A rebel without a clue.

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...