Le Puy or Not Le Puy

Galway, 16 days ago...

Clemont: Ah, you want to walk St Jacques de Compostele? Are you Catholic?

Me: No, I just like walking, that´s all.

Clemont: And you start, where?

Me: St Jean Pied du Port.

Clemont: You will walk through Spain? Noooooo, you must start in Le Puy, it´s very beautiful to walk from there, I did it. It´s very beautiful.

(Blaise nods)

Clemont: In Spain, all you´ll find are, how you say...

(Clemont and Blaise speak quickly in French)

Clemont: FAR-NAR-TEEKS. They whip themselves, scream "Jesus, Jesus!" They´re very racist, homosexual...no, homo...they hate the faggot, you know. No, you should start in Le Puy, very beautiful, and then you cross the PEER A NEE and go to Barcelona.


For years now, one of the main goals I´ve considered accomplishing while over here in Europe is to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a historical pilgrimage from the French side of the Pyrenees to the city of Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain. It´s about 800kms in total. When I bought my plane tickets I even spent a lot of time looking at maps of the walk, reading up hints on how to accomplish it successfully and the like. It was, as anyone close to me can recall, a bit of an obsession.

However, while traveling I´ve found myself to be really quick to change my mind. I highly valued the input of locals or experienced travelers, to the point of abandoning previous plans for better informed ones. So it was that, after talking to Blaise and Clemont, as well as some other people, that I jettisoned my entire idea of walking the Camino. Stuff the drab, northern plains of Spain, I thought, I´ll just walk through beautiful France and then hightail it to late night parties and funny buildings in Barcelona.

And then, in my last night in Paris, my mind just cracked. I´d spent my entire trip so far, typing online, sending emails, using my credit card to book flights and accommodation in euros and, generally, just being a slave to the dates I´d scrawled in my little travel bible. I had too many dates, codes and addresses in my head - enough was enough!

I´d also been sleeping beneath this terrifying water heater that would make explosive belches every five minutes, threatening (in my mind) to douse me with either fire or disfiguringly hot water. I was a little unhinged.

This was just the right amount of a personal breakdown that I required, and the very next day I bought a ticket to St Jean Pied du Port. Stuff Blaise and Clemont, though their advice was probably really useful - I´m going back to Plan A and walking across the north of Spain.

Jump ahead to now and I´m sitting in Pamplona, with my right knee and left ankle strapped tightly and about 75km worth of mud caking my boots. I couldn´t be happier (I´ve also just swallowed a bottle of cheap Spanish red, Hemingway-style, which I promise you was consumed as quick source of pain relief).

The most obvious thing I´ve noticed about this walk is that there are a lot of Germans doing it. In fact, almost everyone here is German, and retired. But, there are a few others like me, young, or nicht Deutschlander, walking along here. Also, almost no-one is walking for religious reasons. Most people are, if not retired, between jobs, or have just recovered from an illness, and really liked the idea of walking through the Spanish countryside.

And, without a doubt, it is such a beautiful way to spend a season of unemployment. If starting from St Jean Pied du Port, you are thrown headfirst into the imposing heights of the Pyranees. I was even fortunate enough to have it rain heavily on my first day, turning the dirt tracks of the of the mountain into sucking mud slides. From what I´ve heard this first day is a real crucible, testing quite quickly how hardy your pilgrim desires are. Two boys, cyclists to boot, were trapped on the heights of the mountain and had to be rescued by an ambulance crew, as they developed hypothermia.

Even so, the mountain crossing was amazingly beautiful. To put everything into a nerdy context, the French side of the Pyrenees is like a jaunt through "The Lord of the Rings". However, once you cross the peaks and descend through brightly lit beech forests, you´re right in the middle of "Pan´s Labyrinth".

Actually, to continue the nerdy flavour for a moment, I´d have to say that one of the major things that keeps me going is the thought that I´m in one of my favourite fantasy novels, or a character in a game like "Morrowind" or "World of Warcraft". The scenery and architecture alone is worthy of such daydreams.

