Tuesday 22 October 2024
Definitely faced some challenges today, but not as hospitalero. More on them later. It's about 5:30 right now and we have 4 pilgrims so far. Yesterday we had one late arrival, after I wrote my daily entry. Jim, from the States, is walking the Plata in reverse from Leon through Astorga. When he arrived, he greeted me with "Are you David?". Apparently, he'd been hearing about me from pilgrims who had stayed here. Good things, he says. That's always nice to hear. He asked if he could stay an extra day. Since my philosophy as hospitalero is to treat people as I would like to be treated, I said okay as long as it didn't mean turning away other pilgrims, which I thought would be very unlikely given the number of pilgrims I'd been seeing and the number of beds we have.
This morning, when I got up at 6, the Spanish pair were already up and the first out the door. I managed to clear the rest out by about 8:30. Jim left his backpack here for the day, as did the Belgian peregrina who was catching a train to Madrid after 4 pm.
I decided today was cathedral day and was there at 10 am when they opened. I got the audio guide and followed it diligently while touring the new cathedral and attached old cathedral. As I suspected would be the case, the old cathedral was a bit more to my taste. While walking around admiring the cathedral and taking photographs, I put my hat down on one of the benches for the congregation. You aren't supposed to wear hats in churches, so normally I take it off and carry it with me, but if I am taking lots of pictures, sometimes I like to set it down. Well, I set it down today and when I went back for it, it had disappeared. There had been a tour group coming through and I guess someone must have picked it up. I checked lost and found but it hadn't been turned in. I will try again tomorrow morning and if it isn't there, I guess I am looking for another hat. That was somewhat of a downer. In fact, it was enough of a downer that, as I was walking through the streets back towards the cathedral entrance to ask about a lost and found, and passing the entrance to the climb of the cathedral's towers, I decided I just didn't have the energy to force myself to face my fears and climb, as I otherwise might have done. And after checking the lost and found unsuccessfully, I completely forgot to check out the episcopal palace, also included in my cathedral ticket.
After the cathedral, I followed up on
@filly's request and popped in to the Civil War Archives. There was no charge and they had a number of displays on the first floor, including a special exhibition on the Franco regimes persecution of freemasons, which culminated in a recreation if a freemason environment. From there I went back to the albergue and then off to lunch.
After lunch, I decided it was time to visit a bank machine and top up my euros, which I had not done since arrival in Spain. Unfortunately, when I did so, the transaction was not authorized. I thought "maybe I was asking for too much", so I tried again, only asking for €100. Still not authorized. I keep hearing from my bank that they don't want to hear when I am traveling. They no longer can use that information. The algorithms have it well in hand. And every year I keep having problems like this. Tomorrow, I will try again at a different bank here, with a debit card from a different bank at home. I dejectedly headed back to the albergue to be there to open it up for today's pilgrims.
The first pilgrims to arrive were the two from yesterday. Jim had brought a little spread and was offering us wine and chorizo and olives. A little later we got a visit from
@Sitkapilgrim, who is staying in a hotel tonight to catch up on sleep but will be checking in tomorrow and setting out on the Camino Torres on Thursday. Since I will be following her just over a week later, I'll be watching for her updates! She has also taken the hosvol training, so we chatted about being a hospitalero as well as about Salamanca, our Camino histories, and the usual things pilgrims talk about when they meet.
At 6:00, I paused working on this to join the Forum Zoom call, and with one thing and another it is now close to 8:00. One of those things was the arrival of a bicigrino from Mexico, bringing our pilgrim numbers up to 5 tonight. It turns out that he had met with Jim in Zamora (a name that he shares) and he had met another of our pilgrims (who also identifies as Mexican) on the Norte. Small world!
I think this is where I will leave off. We will see what tomorrow brings.
Photos: New cathedral (x2), Old cathedral (x2), Civil War archives (x2)