My Pilgrimage to Spain

How My First Big Journey Started

I was never one to travel much. My family mostly stayed at home during the holidays. Admittedly, I did go to India with my dad for three weeks when I was 15, but other than that, there were not many significant journeys. However, I was always the kid who was a little different than all the other kids in my class. I was known for doing crazy things and going my own way. For example, on one of my friend’s birthdays, I hung up a huge banner to congratulate him on the entrance of our school.

When I finally finished high school and was finally able to make my own decisions, I refused to walk the path everybody took and go to university. I wanted to find my own path in life and follow my passions.

And I had an idea. The Way of St. James. One of the most famous pilgrimages, one that was hundreds of years old and walked by millions of people. But I didn’t want to do it the way everybody else did it and start from the border of France. I wanted to walk from my home in Germany. So, in August 2022, at the age of 18, I started my roughly 3000 km long journey and just started walking.

Money Problems

One month before that, I started working and saved about €2,000 to finance my trip. I still planned on living frugally and sleeping outside a lot. But when I finally started, I found out that my credit card, which I ordered a few days before the trip, didn’t work, and that I forgot to take any money except €50 in my pocket, which a friend gave me for my trip. So, I was broke.

At first, that wasn’t a problem because the first few days, I slept with friends of mine who also gave me food and took care of me. But on the fourth day, my destination was a small city where I wanted to spend the night but knew no one. When I started walking that day, I was super scared. Would I find a place to sleep? Would I have to sleep on the street? Would I get robbed? Would I get wet? The whole day, I couldn’t stop thinking about that, and shortly before I arrived at the city, I was visibly shaking.

In the city, there was a big celebration at the time, so people were out on the street drinking beer. I nervously walked up to a group and, with a shaky voice, told them my story. They turned out to be part of a religious Christian group, and 15 minutes later, I met up with their priest at their religious center. He gave me the master keys of their center, which included a mattress, a living room, a canteen, a kitchen, and the church itself. Furthermore, one member of the community also gave me €50 for my trip.

This first day where I did not know where to sleep in the morning was the most important in the whole trip. It not only increased my budget from €50 to €100, but it did something more than that. Something way more important. It gave me hope, a sense of accomplishment, and the seed of the idea that the money with which I started was enough to walk all the way to Spain, which still seemed like a crazy unachievable goal to me.

Germany

I decided to at least walk to France with the money I got. I only ate the cheapest muesli that was available in the supermarket mixed with tap water and tried to find a place to sleep just by asking around.

And so I did. I slept in the sauna of a mayor, in the workshop of a stonemason, and the barn of a farmer. Combined with the fact that muesli is quite cheap and some people also gave me some food, I had spent an average of just below €2 per day when I arrived in France. Also, some people I met also donated money to me, and when I crossed the border, I had about €220 in my pocket.

France

When I crossed into France, I was scared again. I did have French in high school, but my last French class was two years ago, and even back then, I was so bad in French that I nearly failed because of it. I couldn’t even buy a baguette in a bakery. Furthermore, I calculated that I had about €1.80 per day if my budget should take me all the way to Santiago in Spain, and now it would be considerably harder to get money if my savings turned out to not be enough.

That morning of border crossing, I did something that would save my whole journey. I stopped thinking about how I still had more than 2000 km to walk, little money, and little French knowledge, and I just started walking. I learned that day how to achieve my goals no matter how big they are, no matter how many fears and insecurities you have.

I focused only on my next step, which may be at most 1 meter long, but without taking it, I will never achieve to walk the remaining 200,000 meters to my goal. To only think about the smallest next step to my goal than about the monster of a task that is the goal itself. That evening, with the help of Google Translate, I managed to find an old man in a small village who took me in, I downloaded an app to learn French vocabulary, and I found out that in the supermarkets, a baguette costs about 35 cents.

How I actually crossed France is a long story, but I managed to do it. I managed to find a job in the countryside and managed to earn €140 in two days. I continued to learn French vocabulary every day, and I even got myself a small bivouac tent on the way. I could afford myself some jam on my baguette, and a few days before I arrived in Spain, a French local even told me that she thought that French was my mother tongue.

Spain

So what challenges could await me when trying to cross Spain? Right? Well, in short: Spanish, other pilgrims, and my own expectations.

First of all, I could speak no Spanish, not a word. And it turns out to be quite hard if you also have no basic educational background like I had in France.