One other observation I´ve made about this pilgrimage is that you´ll encounter one of three types of local along the way. There are the pro-pilgrims who, like this fantastic old lady I met in Pamplona today, will guide you to find your refuge, chattering away in Spanish despite knowing that you don´t know what she´s saying. Then, there are the people who profit from the pilgrims, charging you money for the cheapest, most under-nourishing fare. This is quite easy to get away with too; if you´ve just spent eight hours crossing a mountain range, any pint of beer will taste like heaven, even if it´s actually another man´s phlegm.

Finally, there are the people who´ve seen so many damned scallop shells and they don´t care who or what you are, as long as you don´t stand in their way. I quite like these people, because they´re a nice reminder that the walk I´m doing isn´t essentially some amazing, life-changing adventure, nor is it some honourable, rare achievement. It´s just a walk, a fantastic one, but a walk just the same.

Of course, if I didn´t care about making this pilgrimage, that would be another story.

P.S. You do not know pain until you´ve spent your third night in a row in a 120 person dormitory, where over a third of the inhabitants snore as badly as the French man I endured in Galway.

I went to Paris and didn't see the Eiffel Tower

I had a bit of a love affair in Paris.

She was a big girl, who, for a small price, would happily lift me into her arms and fling me about the place until I was giddy with laughter. Then, when she was spent, shed'd throw me out onto the street, and I'd be forced to find a real person to talk to.

Her name was Metro and, when compared to the wheezing PE student that is Sydney's rail system, she is the most efficient piece of public property I've ever been introduced to. Though I've been told that, given time I'd get over her novelty, my map-nerd heart leapt whenever I had to work out the combination of correspondences I'd require to get through Paris.

I'd like to think that Paris began when I was still in Cork. My lift back to Limerick was stuck behind several lorries, which meant that I was sitting in front of the Court House (our meeting point) for about an hour. I had a book to read, so this was fine, except for the fact that a homeless man was running about the courthouse steps yelling "I'll fuck your life!!" at the cross on the church next door.

I didn't want to leave the area, but tried to look as interested in my book as possible (whole pages were flicked through without me registering their contents). Unfortunately I must've looked a bit like a crucifix, because I suddenly found myself the only person in the street, being approached by this man.

He stunk of beer and cigarettes, and his Tom Waits voice barked and wheezed, telling me that God was the only thing that would save him from the drink. 

He grunted, "This hand," and grabbed mine, leaving a pause long enough for me to hope that his next words weren't "...has been up my arse," before relieving my fears by concluding, "...is giving transmitting peace and love to you."

I smiled at him, but this just encouraged him to the next degree of bum scare tactics. He launched at me, taking me up in his arms in a big hug, all the while yelling out for God to "bless this traveler". I would've been touched, but was too busy thinking about the dark jewel of mucous that I'd seen pulsating in his nostril.

Just before he left, the man's wet gravel voice let slip that he was not long for this world. 

A car, plane and bus blur later, and I was walking around Paris in the early hours of the morning. Disgorged from a french electro club (filled with pretty things in leather, skinny jeans and scarves, dancing to the musical equivalent of the throaty Francophone 'r'), my new friends and I joined forces with a bunch of med students trying to find their way back home to Versailles. One of the boys told me just how hard his medical course was, and of the great stress that he was under.

"Several times now, I've tried to...how do you say..."

He mimed hanging himself. For some reason, I heard crunching gravel in the back of my mind: "I'm not long for this world".

This was the Paris that I've spent the last few days in, being throttled about in a speedy tin can and chatting to strangers. There was the drunk Montenegran who drew my portrait on the back of an envelope, the 16 year olds denouncing the French politcal system because anarchy is trendy for adolescents, beer-fuelled chats about Tolstoy (I haven't read any), my clumsy French somehow succeeding (though supported by friendly locals who knew English) and gypsies trying to beg off me with printed cards. 

For the record, I only came to Paris to see a friend, and was never really in love with this city. Most of the romantic assocations with Paris are, sadly, over-priced and frequented by camera-snappers and pickpockets. But, having been here, I can see now why there is a long history of expatriates collecting here like hairs in a sink. Things seem more relaxed than in Sydney, definitely more relaxed than any culture grown out of the Protestant work ethic. Here you're allowed to sit in cafes and talk artistic dross -- some people have made careers out of it.

