In the
morning I was woken up by the clashes of pilgrim staffs (on the ground, not on me, of course) for I built my tent near the
pilgrim's route. Later on, I spotted some flashes, too. Probably somebody was
trying to snap a photo of an unusual peripatetic bike pilgrim. This morning was
fortunately warmer than the last time. Today, the bike route mostly shared the
same path as original Camino so I saw many a pilgrim on the way. I pulled out
at the first small village to go to the bathroom, but in the end I rested in
the restaurant and indulged myself with coffee and a Spanish version of omelet.
The barista was very nice and talkative. We talked in some way of Spanglish or
so. He even gave me a lucky charm, a small medallion of Virgin Mary. I put
it on the bike afterwards. Thanks to the WiFi, I was finally able to upload
some entries on my blog and spent another 2 hours answering e-mails. It has a special rustical charm to sit in a
village cafe in the morning and enjoy your breakfast. I was actually very
surprised that I found here internet connection.
I am
passing endless flat inland. The great deal of the route is shared with
pilgrims. This time I am not taking any unnecessary harder way because even my
guidebook does not give me any other alternative. What a nice change to ride alongside
walking pilgrims again. It is also interesting to keep my ears open and every
now and then listen to people's conversations. As an unwilling eavesdropper I
can say that the most common topic among pilgrims is obviously the meaning of
the Camino. Surprisingly there are more atheists than religious people on the
way, at least from the little I have experienced. Most of them tackled the same
old question of morality and religion - presumably a very intricate affair if
the humanity could not provide a feasible answer to it for several millenniums.
On the other hand, I must also admit that after having read philosophy for some
time, I am now even more bewildered than ever before. There might be situations
for which no correct action is available and one must choose between the lesser
evil. But that is rather an exception than the rule. And the rule for universal
morality is rather simple. One does not need to learn it, it should somehow
come naturally to any person. The rule is sometimes referred to as the Golden
rule and it is seriously nothing new - I do not know a person who would not
heard the maxim that one should treat
others as one would like others to treat oneself. The same principle
embracing tolerance, respect, and freedom is also the backbone of almost all
religions. I am just wondering if all religions always come back to the same
principle, what is so wrong with us people that we can hardly live according to
it? If everyone could follow this once stupidly simple axiom, there would be no
wars and animosity. The root problem might dwell in our pride. Maybe we cannot
accept the fact that the other person might have his or her own truth and we
want to win everybody over to our side for the sake of justice, truth, God,
humanity, nation, or whatever true or false reason we can come up with. And
even if we were absolutely right, does it even matter to bully the others to
accept it? That also contradicts the principle mentioned above. Of course,
bullying is just the absolute extremity, and luckily in civilized society,
people do not revert to open hostility anymore. Instead, they proudly think
that the others are wrong, they are the right ones, the better ones, and who
does not share their opinion is the necessary evil that they gladly bear as the
strong ones and the "peaceful" ones. I do not get it how people can
possibly think like that. I normally hear clues for this behavior pattern over
and over again, but interestingly, not here on the Camino. In my humble opinion,
tolerance is the key to one's own freedom of mind. It starts right there and
many things depend on it. To my mind, the world and society are like a soccer
field and each of us plays his or her own piece of the game. Therefore, I will
rather admire the person playing for the other team who plays fair and brings
some added value to the game than my own team player floating the rules and
spoiling it all for everybody.
***
I try to learn Spanish with my audiobooks on the way, but it is a little frustrating to learn a new language out of scratch. I still keep mixing it with French and since I cannot devote full attention to the audio course while biking, I feel that I have to hear something at least hundreds of times before I finally remember it. Hopefully it finds its way to my unconsciousness anyway and will resurface later when needed. Well, and I thought that I might be gifted for languages J Languages are not like math, you must rehearse them all the time, it is not about grasping the principle, hearing something once and then using it flawlessly.
For lunch I
had bread with some kind of meat spread that was not particularly tasty. I had
to compensate this bad taste with chocolate spread.
Today,
nothing noteworthy has happened on my way. It was cloudy and rainy which was
actually a pleasant change after scorching temperatures from days before. In
the evening I could see a magnificent image of a sunset through a thunder far
in the distance. Pouring rain overshadowed the sunlight and it looked like the
clouds were reaching the ground. This was all emphasized by the crimson sun and
the clear sky in the distance.
Unfortunately my cell phone battery was flat and I was not able to snap
a photo of this unusual and breathtaking scenery.
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