I met Flo at an old wooden table in Saint Jean Pied de Port France. We were both checking into the Belarus albergue and after we shyly shook hands and introduced ourselves we followed each other around the rest of the day. Flo isn’t from a small town in the southwest of Germany which most Germans don’t even recognize the name of. The name escapes me as well.
The next day Flo and I woke up, walked out into the street and wished each other good luck and a “buen Camino.” We then turned on our heels and walked out of town together at exactly the same pace.
Flo and I walked this way all the way over the Pyrenees mountains and into Roncesvalles. By the end we had talked so much about our lives that it felt like we had known each other for weeks. From Roncesvalles on we wordlessly assumed everyday that we were walking, sleeping, eating, and surviving together.
each day as we walked and the landscapes would blur together around us there would be a dull music that appeared in the common silence between us. When you walk for miles over rocks and hills and cobblestone roads in silence you begin to become aware of details around you that are normally insignificant. Flo’s carved staff strikes the dirt and rocks making a distinctive “click.” My scallop shell attached to my backpack clacks and chimes against my water bottle and I noticed that they make up the only sounds around us when we walk together other than the wind and the bird song; “clack, plink, clack, click” are the only sounds we hear for miles at a time. I notice also, in the times where I walk alone, how much I miss the click of Flo’s walking stick.
Flo taught me that Germans are polite. Flo said so himself and demonstrates it by never speaking over others and demonstrates it by never speaking over others and always paying attention to how I’m feeling; he’ll ask me if my legs hurt, when I’d like to eat, etc. The only German word I know is one that Flo taught me. It isn’t very useful because the word is “schmetterling” and means “butterfly” – not very handy but very entertaining when it is my only contribution to a German conversation.
Having someone to endure things besides turns hard tasks into bonding experiences. When you do squats for an hour or a similar exercise your legs normally feel warm for a day and then you wake up in the morning with growing pains. Flo and I walked for so long over the Pyrenees that my legs began to stop feeling warm and I began to feel my thighs and calves ripping and repairing themselves in real time. Flo and I panted up each hill and kept looking at each other in disbelief, realizing that each of us had actually signed up to do this. It was there that we coined what would become our signature catch-phrase from then on. Over the coming mikes through rain, exhaustion, hills, and valleys we would look at each other, grin, and say: “Could be worse.”