Does that mean I'm now in love with Paris?

No.

Not yet anyway.

But I do love that Metro. She is definitely a keeper, even when she stinks of urine.

The Tale of Red Rory and Tim the Caterpillar Wrestler

Take a moment to think of poor Rory.

A Cork boy, Rory is cursed with ginger locks and an occasionally beetroot complexion, not to mention an accent that is sometimes completely indecipherable by even Irish standards. He studies computer science at the Cork Institute of Technology. And a few days ago, he finally worked up the courage to ask that pretty German waitress out for a "friendly night out".

Flash forward to last night, and poor Rory finds himself front row centre at the most bizarre comedy night in the history of stand-up. While Christina, the German, crosses her arms, Rory is put on the spot to explain what his sexual relationship is with the girl at his table (she emphatically said "No" when asked if she was going out with him).

But this isn't the end of it. His interrogator is Tim, a mash-up of David Brent with Bill Bailey's sense of style, and the host of the night's festivities. The deep red of Rory's face might have something to do with, aside from witnessing all of his long-rehearsed romantic scenarios collapse into dust, the fact that Tim is sitting on a giant caterpillar.

It's surrounded by a "semicircle of enchantment" made from crystals and cacti.

The place was called "Utopianation", and it is a fantastic bubble of life just to the south of Cork's centre. By day it's an alternative cafe and winebar, but it hides many a talent beneath its organic skirts. Last Saturday they held a burlesque barn dance party, and while I sat at the bar making little television sets (for an upcoming comedy karaoke night), a pole-dancing class was taking place out the back.

How I'd come here was through the wonders of couch surfing. Kait and Markus, a beautiful couple from the US and Germany respectively, agreed to host me despite their massive workloads. Kait is one of the managers at Utopianation and definitely a creative asset, as she is now currently planning to convert the surrounding apartments into an eco hostel. Fingers crossed, it'll be up and running by the summer time.

But, back to poor Red Rory and his faltering attempts to woo Christina. After barely surviving the inquisition from Tim (where Rory was encouraged to throw a shiela on the bbq when he visits Australia), he was then forced to sit through the agonising account of one of my most embarrasing and, obviously sacred, sexual encounters.

You see, part of the reason why Kait and Markus were so happy to have me stay with them, was that I'd mentioned that I was trying my hand at storytelling. After telling them a tale on my first night, I was encouraged to come along to Utopianation and perform alongside proper comedians.

Be funny...hmmm...unfortunately I was yet to learn of any funny stories from the annals of human folklore, so I needed to delve into darker, more personal archives.

I won't tell the story here, though some of you may already know it. Let's just say it involves me attempting to talk dirty. The audience seemed to really enjoy it, though I could see that doe-eyed expression slapped straight across Rory's face.

It said, "Kill me now, please, because I'm not going to get a root tonight".

Christina, on the other hand, was looking at her phone. Perhaps it was Hans, with the simple, yet powerful phrase of "figg mich".

Whatever their fate, Rory's crimson features and Christina's bemused, germanic face, escaped into the night at the end of the show, and I wish both of them the best of luck.

As for me, today is my final full day in Ireland. The last few weeks have just flown by, with such an amazing cast of people, Irish and otherwise. Tomorrow will be very exciting, and slightly terrifying, given that it's my first time alone in a non-English speaking country. Let's hope things don't go too pear-shaped...

Stab City

Limerick's reputation has spread out from its industrial fringes like some oily stain, bubbling and flowing in so fast a manner that you have no choice but to yell, "Quick, Ted, quick, get the mop it's heading for the carpet!"

A famous site for stabbings, gang warfare, and Frank McCourt's father abusing his mother, Limerick is an industrial carbuncle on the otherwise perfect, emerald face of Ireland. Almost every comedian tells jokes about how awful Limerick is, as it seems to be a guaranteed laugh from anyone who is not from Stab City. Otherwise, it's a definite shank in the spleen.

