Meandering to Xinzo

I was psyched to start walking on Wednesday, I wanted to put into practice everything Samantha and Toni had taught me. Belin was up early too, loading up her car with all the cake she had been making the night before, for what purpose I don't know. She hugged me tight and dashed off, leaving me in the arthritic hands of her mother, who seemed to be under the impression that if she spoke a steady stream of Gallician to me I would eventually understand. 

I have to say my biggest struggle most of the time is packing. There is some logic to be found but in order to achieve this I have to stand frowning at the rucksack for fifteen minutes every morning. Once satisfied with my packing, I joined Belin's mother in the sitting room and tried to stomach some of the tortilla left over from the night before. I was defeated half way through both the tortilla and my coffee tankard so I put my rucksack on and made to say goodbye. 'I go Xinzo' I said and the old ladies face crumpled as she made the sign of the cross. If this wasn't disheartening enough, as she waved me off from the door she started crying loudly and sank down to the ground. I walked quickly onto the street. How could I have that effect on a person and not even remember their name? It left a bitter taste in my mouth and I adopted a guilty pace as I thought about her all alone in that flat, the picture of her late husband hanging sadly on the wall. 

The walk to Xinzo was a stroll. I sat for half an hour reading a book and eating an orange in the sun and on the outskirts of the town I lay under a tree and watched a Crain feeding its chick. I met an old man on my path who spoke perfect English and he explained that normally he walked in the afternoon but because today he had a funeral he'd had to rearrange his schedule. There was little ascent or descent apart from climbing the hill to St Benedict's church which was 4 miles out of Xinzo, a place with strange stumpy sculptures and park benches. The suburbs of the town were ugly, gated with huge great dogs, the size of polar bears, barking relentlessly at anything that moved, just to pass the time. The way animals are treated here makes me feel quite sick actually. Dogs are never walked, kept outside to there own devices, where they sweat out their days in the sun, harbouring an aggression grown from their boredom. 

I arrived in Xinzo at three o'clock, the sun was high and when I entered the bar everything was blue for a while as my eyes adjusted to the dim. I ordered a coffee and blogged until six when Merle came to pick me up. She had been Xinzo for 6 months with the European voluntary alliance, or something along those lines, and her English was perfect, with a German lilt. Her flat, which the alliance provideded, had five bedrooms but only two current occupants - herself and a Hungarian guy called Norman who I was going to meet later. We sat and had coffee and talked about travelling until I had to go out and get food for my walk the next day. 

When I returned to the flat Norman was there to greet me; tall, thin and shy he told me that his friends called him 'Normie' which literally made me want to feed him cake. We ate pasta and drank wine and laughed a lot about our different cultures. Norman also managed to totally pull the rug out from under my feet with his genuine concern for my safety, looking at me like I was a dead man walking. I went to wrapped in three blankets and feeling slightly less invincible than before.