Learnings that improved your walking experience

[KGBurk]

We’ll be walking our third Camino (Portuguese Centra/CPI/Sanabres) next Spring and I’ve been thinking about going deep in learning about a certain topic to enhance the overall experience. I’ve considered learning the Portuguese language, or Portuguese history, or even religious history. Not sure.

What is your suggestion for me?

 

[jungleboy]

I would say language for sure.

Some online resources are: Practice Portuguese, Portuguese with Leo, Portuguese with Carla, Mia Esmeriz Academy. Maybe look these up and see if they appeal to you. These are all European Portuguese resources; be aware that European and Brazilian Portuguese are quite different so the plentiful resources for Brazilian Portuguese on the web won't really be of much help.

Boa sorte e bom caminho!

 

[bigcaminolover]

I listen to gregorian chanting in Latin while walking and I've learned a fair bit of Latin ...

 

[VNwalking]

going deep in learning about a certain topic to enhance the overall experience

Art and architecture history.
History of Spain in general.
Those both give context to what you see and walk through on a camino.

 

[Rick of Rick and Peg]

What is your suggestion for me?

I was about to suggest that you could learn about architecture when I saw that @VNwalking suggested that (and art) already so I gave her post a like. I've since decided to do a bit more.

In 2020, year 1 of the pandemic and limited numbers of caminos being walked, forum members contributed to many threads to make future caminos more pleasant. Among these were these threads describing the architecture styles encountered on caminos. These threads are listed in chronological order of the styles although the threads were created in a different order.

• Architecture for beginners - curriculum planning
• Roman architecture for beginners
• Visigothic/Pre-Romanesque architecture for beginners
• Romanesque architecture for beginners
• Gothic architecture for beginners

In addition you can use the forum’s search feature to look for even more threads discussing these topics with many showing you examples you may actually walk past. Click on the magnifying glass and then the box to search for the keyword(s) in thread titles only. Then enter one (and only one) of the following keywords followed by a click on the Search box. If you enter more than one word to search only the threads with all the words in the title will be found.

Keywords: Art, Architecture, Roman, Visigothic, Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque

However, I don't think there are many threads available to teach you Iberian Portuguese. There are plenty about language learning apps though. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find these threads.