So, while sitting on the bus, cursing my iPod's batteries, I made a promise to myself: I was going to squeeze some positive blood out of that gritty stone.

I think I got a few drops.

Limerick was the first time that I've stayed with people who were not family members, hostel patrons or couch surfers. Amazingly, a friend's cousin gave me a place to sleep and welcomed me into his social circle. But here I discovered the first major flaw of traveling by yourself and staying with locals -- you're the only one who is on holidays. Thus, for most of my stay in Limerick, I was sitting in lounge rooms with the television on. That's my fault too though, because I should've hopped off my arse and gone for a walk, but for the record, I'm not actually complaining here. Rather, I'm using the literary device of "setting the scene" to bitch without getting into trouble.

Anyway, this meant that my view of Limerick was of row upon row of grim council estate housing, of streets draped with grey skies and fast food rubbish. Every boy had all but the top of his head shaved, and they were all sporting tracksuits and faux gangster bling. Punctuating every suburb were tagged walls, barbed wire and electricity pylons. Even the horizon was braced with the metal skeletons of grim industrial development.

So my first thought was, "Time for a can of lager".

It's now time to introduce Brian. In ancient, prehistoric times, pantheistic tribes believed that every animal, rock, tree, waterhole or piece of poo had an inherent, spiritual spark. These essential beings captured the most pure image of whatever object they inhabited.

Brian, I honestly believe, is the spirit of Limerick.

Standing at 6'2", with dirty blonde hair, a cheeky smile and hands that could be carved for Christmas, Brian's first words to me were - in an accent thicker than a pub toilet's atmosphere - "It's all gravy, baby!".

Though almost entirely unintelligble, Brian and I spoke constantly in the few days I was in Limerick. He was "born, reared and dead" in Limerick, and at 20 years old was overcoming a hefty load of baggage.

In his mid-teens, Brian witnessed his twin brother burn to death in a house fire. Another brother was lost due to a weak heart. Since then he's been charged for assault and drug offences, has had numerous bones broken, arteries slashed and his lungs and liver are apparently now on loan from Keith Richards.

But, that's starting to change. Though he still drinks a lot (I personally watched him drink 15 litres of beer in an eight hour period), he has straightened a lot of his life out. You can see it too. Occasionally, when he gets really excited about a subject, Brian's usually cherubic face spasms into an aggressive snarl akin to (warning: nerd alert) Bilbo's lunge for the One Ring while talking to Frodo in Rivendell. That, Brian later tells me, is how he looked all the time.

Limerick's changing too, and Brian proudly showed me the new development of the Thomond Park stadium. Ross, my awesome host, also told me that the inner city is going to be revamped and turned into a pedestrian-only thoroughfare.

"The media pick on Limerick all the time," Brian said one night, "and it's unfair. Crime happens here, yeah, but it happens everywhere. People poke at Limerick because of our rep. Fucking Angela's Ashes."

He's right too -- Dublin has a much higher crime rate than Limerick (look up the facts yourself, I'm in an internet cafe). What Limerick does have, however, is a very colourful criminal history. Two days before I arrived in the city, a massive gang feud fired up after a year's hiatus. It seems that a whole load of boys were released from jail on the same weekend and hopped straight into shooting eachother. On the actual day of my arrival, the city was in a tense state of lockdown, with Gardai cars zooming around the city.

"Poor fucker had to dig his own grave," Brian told me, explaining that the most recent feud member to be shot was driven around town, dressed as a woman, and shot dead at the age of 20. The only reason why he was found was that he'd been forced to dig in a very muddy area so, a few days later, his corpse sunk head first into the soil, causing his feet to sprout out of the ground. It was his funeral the day I came to Limerick.

"See that hotel there?" Ross asked, pointing at what looked like a giant cigarette lighter hanging over the river.

"A woman was murdered there a few years ago. Went there to meet up with a man she met in ones of those ads in the paper. The cleaners found her the next day."

"And there was the time when the man leapt to his death from the top floor. Also, a manager caught employees robbing the till one night, and was stabbed to death."