Second of all, in Spain, there were a lot of other pilgrims. I wasn’t special anymore. Instead of being the only pilgrim that walked through town that year, I was one of twenty that day. And there were a lot of hostels, and the cheapest cost only around €6. Way too much for me but enough to not be easily invited to stay.

Which leads to my expectations. Through all of Germany and France, someone gave me a place to sleep every day (except two times), and I had the expectation of myself to try to find a place to sleep every day. Every day I had to sleep outside so far was a day of disappointment, of doubt if I didn’t try hard enough or fear of what could happen to me while sleeping outside.

Now on my fourth day, I already had to sleep outside. And then on my fifth, sixth, and seventh. And there was a lot of rain, and my rain equipment was failing. There were days when I woke up in a wet sleeping bag, days when I had to go to sleep in damp clothes, and days when the only way to dry my wet clothes was to wear them.

And then I learned something again. I learned that things that previously scared me and made me uncomfortable were actually okay. I learned to accept sleeping on the street, wearing wet clothes, and being cold. These were all things that were unthinkable before, but now I learned that they were all manageable and okay. I learned that things which were totally unbelievable one day could become the norm the other day.

Then I arrived.

The feeling was super underwhelming. It was just like arriving any other day. The city was just like any other city I passed through. The Cathedral of Santiago was just like any of the many other cathedrals I had seen along the way. But it didn’t bother me because by now, I didn’t expect it to be special. I was totally okay with it. By now, I had accepted that the special thing was the people I met, the places I saw, the lessons I learned, and the way in which I grew along the way. Also, I had to go back home somehow.

Hitchhiking

The people in Spain told me that nobody hitchhikes in Spain. That people wouldn’t stop for me. One guy even told me he hadn’t seen any hitchhikers in more than 10 years. Still, I walked up to the road and put out my thumb. Three minutes later, I was sitting in a car, the fastest I ever got a ride in my whole trip. Sometimes I think it is fate that the first time I try something new, like finding a place to sleep by asking around or hitchhiking, I have such a huge success that it fuels me to try again until I am successful again.

But that luck didn’t last long, and for the next few cars, I had to wait over half an hour. And overall, that day, I only drove about 80 km. Since my plan was to return by Christmas, and I was already halfway through December, this was way too slow. But the thing about hitchhiking is it is kind of like gambling. You have extreme lows and extreme highs.

The next day started really bad, and by noon, I had only made 40 km. But then I found a couple who were going on holiday in France and who took me all the way there. And then the same thing happened again. For the first five hours of the third day, nothing happened, but then I found a truck that drove me all the way to northern France.

Lessons about hitchhiking

The trick about hitchhiking is you just need one car. If you wait for 5 hours to get a truck that drives you all the way through the country, it is way better than to just take every car that stops and drives you only 5 km to the next village where your trip might last days.

The other great thing about hitchhiking is that you meet the most diverse people. I met a Spanish TV host, a cultural minister, a Belarusian truck driver, a military police woman, a dentist assistant, and some metal fans. All these people have different living styles, different ways to view the world, and different opinions, and you spend hours in the car with them just talking. I think there is no better way to get an open mind and a broader worldview and maybe to deal with personal problems than to hitchhike.

It is kind of like speaking to the collective consciousness of a country if you hitchhike through it. You see some similarities with people, realize that all humans are the same in some way, but you also see differences in all humans and realize that you cannot put humans in categories just like that. Lastly, if you have some personal problems, like a breakup, for example, and you hitchhike, you get a very diverse set of opinions and solutions by the people that you meet, and if you do it long enough, chances are high that some of them are really good and helpful (especially if you hitchhike with a psychologist).

That said, I managed to hitchhike from home to Santiago in six days and with the help of 25 cars. Overall, my journey took 137 days. I spent about €360 and returned with €106 and a lot of life experience.

What I learned from the trip

I know this kind of travel is very rough, and I don’t recommend it to everyone, but if you try doing something similar like this, the rewards of this are immense. For me personally, I learned how to find hope in hopeless situations, how to speak with strangers, how to accept difficult and uncomfortable things, how to be better at budgeting money, and how to be more independent and take care of my own problems. Furthermore, my French drastically improved, I know the basics of Spanish now, and I have a way better understanding of the different opinions and worldviews people have and a more open mind towards them.

The red line is the way I walked on food and the blue line is the way I Hitchhiked

Me with my Hitchhiking sign on my Way bakc to Germany

How I walked from Germany to Spain on the Way of St. James