I spent most of my time from May 2014 to May 2015 walking in Spain and have learned to love the country and the Spanish people. I made long walks∗ in the countryside, in the mountains, and along the coastline. I visited countless villages and towns, mostly staying in small guest houses and hotels, but also spent an occasional night outdoors camping.
GR-7 Andalucía
I met hundreds of dogs of unknown origin and experienced breathtaking views from paths high up in the mountains of Sierra Nevada and the Pyrenees and from rocky coastal paths winding past a myriad of small beaches (calas) alongside the azure blue water of the Mediterranean Sea.
Andorra is still far away 🙂
And I can honestly say that I solely met nice and friendly people that were pleased to help and also showed great patience with my faltering Spanish pronunciation and gave me credit and respect for trying to speak their language. Right now I am compiling the web site, joriki.eu “Inside the head of a hispanophile”, in order to organize my memories, experiences, and knowledge, and to make it accessible and hopefully useful to other people.
∗For example: GR-7 (E4) from Tarifa to Andorra la Vella and GR-92 from Valencia to Portbou.
It took many years for me to realize what I had to do in order to stop being unhappy. A holiday trip to Mallorca was what really set things in motion. There I experienced several full days of walking in the Tramuntana mountains. It was christmas time, the air was crisp and fresh, and the pale daylight made everything appear in a mysterious glow.
The archduke’s path from Deía
I felt happy and calm and had complete trust in the performance of both body and mind. Excited as a small child on Christmas day I was moving silently along soft narrow paths passing through quiet oak forests and climbing steep rocky trails hanging on the mountain sides trying to decode the more or less cryptic instructions from the guide-book that I was carrying.
The archduke’s path from Deía
It was like playing an adventure game like Myst or Riven on the computer but this was real. Strange and unfamiliar things everywhere, like charcoal burners bread ovens, mill wheels, and other old remains of human made structures, scattered all over the mountains, all those stone walls, arduously built by generations of men under the burning sun. And it was quiet. Very, very quiet. Not a bird to see or hear, not a rabbit. Nothing. Anywhere. All this together changed something inside of me and I was never to be the same again after that. But it still took me almost another ten years to break loose from my old life.
Everything continued more or less as it always had for another six years but I traveled more than before and I walked a lot in places like mainland Spain, Tenerife, Mallorca, the Azores, and Madeira. I also toured the Iberian peninsula from north to south and from west to east by train and bus and visited many fabulous places.
Montserrat
Then one day after coming home from a three-week tour of Eastern Europe I had a clash with middle management over a trivial matter and I suddenly felt that I had had enough of poor management and egotistical, stupid colleagues. I submitted my resignation a couple of days later and after two months notice I walked out of that office and have never looked back.
Ronda
I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with the rest of my time on earth but the most I came up with was what I didn’t want to do. And I didn’t want to return to a job in an office working nine to five no matter how much I was paid. Then I made some calculations and it stood clear to me that if I could reduce my fixed expenses to a minimum I could afford to say no to wage labour for an extended period of time.
Córdoba, la Mezquita
I decided to have a go at one of Europe’s longest walking trails, the GR-7, also called E4. The trail starts in Tarifa near Gibraltar in Spain and ends in Greece after more than 10000 kilometers. I settled for the distance Tarifa to Andorra that is well over 2000 kilometers. And that I thought was enough for me at least for a start.
Casa de las paraguas, Las Ramblas, Barcelona
Now I had a defined target and could focus completely on what I had to do in order to reach that target. So, I began to sell, give away, or throw away everything that I didn’t really need and also investigated the possibility of getting rid of the rent for my apartment. At the same time I wanted to keep some of my furniture and some of the other things that I had further use for, and I had to find a way to receive my mail not having a permanent address.
Plaza de toros, Sevilla
I found the answers to all of my questions and terminated the lease for my apartment, rented a large box in a warehouse where I could store my furniture and stuff for as long as I needed for a reasonable cost, and changed my address to a post office box. I also bought a large backpack and stuffed it with carefully selected items. I didn’t want the weight to exceed 15 kilograms excluding water and food.
La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
And then came the day when it was time to set off. Early in the morning the movers came and collected my furniture and my other stuff that was diligently packed in cartons. Then came my landlord to make his inspection of the apartment and collect the keys.
Casa Batlló, Barcelona
At noon I stood outside my old apartment dressed for walking and with only my backpack to carry. It created a strange but awesome feeling when I thought about that I now had left a place where I had been living for the past 25 years and that I never would return there again.