It's quite hard to get away from the sense of Limerick being the seediest, crime capital of Ireland when you're surrounded by that sort of talk. Still, I did enjoy of my time in the city, even if it was spent sitting down watching British soaps and music videos with single mothers in council flats.

UPDATE: I received an email from Aonghus, the Connemara boy who had his face busted in a fight. It turns out that he didn't lose a tooth at all; his jaw was fractured in half and is now being held together by a titanium plate.

And that wasn't even in Limerick!

On the Emerald Road

I haven't slept well for the last two nights. In some parallel universe it was because I was out all night, drinking copious amounts of cheap booze, or smoking hash with mushroom-infested hippies, or even engaging in multilingual hostel dorm orgies. Unfortunately it was all thanks to the wonders of some random French guy and a relentless snore that sounds like he's inhaling Clag paste through a sponge.

The first time his apnoeia invaded my dreams, I had this image of some wild beast being slaughtered by medieval peasants. Eventually, the sleep dropped away and I realised where the sound was coming from. For the next twenty minutes I had front row centre to the nasal symphony of gasps, chokes, gurgles, roars and snorts that erupted from this tiny man's mouth. When it finally finished, I sighed and rolled over to sleep, only to learn that his breathing disability was set onto some demonic rinse and repeat cycle.

This week marked my first time traveling away from the comforts of a family. For the most part, it has been a really fun experience.

Over the weekend I was staying with an Irish man called Aonghus, who lived in the tiny town of Inverin, Connemara, just outside of Galway. All the towns to the west of Galway, at least on the southern part of Connemara, are Gaeltacht. This means that they're a region where people speak the traditional Irish Gaelic as their first language. I'd first learnt about the Gaeltacht while watching a stand-up comedian, Des Bishop, perform to Irish audiences in a mix of Gaelic and English, so immediately Aonghus and I had a good point of cultural reference.

Aonghus lived alone in a house that he'd inherited from his aunt. It was a tiny place, built without insulation and equally devoid of both a shower and heating. That didn't seem to really matter too much, as there was always a nice fire burning, and a pub next door.

Things took a bad turn, however, on the first night I was there. I went out on the town with Aonghus and his friends, playing billiards and drinking pints of the cheapest beer I could find. At the end of the night we all hopped into a hackney, which is a minibus that runs up and down the one road between all the towns in Connemara.

The bus was packed with drunk bodies, and I found my head swimming as I tried to work out if people were talking to me in Gaelic, or if I was just having a bastard of a time understanding their accent. Aonghus yelled out to the hackney driver to stop, as we were at his house.

When Aonghus stood to hop out, another young guy, his head shaved down to all but the bizarre flattop that so many Irish men sport, leapt over a seat and took a swing at Aonghus. Instantly, the hackney erupted into a mini-brawl and we were all pushed out onto the street (incidently, it did mean that I got out without having to pay the cab fare).

One big difference between an Irish street brawl (at least in Connemara) and an Australian pub brawl, is that the freezing, sleeting Irish nighttime chills a fighter's heart pretty quickly. The brawlers backed down and scattered into the night, leaving me to help Aonghus out with his bleeding mouth.

It turns out that about five years earlier, Aonghus had been attacked by the same guy and, over the course of their fight, put the man's head through a car window. It had been hell for him ever since, and, despite losing a tooth in the hackney brawl, he knew that their revenge was still far from paid.

Galway city provided a very different experience for me. After the mostly good times with the Irish in rural Connemara, I moved into a multinational hostel right in the city centre.

Perhaps it's because I can be a bit of a dirty, shower-free fellow at times, but I took to hostel life quite quickly. On my first proper day in Galway, I decided to lose myself in the city, just walking around and pretending to know where I was going. It was, by far, the best way to get my head into gear and by the second day I was actually leading other foreigners around, recommending restaurants, and pointing out local oddities.

I may or may not have been making up some facts, but that's not the point.

Hostels are like an underground UN, and I fraternised with delegates from France, the United States, Canada, Germany and Brazil over the course of two days. For the record, everyone was brilliant, but there's not enough space to talk about all of them in one hit. Maybe I'll introduce them later.

