with the locals. Such an easy thing at other times...
And another thing I now have a set of false teeth, the result of the loss of a few teeth from wear and tear as well as those lost during a physical attack in early 2020, but I hate wearing them.
Although I look for all the world as unwholesome without the plate, I'm not certainly not. Perhaps the combination of age, loss of hair, saggy skin and missing teeth around 50 years old seems unwholesome?
Often when I forgot to replace the false teeth I get a reaction of horror to my gapping mouth ... If the world wasn't built on image I'd never wear them again and when I do wear them I am not entirely confident along the Way trying to converse with this blasted acrylic.
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What has Chartreuse got to do with Tarragona? The city is about to head into a cultural spew-fest with this flask for Chartreuse hung heavily around a Tarraco's neck celebrating something. Perhaps it's linked to Oktoberfest in some fashion?
Back in 1999 I drank my fill of Chartreuse on Mission Beach, Queensland, with a guy off from work for a couple of days, descending from Dunk Island, to help me hate myself for a few hours! Bleeding monks!
Referring to Wikipedia, which answers most questions in a matter of minutes, it seems that the monks were ejected from France and fled with the valuable recipe to here. So Tarragona is a second home other than the one I know around Grenoble. In truth I've not touched a drop since 1999.
My fault was that back in 1999 I didn't sit down to a glorious Coral Trout as I was afraid of seafood. I've since discovered fresh seafood is actually very palatable. In England most seafood has been put on ice, frozen or brined and it's just awful! Unless it's swimming in vinegar and considered the 'English' national fast food, fish & chips, I can't eat it in the UK.
Someone in the Mediterranean told me the heat of the water effects the taste of the fish and, after eating mountains of it in Croatia in 2010, I completely agree!
Just had a couple of beers, a slice of Tortilla and Tomato bread at Domum, opposite the Ajuntament in Plaça de la Font. It is time to eat proper food...kebab? Lol. I thought I saw a Mexican Cantina, but it's entirely Tex-Mex. A plate of beans would help me through the afternoon as I'm nibbled by Asiatic Mosquitoes...
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After Ramen I'm back in the Plaça and a bottle of Rosita Porter, made with Hazelnuts from Alcover, which are in the sack. Up the hill, near the cathedral, I saw a shop specialising in Yerba maté which is on my wish list, in England there is little or no choice and I love Maté as the sun goes down. Hatefully, I just make an English style tea from the leaves. I have no bomba or gourd. I had a flask, but I fell over, crushed it and left it with Mike in Frankfurt to put in his household recycling.
In Tarragona they don't seem to be very forthcoming with beer snacks. Olives would be very nice. I don't need a menu. But it's standard in Spain(Catalonia) to be given a small dish. Maybe it's a dying traditional... I have to ask for a snack.
On a hasty pour I am now dribbling porter on my once cleaned trousers. Within two weeks of setting off they've lost a button. Craghoppers should be renamed Craphoppers as there are bits of loose thread everywhere.
Across from me I can hear a faint Irish voice, although it might be, as I pour the brew too heavily, American. It doesn't like a long pour! A diagonal it's fine with: it's viscosity! Damn it I forgot.
In every city, and a great number of smaller towns, there are many of the same beggars. The definitely faux, drug bent, variety. On my train journey between Carcassonne and Narbonne there were two 'gitanes' and this morning three Gitanos and dogs were wrapping up their beds on a beach I passed. One dog, being surprised, did nearly launch itself at my feet, ankles, legs, but it just barked like the cig smoking gypsies. Now a Senegalese gentleman is offering pointlessness as a pendant. I don't get it. I guess he must feed his family. But it's not a thing. I wonder if he's contactless? There is a 'look' of a Gitanos so I'm not sure what that that means also? Being identified with a subculture has a very human stamp on it. A gentleman opposite rides a FCK NZS t-shirt, but could I sit here with NZS emblazoned on my shirt to be lambasted. I honestly doubt he knows a Nazi. It could actually be Fuck New Zealanders, then it's rugby related and doesn't involve memories of Genocide or things happening almost a century ago.
Passing out of the Plaça de la Font I'm heading up the hill, when I see a fraulein clinging to the Cantina Escola de Vida (Carrer Major), on the way up into the Roman part of this town, and she invites me to take a space next to her Teutonic thighs: mama!
We know a few of the same towns in Germany including Gorlitz. Then she gets a phone call and scoots off to her room mate in an instant. And we were having a very interesting conversation about Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel and the Northern Renaissance. I think I was opening her eyes until she hastened away. Definitely things are difficult and different at 50.
Perhaps divulging my false teeth was an issue. She was a little repulsed. I think nothing of taking them out... They're literally not part of me. The beer (Kesse Summer Ale €3) I am left to cozzle, in my lonesomeness, is more a part of me than the plate in my mouth could ever be. Until it passes out, unrequited, the other side of it's displeasure in seeing me!
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What can I say about the rest of the time between Narbonne and Lleida? As the breeze blows in up the Carrer Major I see a Labrador pantingly approach and feel I'm pinning for Lola Majinka and our adventures.
I don't know... Was it my final Camino or is it a passing phase. What I found before, which was clearly unlooked for, has become an insanely dangled, slave driving carrot. The sense of bliss has gone! It wasn't a thing I went down the hill, round the bend, alone in a forest or over a mountain looking for. It was exactly where I was at that moment. It was like this breeze... It was unexpected. It was the path as the destination.
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Then I discovered that the PCR testing kit I've got in the UK, gathering dust since June (when I was meant to go to Portugal, but failed through far too many hoops), can't be used unless it's been activated and I've a code! That's another £43 on top of the €80 to prove, with a vaccination, I haven't got Covid and the original expense was £69.95. This is a huge swindle and it's definitely going to roost as someone questions it in an enquiry. It's mis-sold by the UK Government which is corrupt with canvassing and cronies.
Who can you trust in a Capitalist society? No one plays fair! They only care for pounds, shillings and pence. Those who constantly lobby the government for contracts obviously have someone by the short and curlies. Boris and Co. are not acting for the common good, but for their own pockets.
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Had a fair night's sleep in Hostal Noria considering its above a load of bars. Some grandmother was battling her granddaughter and losing as the kid fled out of control into the pell-mell on the Plaça de la Font. Niña, niña, niña she screamed as the kids voice got further and further away. I'm guessing the considerable loss of a child sobered her up and, with a little wavering, the voices of the two receded. Then I heard the hosts clearing away. Finally around three this morning some people came braying, coated in Chartreuse evil, along the square. Then I closed my window and accepted a sultry snoring squeezed space until I finally nodded awake by 6:30 as someone's alarm chimed.
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I've really got to find another way through this maze. Is travel the destination I thought it was? What is it revealing to me? Perhaps that there really is nothing outside of myself. My perception is all there is.
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Down to the seafront, via the robbed out amphitheatre, towards the station. Bought a ticket for the 10:24 to Reus, although the trains are not running so it's a bus. A brief walk around the Barris Maritims to a robbed out Roman Theatre. There is nothing of any significance to Tarragona as what was once Tarraco. And now the heavens open, taking the humidity and washing away the Chartreuse bile heaved up onto the pavements. Those monks are laughing all the way to their solace! I've seen no where more palatial than a monastery. True I've seen some that are more austere, Franciscans, Carmelites and Poor Clare's, but the Benedictine, Cistercian, Dominican, etc are all bells and whistles. At Westvleteren I paid €36 for a bed - I wasn't actually on a Camino though - and the beer retails at €20 a bottle Saint Sixtus saw Capitalism and thought it was good!
Oh goodie! Thunder and lightning to bring more torrential rain.
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