Walked from Villanueva de Campean to Montamarta, 38 kilometres. Got lost twice, but managed to find my way back without to many problems. It’s like my roommate Edzard, from Berlin, says: trying to find your way back to the camino makes it a little adventurous.
The highpoint of the day was Zamora. What a pearl of a city. I’d never heard of it, although I did highlight it in our roadmap as one of the cities with interesting Romanesq reminiscences. And there were quite a few of them. It was like condensed Burgundy. I visited four Romanesq churches, each one with amazing sculptures and lovely windows. One with alabaster windows so large, it looked like a modern artist made them.
In all of the churches there were preparations going on for processions because of Semana Santa. The processions in Zamora are only surpassed in importance and magnitude by the ones from Sevilla, I learned. This day there were going to be two, both in the evening, one only starting at twelve. Everybody was so excited and busy preparing, I almost decided to stay, but decided against it. It would not have been possible to reach Santiago after this interruption without taking crazy long days.
Decided to go and get a haircut though. It has been four months since the Italian barbour touched my hair with so much care. I wondered what the spanish experience would be. Well, it’s different. First of all the barbour asked me if I minded to wait a little. That at least is what I think he said. He definitely used the word poco, although when I write this I am not even sure about that anymore.
First he had to make love to the hair of two older women. They were preparing themselves to look at their Easter best, or as they say here: Semanta Santa best. They both got their hair done in the way that was fashionable for American woman who liked rock and roll in the fiftees. They looked more and more like the fluffy sugar puffs that were sold on the street.
Then it was finally my turn. He asked me what I wanted, I think, and I indicated that it had to be a lot shorter. He didn’t want to understand that. Cutting hair shorter could be done by everybody, but what he wanted was a transformation. He handed me a book full of eighteen year old male models with the kind of hairstyles that accentuates the confused state of their teenage mind. Hair as a too, of trying to impress someone. I skipped that phase then and was not prepared to enter that period now, but how does one explain that in Spanish. Finally I chose a certain head, the most normal looking one, but I got kind of worried when he started to cut of inches while Ii wanted to get rid of a half foot of hair. His enthusiasm was endearing though. Before he would cut of a little bit of hair, he would first snap the scissors about eight times. And all this very close to my ears and other places where he could do serious harm.
When he had reached my ears, the hair around the ears I should say, he asked if I wanted the cut to be at 3/5, 4/7, or 5/8 of the ear. No above the ears, I said. He looked at the model and said that was impossible. I was firm though and repeated that’s what I wanted, above the ears. He sighed deeply and started cutting away. I could see he had lost his enthusiasm. My firmness of getting rid of the hair around the ears had ruined his envisioned transformation. He was not as snappy anymore either, just four snaps before a real cut.
The end result was strange, partly because he made the division in my hair far over to the left. All the hair was combed to the other side, like he was trying to hide a bald spot, which isn’t there, I can assure you. I just looked at myself in the mirror, after the shower. The damage is limited. Within two weeks I will be my old normal self again.
After finally arriving in Montamarta I saw two unspanish looking persons, walking my way. They had bad news; the albergue was closed. The next town with an albergue was another 13 kilometres. But they thought there would be another hostal (hotel) in the town.
Before I could go and look for it a farmer jumped from his tractor and asked me if I needed a place to stay. Oh, he just had the right thing for me, a casa rural, which turned out the place where all the other pelgrims had found a place too.
Like Edzard, who I’d met the night before and who’s an interesting guy. But that information has to wait. It’s after 11, bedtime for pelegrinos.
16 apr
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Han says
I’m missing a selfie, taken after your barberous adventure, Joost