But, I did have the pleasure of spending a day with two Lyonnesse men, Blaise and Clemont. These two were gentle madmen. Both worked in a library back in Lyon ("we, err, how do you say, we stole books and sold them to pay for our trip. It is something with which we are not proud"), and had come over to live in Ireland for about a month. We walked around the city, and almost got shot for walking onto a military base in an attempt to make a short cut (military bases in Ireland, or at least Galway, look more like UNESCO tourist spots).

The two were about to start living and working with an old hippie woman out in the town of Spiddle, just west of Galway.

"We will be helping her with the work, like, errr, painting the 'ouse and, weeding and, maybe help with the organ," Clemont explained.

For a few seconds I thought he meant that their hostess was a keen pianist.

Tales from the Townlands

"If that fekking idiot of a postman doesn't know that we live here, then they can just fekk off and get a local boy to deliver it. Ain't no sense in getting rid of the townlands. Stupid fekking house numbers and street names, Jesus."

She was a young nurse, leaning back and blowing smoke out of the open kitchen window. This was the first time I'd heard of the townlands, and it would not be the last.

A townland is, from what I can gather, the name of an area in Ireland. They are not towns as such, as you can have many townlands associated with a town. And they're not single property names, because you can have multiple properties on a townland. They are the townlands - touchstones to Irish's colourful history and folklore, and, as the nurse railed out against, under threat from the modern need for a billing address.

Townlands generally come from the old Irish, and some have very inviting, poetic translations. Standing at one point, for example, I could see "the Big Tate" (a tate is an old measurement of land, not based on area, but on the amount of cattle it could provide food to in a year), "the Fort of the Fairy Woman" and "the Fort of the Soothsayer". It is no wonder that a lot of people are interested in uncovering their meanings.

Though he was sitting at an angle sympathetic to the droop of his face, the old man sitting behind me in the car was quick and alive with local, historical information.

"That's where they set off the Enniskillen bomb, back in the Troubles," he said, "and a mighty shame it wasn't a bigger one."

Politically charged, he was also writing a collection of all the townland names and their meanings from the county of Fermanagh. We were actually on our way to the meeting of the local historical society, who were holding their Annual General Meeting, as well as launching a book about the "Chantry Inquisitions" of Counties Fermanagh and Monaghan (a book that is only required reading for people interested in local history and townlands).

"Those elections were rigged," he growled as we drove away, "they always are. It's the Bishop, you see, he always picks the folk he wants to run the society. That's why their journal's always filled with bloody church history."

I don't doubt him either, mainly because he didn't actually run, so couldn't have tasted any sour grapes. He was, though, interested in reading his book on the townlands. As was my uncle, an equally sage man, who'd been our chauffeur for the evening.

"See that man there, Jimmy," he said, as we passed a waving figure, "he's old Boyd, a real oddball. Keeps wanting to get lifts into town, but he reeks of filth. Keeps goats, you see, and he got stabbed a few years back"

My uncle's encyclopedic knowledge didn't end there. Every building, person, lane or field held a wealth of legends and history.

"That there house, with the caravan parked out the front, see it? A man came from England, to lay his claim on it, so he left the 'van there till it went all mouldy. He came out then, a few years back, and finally got onto the land. He only lasted about a year. You see those trees in the field? The ones that are standing by themselves, scattered around a bit? They're called "lone trees". We don't cut them down, see, some folk think they're fairy trees or the property of the druids. But this man, he went and lopped off parts of those trees, then got the cancer and died. So we leave the trees there, rightly so."

Even today, then, stories form a very important part of the Irish landscape. I've been taken on many tours now, with all manner of family members, and they are all the same: pointing out buildings and people and telling a story about them. There's the house where one brother died,so his surviving sibling stowed him away in the attic until he rotted. While, over there, is the woman who always collects herbs by the side of the road--she's got the cure for urine infections, passed on from her husband. Further down, there's the church whose site was determined by the cast of a spear and where, a century or so later, a bishop was cut down while he stood at the altar.

Though the phone and electricity companies will no doubt get their way, it's comforting to know that the townlands will still live on, carried through in the tales of their inhabitants.